Petrobras announces it ain’t lovin’ it in New Zealand | GREENPEACE New Zealand. Press release - December 4, 2012 Auckland, 4 December 2012 - Today’s announcement that Petrobras has pulled out of its deep sea oil drilling plans for New Zealand is a victory for Kiwis opposed to risky deep sea drilling, says Greenpeace. A campaign by East Cape iwi Te Whanau a Apanui, Greenpeace and other groups against Petrobras’ exploration of the Raukumara Basin started early last year. “The likelihood of oil from a deep sea blowout washing onto the beautiful beaches and coastline of the East Cape and Bay of Plenty just went down by 100 per cent,” says Greenpeace Climate Campaigner Simon Boxer.
“However you look at this, it really calls into question the Government’s petroleum plans. “This is yet another blow to Steven Joyce’s business growth strategy that is so intimately linked to the interests of overseas oil and mining companies. Notes to Editor: Home | GREENPEACE New Zealand. Year in Pictures 2011 | GREENPEACE New Zealand. 2011 was the year the bottom shook the top, the year the ballerina danced on the bull, and “The Protestor” was named Time Magazine person of the year.
The faces in our Year in Pictures pay testament and tribute to our contribution and to the benefit of standing up and taking action. 2011 was a year of incredible turmoil and of enormous triumph, demonstrating what is possible when people stand up for what they believe in. In 2003, in the run up to the war in Iraq, Time argued: “There are two forces in the world today – US military power, and world public opinion”. For nearly a decade the second super power, global public opinion, has been dormant, but it's now woken and Time asks ‘Is there a global tipping point for frustration?’
The answer is yes! And that tipping point has arrived. In 2011, Greenpeace was in action across the planet -- looking through the images from our 2011 campaigns we can see the face of protest, and we can draw some inspiration. And in New Zealand.
TUNA VID : The video Sealord doesn't want you to see. Finally, some long-awaited news: New Zealand’s biggest tuna brand, Sealord, has acknowledged that destructive fish aggregating devices are OUT and more sustainable fishing methods are IN. The company announced yesterday afternoon that it will be phasing out the use of FAD-caught tuna by early 2014! This is great news and makes the weekly supermarket shop easier for mums and dads who will soon be able to have more confidence that their canned tuna hasn’t been caught using methods that can kill sharks, turtles and baby tuna. It has certainly been a long road to get here. It was two years ago when we first called on all of New Zealand’s major tuna brands to shift to more sustainable tuna sources. With tens of thousands of emails sent to all five tuna brands, our first success came soon after the launch of our campaign. Since then, tens of thousands of Greenpeace supporters have been involved in the campaign to convince Sealord to do the same.
Don’t Hack the Hippies: Nuclear giant EDF found guilty of spying on Greenpeace | GREENPEACE New Zealand. As the great Mahatma Gandhi (nearly) said, ”First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they spy on you, then you win”. That’s pretty much the chain of events that lead to today’s conviction by a French court of French state electricity company, Electricité de France SA (EDF) for spying on us. The court fined the company 1.5 million Euros and ordered it to pay €500,000 in damages to Greenpeace France.
In addition, the court sent the four men involved, two of them senior EDF executives, to jail as well - and fined three of them. EDF’s spying operation monitored Greenpeace while we challenged plans by the UK government to work with EDF to expand its nuclear operations. Clearly worried about this - and losing the nuclear debate in France, EDF somehow decided a cloak and dagger espionage operation was the way to go. In 2006, the company hired private investigation company Kargus Consultants to spy on Greenpeace France. Why is that? Nuclear power is at the end of the line.