This is part of a trial series
The biggest Greenpeace-related news of the day is the coronation of pharmaceutical giant Roche and the Royal Bank of Canada as the two worst enterprises of the year at the Public Eye Awards in Davos, Switzerland - Roche because it uses the organs of executed prisoners in its medical testing and RBC because it facilitates the extraction of oil from the Albertan tar sands. This story received widespread European coverage.
In Obama's first State of the Union speech, the American President devoted more time to climate change than had been predicted, renewing his promise to create clean energy jobs, but held out little hope that Congress would pass a climate change bill this year. The Guardian reports that environmental groups such as Greenpeace welcomed Obama's commitment to create clean energy jobs as a priority for this year.
EFE reports that scientists from Australia and New Zealand launched an expedition to prove that it isn't necessary to kill whales to research them and thus discredit the Japanese view. The article states that Greenpeace prefers to try to change public opinion in Japan so that Japanese citizens themselves force their government to ban whaling.
AFP reports that Greenpeace awarded Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the "World Cup of Forest Destruction" on Tuesday as the real football Jules Rimet Trophy passed through Jakarta.
AFP and AAP report that Greenpeace has warned climate change could more than triple the risk of catastrophic wildfires in parts of Australia, almost a year since savage firestorms that killed 173 people. Greenpeace warned that, without a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the frequency of severe fire danger in drought-parched southeastern Australia would grow threefold by 2050.
Mexican media report that Greenpeace has cautioned the Mexican government against GE trials in order to prevent or stop major negative effects on the environment, agro-biodiversity and human and animal health.
In Russian news, Greenpeace will give the country's government more than 42,000 signatures asking to restore Russia's state forest protection. The article quotes a Greenpeace statement, which says that the lack of forest protection has led to the growth of landfills, illegal logging, uncontrolled fires and forest land grabs.
In French news, Europe Ecologie has affirmed its support of the recent Greenpeace action the blocked a shipment of nuclear waste heading from France to Russia.
There has been further coverage of British government officials labeling environmental campaigners extremists and listing them alongside dissident Irish republican groups and terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda in internal documents seen by the Guardian. Greenpeace's Ben Stewart said: “The climate movement has never once sought to further its political aims by using violence, which is something that Jack Straw, foreign secretary during the invasion of Iraq, can most certainly not claim. His Ministry of Justice would be better occupied reminding itself that peaceful direct action has a long and noble history in this country.”
In Spanish news, 500 people protested in Barcelona against the government's dicisions to build a temporary nuclear waste storage site in the town of Asco. The demonstration was organised by a coalition of NGOs, of which Greenpeace was a part.
And in non-Greenpeace news:
AFP and The International Herald Tribune report that French President Nicolas Sarkozy went on the warpath over globalisation and 'indecent' pay for finance executives in a hard-hitting speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. Taxing the 'exorbitant profits of finance to combat poverty' would 'contribute to putting us on the path of a moralisation of financial capitalism,' Mr Sarkozy said, also praising British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for proposing the tax. 'We cannot avoid the debate on a tax on speculation. Whether we wish to restrain the frenzy of the financial markets, finance development aid or bring the poor countries into the fight against climate change, it all comes back to taxing financial transactions.' Joining the Davos offensive against the finance industry, he said: 'There is indecent behaviour that will no longer be tolerated by public opinion in any country in the world.
The Guardian reports that the University of East Anglia flouted Freedom of Information regulations in its handling of requests for data from climate sceptics, according to the government body that administers the act.
Also reported by The Guardian, the British government's cheif scientific adviser, John Beddington, has stated that a failure by some scientists to be candid on the uncertainty of
predicting the rate of climate change is to blame for fuelling scepticism about such predictions.
(Photo: Copyright Greenpeace)