Greenpeace

Thanks in great part to all of the emails and calls activists like you sent to the company, Timberland has announced a new policy agreement with Greenpeace that will help ensure the leather used in its boots and shoes is not contributing to new deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest or global warming. The policy will not only guide Timberland’s leather procurement from Brazil to ensure it’s not supporting deforestation, the policy also sets a deadline for Timberland suppliers to publicly commit to a moratorium on cattle expansion in the Amazon.



Timberland worked with Greenpeace to craft a policy that will require its leather suppliers to commit to a moratorium on purchasing any cattle raised in newly deforested areas within the Amazon Rainforest. Given the cattle industry is Brazil's top source of greenhouse gas emissions and the largest driver of deforestation in the world, a moratorium on cattle expansion is a critical component of any Zero Deforestation policy in Brazil that aims to reduce forest-related greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil has committed to achieving Zero Deforestation by 2015.

Thank Timberland for stepping it up a notch with its suppliers to help eliminate Amazon destruction from the leather sector in Brazil. Every step counts in the fight to save the Amazon and our climate!

Today Greenpeace was glad to be part of the announcement that the Amazon Soy Moratorium has officially been extended to July 2010. This is a crucial piece of Amazon protection, so its extension is welcome news indeed.

Approximately 100 km (62 mi) above Manaus, in Brazil's Amazonas state, the Anavilhanas is the largest river archipelago in the world with over 400 islands. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

The Soy Moratorium is essentially a commitment not to trade soy from areas in the Amazon Biome that were deforested after July 24, 2006. The moratorium is enforced by the Soy Working Group (abbreviated as GTS based on its Portuguese name), which was established in 2006 to implement the moratorium and is made up of representatives from the soy growing and exporting industry as well as various NGOs, including Greenpeace, WWF, and the Nature Conservancy.

Originally, the Soy Moratorium was an initiative of the private sector and various environmental and conservation NGOs, but the Moratorium received the support of the Brazil's Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, who formally joined the initiative last year. Thanks to the Soy Moratorium, soy is no longer the chief driver of Amazon deforestation. That distinction belongs to cattle ranching, which is responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon. Greenpeace is calling for a cattle moratorium to match the protect the Amazon.

Prior to the Soy Moratorium, large swaths of Amazon were clearcut for soy plantations, while tiny islands of intact rainforest such as this one were left behind to meet lax government standards. © Greenpeace

Read more about this great news here, as well as what the GTS says about the new challenges it is facing in monitoring deforestation and flagging new soy plantations for the industry groups to add to their Do Not Buy lists.

Responding to concerns that its demand for leather is fueling deforestation of the Amazon and contributing to climate change, Timberland has taken a major step toward protecting the Amazon rainforest today. While the company's announcement of a new policy is a positive and welcome step, Timberland needs to put its foot down and tell Bertin, one of Timberland’s leather suppliers and one of the dirtiest companies in Brazil, that it will no longer purchase leather made from Amazon destruction, period.

Bertin supports the deforestation and burning of the Amazon to graze cattle. According to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” that’s not all that’s wrong with Bertin:

Greenpeace has identified hundreds of ranches within the Amazon rainforest supplying cattle to Bertin’s slaughterhouses in the Amazon state of Pará. Where Greenpeace was able to obtain mapped boundaries for ranches, satellite analysis reveals that significant supplies of cattle come from ranches active in recent and illegal deforestation. Trade data also reveal trade with ranches using modern-day slavery. Additionally, one Bertin slaughterhouse receives supplies of cattle from an illegal ranch occupying Indian Lands. (p. 66)

The Brazilian Federal Prosecutor based in Para State has opened a billion-dollar lawsuit against Bertin and other cattle companies for illegal deforestation. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, has withdrawn a $90 million dollar loan to Bertin. It’s time for Timberland to take the next step and let Bertin know that it will cancel its contract if Bertin doesn’t stop supporting Amazon deforestation and global warming.

