Top news: Danish court recognizes peaceful protest; Hormone disruptor found in dirty laundry; Thailand (r)evolts ; Carbon offsets down under; Conservationists build Orangutan Bridges
#Red Carpet: Yesterday in Denmark, eleven Greenpeace activists who were involved in the ‘red carpet” peaceful protest, at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit were given a two-week suspended sentence for trespassing, falsifying a license plate and impersonating a police officer – considerably less than what was demanded by the prosecutor, who also wanted deportation. The court stated its recognition that the activists carried out a peaceful act of political protest. Hopefully, the focus of the upcoming COP17 will be on rescuing the climate rather than on prosecuting peaceful activists.
#Dirty Laundry 2: A new Greenpeace report reveals traces of hormone disruptor nonylphenol in samples from fourteen clothing brands. Implicated brands include Adidas, Uniqlo, Calvin Klein, Ning Li, H & M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lacoste, Converse, and Ralph Lauren. Detected nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) are released when clothing is washed and in turn accumulate in living organisms, compromising growth and fertility.
#Carbon credits: Australia’s parliament has approved the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI): the first national scheme, in the world, for trading carbon credits from farming and forestry. As the highest per-capita polluter in the developed world, Australia will be able to trade credits internationally in an effort to reduce its carbon emissions by 2020, which it hopes could lead to an international breakthrough for climate change mitigation.
#Energy (r)evolution: One thousand protesters closed Phetkasem Highway in Thailand, refusing to accept the risks to their livelihoods posed by the government’s planned industrial projects. By fighting to protect their communities, the Thai people can push the country towards “lead[ing] the energy revolution by investing in renewable energy and putting in place more aggressive energy efficiency systems,” said Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Chariya Senpong.
#Orangutan Bridges: A team from Chester zoo in the UK, will team up with conservationists in Malaysian Borneo to create bridges for orangutans. In the Kinabatangan region, logging has damaged the canopy layer, preventing orangutans from moving around. Swings and hammocks will keep the primates moving high above the destruction caused by palm oil plantations.