Greenpeace Quarterly
August 2008
Why our foods, cosmetics and biofuels threaten orang-utans, Indonesia's forests and the world's climate
August 2008
The latest edition of Greenpeace International's quarterly supporters' newsletter. In this issue:
The Palm Oil Story - from lipstick to ice-cream, and toothpaste to margerine: palm oil is a cheap vegetable oil, and worldwide demand for it is growing. But at what cost? Vast swathes of Paradise Forest in Southeast Asia are being cleared to create oil palm plantations, and their destruction results in irreplaceable biodiversity loss and increased global warming.
We hear from Greenpeace International videographer Maarten van Rouveroy, who travelled to Indonesia to film a story for our palm oil campaign, and we review the actions at Unilever headquarters across Europe, where we successfully persuaded the world's largest single consumer of palm oil to join us in our call for a moratorium on new deforestation and peatland conversion in Indonesia.
Freeing the Tokyo Two: the Japanese whale meat scandal - follow the story of how Greenpeace Japan exposed a scandal involving the corrupt and powerful whaling industry. Incredibly, two of our activists were taken into custody for 23 days for intercepting a box of stolen whale meat and delivering it to the police; they are now awaiting trial on charges of trespass and theft.
We need your help to give the Japanese authorities unquestionable proof of support for our activists, and in this edition we show you what action you can take.
Greenpeace Voyages to Amchitka, Then and Now -Barbara Stowe, daughter of Greenpeace founders Irving and Dorothy Stowe, writes about the special day when fellow pioneers from the very first Greenpeace campaign - sailing to Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands to protest against US nuclear testing - met up again to reflect on that first journey.
Quit Coal, Save the Climate! - follow the Rainbow Warrior's recent 'Quit Coal' tour of the Philippines and Thailand, written by the ship's Captain, Mike Fincken, in a special photo feature.
All this, plus a celebration of 25 years of Greenpeace in Austria, an account of how Portugal rocks for the climate, recaps of our recent ship tours defending the Mediterranean and the Pacific, and advice on what fish are best left in the sea and not on your supermarket shelves.
Download the full edition