Please write to Timberland now and thank them for taking the first step, but ask them to put their foot down once and for all by establishing a policy of accepting absolutely no leather from Bertin until Bertin commits to a moratorium on any new deforestation for cattle expansion. If Timberland does not take a hard line with suppliers who are destroying the Amazon and our climate for cattle, who will?

Yesterday I posted about an amazing victory for the Amazon, that being Nike's precedent-setting new policy to ensure that its demand for raw materials to make shoes isn't contributing to deforestation and global warming. I also wrote about the fact that the other companies we've been urging to establish such protections have not taken meaningful steps to do so, and specifically mentioned Timberland and the automated response they’re sending to everyone who emails them about their lack of a policy to protect the Amazon.

Although Timberland is responding to the emails they're getting from concerned consumers and activists, and in that response they mention an interest in engaging with Greenpeace, Nike and Timberland are in drastically different places. It's actually been rather disappointing to see Nike, a true sustainability leader, move forward with a policy to protect the Amazon, while Timberland, a company that is more than happy to tout its environmental record, has failed to make similar commitments. Timberland buys leather for its shoes from one of the nastiest slaughterhouses in Brazil, Bertin. Yet Timberland has refused to do anything beyond recommending to Bertin that they follow the law and stop illegally deforesting the Amazon and using slave labor.

The bottom line is, we need to stop deforestation altogether, not just what's currently considered "illegal." And to stop Amazon deforestation, we need to stop the expansion of cattle. Cattle expansion is not only destroying pristine rainforest that is critical to the health of the planet, but the emissions from the deforestation are contributing to global warming and therefore wreaking havoc on our climate.

Fire season has started in Brazil. Acres upon acres of Amazon are going up in flames right now (as much as an acre every 8 seconds, according to our report), while Timberland sits on its proverbial hands and just makes recommendations about the illegal actions of its suppliers. Brazil’s federal government is suing Bertin to the tune of $1 billion. The IFC canceled a $90 million contract with Bertin. The slaughterhouse giant Marfrig has committed not to support cattle expansion into the Amazon. Yet Timberland can’t decide if the shoes you’re wearing should or should not have come from cattle raised on acres and acres of land that has been cleared in the Amazon?

Timberland is parsing words about what’s legal or illegal while knowing that anything that happens in the middle of the rainforest as big as the Amazon is difficult to track or enforce. There is no good system of knowing what is legal or illegal on the ground in the middle of the rainforest.

But that's not what it's about. It's not about what’s legal and illegal, it's about what's right and wrong. Is it wrong to set acres of the Amazon rainforest on fire to raise cattle for your Timberlands? Is it right for Timberland to pressure its suppliers until they agree not to unnecessarily destroy the Amazon — which releases many tons of greenhouse gas emissions, making Brazil the world's fourth largest emitter?

Timberland says they want to engage, but the company has made no meaningful progress or overtures.

So, Timerbland, we’re looking at you. Where you at?

Not to toot our own horn, but here at Greenpeace, we’ve run our share of successful campaigns. Still, I think we’ve all been pleasantly surprised by the speedy response to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon.”



The latest success in our campaign is Nike’s announcement today that it has established a new policy to ensure that its demand for shoe leather is not contributing to Amazon deforestation and global warming (read the Greenpeace press release here). You can help us thank Nike for protecting the Amazon and the climate. This is a huge victory, as it sets a great precedent to be followed by the other shoe companies named in our report, many of whom continue to greenwash their own corporate policies rather than take meaningful action.

I’ll say more about that in a bit. But I think, for now, I want to continue with the positivity. With that in mind, thought I’d run down a quick list of the biggest successes our campaign to save the Amazon has had:

• On June 1st, we released the “Slaughtering the Amazon” report, and the very next day, the Public Prosecution Office in Brazil’s Para State announced that it was opening a billion-dollar lawsuit against several farms and various companies operating there, including one slaughterhouse owned by Brazil’s cattle giant Bertin, a company named in our report as one of the major corporations backed by the Brazilian government who are purchasing hides from cattle ranches involved in deforestation of the Amazon, as well as engaging in slave labor practices and other crimes. That same day, the environment minister of Brazil said that he agreed with our report and echoed our assertion that the Brazilian government should not be funding Amazon destruction.

• On June 12th came news that several major grocery store chains in Brazil, including Wal-Mart and Carrefour, had banned beef purchased from the ranches accused by the Para state prosecutor’s offfice of being involved in illegal deforestation.

• The very next day, June 13th, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, announced that it was withdrawing a $90 million dollar loan to Bertin.

• Then, on June 22nd, the world’s fourth largest beef trader, Marfrig, announced a moratorium that would prevent the company from buying cattle raised in newly deforested areas within the Amazon.

As you can see, the move by Marfrig came after the “Slaughtering the Amazon” report had really thrust an international spotlight on Marfrig, Bertin, JBS and other leading cattle companies who are driving Amazon deforestation and climate change, as well as companies like Timberland, Adidas, Reebok, and Clarks who buy cattle products from those cattle companies.

Like I said before, these shoe companies continue to be evasive rather than talk with Greenpeace about how they can ensure that their demand for leather isn’t fueling Amazon deforestation and climate change. Even if you’ve already emailed them once, you can email these shoe companies again and tell them you expect them to ensure they’re not part of the problem.

One thing I’d like to note: After you take action, you’ll most likely get an automated response from Timberland — a response that amounts to nothing more than pure greenwashing. But this post is already gone on long enough, and like I said, I’m more in the mood to dwell on the good things going on right now. So I’ll write about that more in the next couple days. Just wanted to say: Don’t be fooled by Timberland’s greenwashing in the meantime.

You might have read in a previous post ("Something afoot in the Arctic") that the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, is currently at the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland as part of a 3-month expedition. The crew on board the Arctic Sunrise, which includes many respected scientists, is examining the effects of climate change on the Arctic. Specifically, they're bearing witness to the imminent loss of a 100 sq. km. ice island that is part of Petermann glacier. This video serves as an introduction to the ship tour and what they've found so far.

Check out Greenpeace activist and organizer Mary Sweeters talking with Bill Moyers about last week's Mt. Rushmore action and the lack of leadership on global warming from President Obama. After promising to "restore science to its rightful place" in his inaugural address, President Obama is all but ignoring the science and listening to the fossil fuels industries instead. We need him to be a leader. Also appearing with Mary is Erich Pica, Director of Domestic Programs for Friends of the Earth.

Tune in to Bill Moyers Journal tonight and check out an interview he did with Mary Sweeters, one of our activists who was involved in last week's Mt. Rushmore action. In most areas, the show airs at 9:00 pm local time on PBS. But if you're not sure which channel or what time the show airs where you live, you can find out here.


Photo by Robin Holland.

Mary talks about working as an organizer in Chicago and what she's hearing from everyday Americans about climate change, and why she ultimately decided that the only way to inspire President Obama to leadership was through civil disobedience.The interview also covers a wide range of other topics — from grassroots organizing to the lack of leadership from President Obama on global warming. Mary is joined by Erich Pica from Friends of the Earth. Don't miss it!

By now, F-gases are probably no longer the worst greenhouse gas that you’ve never heard of. But if the EPA would just approve non-F-gas refrigerants for use in the US, we could all go back to not needing to know anything about them. There are some signs that this might soon be the case.

Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a brief backgrounder: F-gases are a group of industrial gases that include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). The "F" in F-gas is for Fluorine, the element common to them all. HFCs and HCFCs are commonly used today in refrigeration and cooling units in North America.

Why should we phase them out? F-gases are extremely potent greenhouse gases. They were originally called the “environmental alternative” to CFCs, the ozone-depleting refrigerants (such as Freon) that were phased out starting in 1989 when the Montreal Protocol went into effect. But F-gases are not an “environmental alternative” at all — in fact, they’re responsible for some 17% of cumulative greenhouse gases currently in our atmosphere (as of 2005). Some F-gases actually have a Global Warming Potential (GWP) value that is thousands of times higher than carbon (check out this chart on the EPA’s website for more info).

But the EPA has not approved F-gas-free refrigeration for sale in the United States. The main refrigerant alternative to HFCs and HCFCs is Hydrocarbon (HC). Greenpeace developed the first ever Hydrocarbon-based refrigeration technology, called GreenFreeze, in 1993 to prove the technology could work, then prototyped it and took over 70,000 orders to help persuade a manufacturer to start actually mass-producing them. Today over 300 million domestic refrigerators using the GreenFreeze technology have been purchased by consumers across Europe, Asia, and South America.

Obsolete regulations, however, are still keeping them out of the North American market. But there have been some recent signs that that is slowly changing.

The EPA recently determined that HFCs contribute significantly to global warming. This will hopefully help ease the applications pending at the EPA for non-HFC refrigerants through the approval process.

There are certainly plenty of companies hoping to break open the domestic US market for green refrigerators and coolers. Ben & Jerry’s has rolled out some GreenFreeze-based ice cream freezers at several of its scoop shops thanks to a “market test” allowance granted by the EPA, and Pepsi and Coke have both announced they’re going to use the technology in refrigerators and vending machines.

Meanwhile, Bosch is introducing a GreenFreeze refrigerator in Mexico, making it the first green fridge available in North America. So, now the race is on for companies to be the first manufacturer of non-F-gas refrigerators in the United States and Canada. GE has applied to the EPA for a permit to make and sell refrigerators that use isobutane as their refrigerant, hoping to roll them out by 2010.

Whoever is first to bring green refrigeration to the States will undoubtedly make a pile of green to reward them for their efforts.

These images pretty much speak for themselves.



If you want to send your own message to President Obama, sign our petition now.

And check out Matt Leonard, one of the climbers, on Democracy Now!

We just posted this amazing new video – shot by our team in the field at yesterday’s banner hang on Mount Rushmore – to YouTube. Check it out, there’s some cool behind-the-scenes footage, and then you can see just how windy it was. Our climbers get tossed around pretty good. Just goes to show how incredible of a job they really did.



In addition to heaps of praise and words of encouragement, we’ve been getting a lot of flak from people who were upset that we would deface a national monument. My response to them is twofold: First, there are already climbing leads established on the rock, which the park employees use to clean the monument. Our climbers used those leads and were extremely cautious not to do any harm to the monument, and in the end they did not do any damage.

Second, all of the sanctimonious claims about our disrespect for what Mount Rushmore represents are completely baseless. We have utmost respect for the accomplishments of the great leaders who built this country, that’s why we chose it as the site for issuing our challenge to President Obama to be a leader on global warming. But Mount Rushmore was built on a mountain stolen from Native Americans. Adding insult to injury, we then carved a bunch of white people’s faces into it. So you gotta ask yourself: What does Mount Rushmore really represent?

For the record, a member of the local Oglala Sioux tribe has published an op-ed praising our action.

And our larger point still stands: If President Obama wants to be considered equal to the pantheon of great American leaders depicted on Mount Rushmore, he needs to start providing real leadership on global warming, the greatest challenge of our time.

The president is currently meeting with the rest of the G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy. Yesterday they held a press conference to announce that they were setting a target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But that is not what real leadership looks like – that target had already been endorsed by 109 nations even before the G8 announcement.

Plus, as worthy as this long-term goal is, the truly critical issue is that President Obama and the rest of the world’s leaders still have not laid out an adequate roadmap for how we’re going to get there. In other words, they haven’t set short-term goals that are ambitious enough to get us to the long term goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have clearly stated that the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But the Obama Administration, like Congress, continues to promote short-term emissions reductions targets that fall far short of what science demands.

We can’t continue to put off for tomorrow what science tells us we need to do today. While the 2 degree commitment would appear to recognize the severity of the crisis we're facing, the Obama Administration and the G8 have failed to provide any plan for staying below this critical threshold. Sign our petition now and ask Obama to be a leader on global warming, not just here in America but for the world as well.

After successfully deploying a banner 65 feet tall by 35 feet wide, our climbers have come down and have been taken into custody by authorities. But they got our message out loud and clear:



Our brave climbers rappelled down the face of Mt. Rushmore today to issue a challenge to President Obama: If he wants to get his face on this monument, he needs to be a true leader on global warming, not a politician.

The 60-foot tall heads on Mt. Rushmore represent four former presidents, all brave leaders who rose to the challenges of their times. For instance, there’s George Washington, our country’s first president. He’s known as the “Father of His Country” because when the American colonies were in crisis, he stepped up and led our forces in the Revolutionary War.

Obama now has the chance to lead our forces in an energy revolution. But instead of leading on global warming, Obama’s playing politics. He said it was time to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inaugural address, but sat back and watched as science was all but stripped from the Waxman-Markey climate legislation altogether at the behest of the fossil fuels and energy industries.

The worst part about this weak legislation is that it will not only keep America heading towards a full-speed, head-on collision with runaway climate change, but it will provide the cover for other developed countries to shirk their obligations to reduce emissions as well. President Obama needs a strong, science-based piece of legislation so that he can go to Copenhagen in December, when the next round of UN climate talks are scheduled to take place, and push for what science demands: 25 to 40% cuts in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 to 95% cuts by 2050. Anything less and we’re headed for disaster.

So we took this opportunity, as Obama meets with the other G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy, to send President Obama a message: “America honors leaders, not politicians. Stop Global Warming.” You can take action too, by signing our petition calling on Obama to be a leader on climate change policy in the US and internationally.

Three Greenpeace climbers have hung a banner on the face of Mount Rushmore to issue a challenge to President Obama: "America honors leaders, not politicians: Stop Global Warming.”

Watch it live in our streaming video: www.greenpeace.org/rushmore

This is just one of several actions Greenpeace has staged today as world leaders gather in L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 meeting.

Global warming is an environmental crisis the likes of which we’ve never faced before, but so far, our leaders seem content to play politics with the issue. Yet, given the powerful forces who are actively working to delay action, addressing it adequately will require bold leadership, not political dealing. The banner hang on Mount Rushmore is intended to press President Obama to be a leader in establishing science-based global warming policy not just here in the U.S., but also internationally at the UN climate change discussions to be held in Copenhagen this December.

The science is clear on the fact that we need to reduce our emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80-95% by 2050.  If we do less than that, we risk crossing a tipping point that will bring about the worst impacts of global warming – devastating floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms. 

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives recently passed a climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), that sets targets far below those mandated by science — largely because the fossil fuels industries were allowed a huge amount of influence in revising the legislation. The bill is so weak that it may actually spur a new generation of dirty coal and dangerous nuclear plants.

The excuse we’re given is that this legislation is all that is politically feasible.  But the climate doesn't care about what's politically feasible. If we don't take action in line with the science, we face catastrophic climate change.

In President Obama's inaugural address, he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place." ACES, which will soon be voted on in the Senate, falls woefully short of that mark. Sign our petition now to call on President Obama to honor his commitment to restoring science by being a true leader, not a politician.
 

Check out this slideshow of some pretty incredible images from Italy, where Greenpeace activists are holding protests at four different coal-fired power stations. The message is simple: As the G8 leaders meet in L'Aquila Italy, we're calling on them to take the urgent actions necessary to stop runaway climate change.

“The G8 heads of state must break the deadlock in the climate negotiations and stop blaming developing countries for their own inadequate climate policies,” said Greenpeace USA Executive Director, Phil Radford, on site at the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy.