Defending Whales: Safety at Sea: Japanese IWC commissioner still misleading people

Posted by Dave (at the last day of the International Whaling Commission, in Anchorage, Alaska)

Malcom Turnbull, Joji Morishita
Malcolm Turnbull, Australian environment minister, with Joji Morishita, Japanese IWC commissioner at the IWC in Anchorage
© Greenpeace/Walsh

Three days ago, at the opening of this International Whaling Commission meeting, the Japanese commissioner, Mr Joji Morishita requested that no slanderous statements be made during the meeting. It would have been a fine thing if they practiced what they preach. Yesterday, the Japanese delegation completely misrepresented the situation that occurred in the Ross Sea back in February of this year, and made some fairly dodgy comments about Greenpeace.

It’s all stemmed from a joint New Zealand and Japanese proposal on “Safety at Sea“. Japan’s Powerpoint presentation showed a list of our expeditions and encounters with the Japanese whaling fleet. As Shane pointed out earlier – the Japanese delegation have to be commended on this, as it’s possibly a better record than he has! The Japanese commissioner, then showed videos of incidents involving the whaling fleet and vessels from Sea Shepherd.

Next, Japan’s commissioner talked about the fire on the Japanese factory whaling Nisshin Maru in the Ross Sea, culminating in the death of one crewman. Alas, he completely failed to acknowledge that our ship, the Esperanza (which I was on board) came at high speed to the assistance of the Nisshin Maru while it lay disabled, after being the first vessel to respond to the distress call.

Continue reading Safety at Sea: Japanese IWC commissioner still misleading people…

CRUMB: An Interview with Sarah Cook

Article PhotoA few weeks ago, I went to Newcastle for the opening of the Picture House exhibition. It was freezing up there and I was walking from one room of Belsay Hall to the other, watching the installations and following a girl with a nice bag that sported a funny phrase in crooked French. I still don’t know if it was the bag or the girl I was stalking but I ended up having dinner with her under a (non-heated) tent. The girl with the funky bag was in fact Sarah Cook, researcher, co-founder and co-editor of CRUMB (the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss), an online resource for curators, producers, commissioners and exhibitors of new media art. Sarah is also a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sunderland (England) and an independent new media curator. She has organized exhibitions, commissioned new media art and managed educational projects for BALTIC, Gateshead; Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Banff New Media Institute; Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland; Locus+, Newcastle; and more. You co-edited the book Curating New Media in 2002. Has the panorama evolved a lot since you wrote that book? Are new media curators still facing the same challenges… (more)

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Media at 4:10 PM)

World(Bank)Changing: A Letter to President-Elect Zoellick

Dear Ambassador Zoellick, Good morning, Mr. President-Elect. Congratulations on the promotion. What a difference a year makes. Not too long ago, you probably felt a bit adrift, manning a desk at a State Department struggling for relevance. It must be difficult to serve as a diplomat in a scrambled bureaucracy that is anything but diplomatic. Your subsequent stint as vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs might have felt comfortable, but I would guess you never bothered to hang any pictures in your office. These days, the bank seems a bit like a farm league for the Beltway majors. Everyone is waiting for the call from the Show. So, welcome (back) to the big time, Ambassador Zoellick. Well, at least sort of. No one would argue that the World Bank is an important force on the global stage, but can you really drive change from the front office? For starters, you certainly will have access to enormous financial resources. Before you roll out of the bed in the morning, you will grant and lend unimaginable sums of money to nations most of your fellow Americans do not even know exist. With 185 countries as your shareholders, let alone the four billion people living… (more)

(Posted by Jonathan Greenblatt in Features at 12:03 PM)

VICTORY: Amerindians Force Samling to Stop Some Illegal Logging in Guyana

Yet another stunning victory for Ecological Internet’s (EI) Earth Action Network and partners, as Amerindian Villages in Guyana where Barama/Samling has been logging illegally have thrown Samling out of those communities. Or depending upon how you spin it, Samling withdrew after being told in no uncertain terms that the residents and Council did not want the logging company there. If only every community with ancient forests undergoing logging on their lands (legal or illegal) that they do not desire were to be given the choice of just saying no. Most of the tropical timber industry would be shut down tomorrow, WWF and Greenpeace would be without a forest conservation program, and prospects for global forest and ecological sustainability would increase dramatically. The report below is from Bruno Manser Fonds, a Swiss rainforest group, and a Guyanese newspaper.

It has been quite a month for Ecological Internet and our local and global partners in protecting from industrial development all the World’s remaining ancient forests as a matter of indigenous justice, terrestrial species and ecosystem sustainability, and maintaining an operable climate. EI spearheaded three different alerts in the past six weeks regarding Samling’s logging activities in Guyana; as well as international banking, and conservation organization’s such as WWF and FSC’s, complicity in this ancient forest slaughter.

Red turns to Green: Ferrari contemplates how to meet new EU CO2 limits

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With European Union regulators preparing to clamp down on automotive carbon dioxide emissions, the lower volume manufacturers of high performance cars are wondering how they can possibly meet the new requirements. This conundrum may be partly behind why Porsche has recently taken a controlling interest in Volkswagen. Presumably the fleet average will be a weighted calculation over all the vehicles produced by a company.

One company almost never thought of when considering green anything (except for cash) is Ferrari. The home of the prancing stallion makes a few thousand of the most expensive, beautiful, fast and thirsty cars on the planet every year. Meeting any kind of CO2 emissions limit would be nearly impossible on their own without destroying the essence of what a Ferrari is. Nonetheless they must find a way.

One part of the plan will surely involve lumping their fleet in with 85 percent stakeholder FIAT but they will likely go further than that. Diesels have apparently been ruled out as has biofuel, although eliminating ethanol as an option seems silly. Ferrari could surely do a turbocharged ethanol burner that would achieve their required levels of performance. The company has pulled some of the Formula One engineers into the the discussions and options like hybrids are being considered and elements like regen braking, start-stop, and direct injection would seem like obvious choices. Will they follow Tesla’s lead away from internal combustion altogether? Unlikely, but you never know.

[Source: Elmundo.es via MotorAuthority]

 

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A hybrid rickshaw, just for those steep grades

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Barcelona and Brussels already have human-powered rickshaws as part of their tourist attractions. They offer an comfortable yet ecological way of touring around the car-free old city centres. However, and despite of the multiplication of gears available, climbing some steep grades can be hard for the driver.

On the other hand, there are lots of electric bikes scooting around with some good available technology, a few ones using light lithium batteries that the biker can take away and recharge at home. The Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), in a project codeveloped with Cyclotourbike has unveiled a new rickshaw that includes an electric motor that assists the driver. The name: Intrèpid, the hybrid human-electric vehicle which will be available this summer for tourist trips around València’s beautiful city center.

UPV plans adding a solar panel on top to recharge the batteries for next year.

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[Source: UPV via 20minutos.es]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Defending Whales: In death, they speak even louder

Posted by Page (in Amsterdam)

Dead whales, dolphins, and porpoises in The Hague. (Click to enlarge.)
© Greenpeace/van Houdt, © Trouw.

Here on the Defending Whales blog, you’ve read about our display of dead cetaceans in Berlin and Stockholm, to emphasize the terrible threats these animals face, beyond being hunted. The mammals were collected from beaches around Europe; many were the victims of bycatch, which means they drowned in fishing nets. Others were mortally wounded by ships’ propellers. All in all, they died terrible deaths… and what’s even worse, is that these animals are protected by the EU Habitats Directive. They shouldn’t have died.

On Tuesday this week, we displayed the animals on “het plein” in The Hague, here in the Netherlands, right in front of Dutch parliament. Seeing the wounds was absolutely heartbreaking; I am haunted by the memory of the face of a harbor porpoise, barely recognizable because of the damage it sustained. I won’t ever forget the dolphins with their tails cut off by fishermen, so they would sink (more photos here, and here).

We handed out fliers, and talked to lots of people. Almost without exception, everyone I talked to was curious about how the animals died, and were shocked to find out that the Dutch government isn’t making much of an effort to enforce the EU Habitats Directive. We had “death certificates” displayed next to each animal, so people saw that some of them had drowned in nets used by Dutch fishing companies.

Continue reading In death, they speak even louder…

AASHTO says to increase fuel taxes or face bigtime highway problems

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AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) made a very sobering report to the federal commission on highways on May 9. They pretty bluntly stated that the use of the roads by trucking is outpacing the revenue being collected to maintain the roads. Like vehicles without fuel, vehicles without well maintained roads are just stationary tin boxes. All those lane miles of highway, those graceful overpasses and on and off ramps, cost a pretty penny to build and need constant care. However, many states have a fixed fuel tax rate in pennies per gallon so that the amount that goes to maintain the roads is fixed no matter what the price of the fuel is. This would be fixed by pegging the tax to the fuel price like a normal sales tax. They asked for a 3 cent increase under the current highway bill followed by a 7 cent increase under the new bill. Current federal fuel tax on diesel fuel is about 18 cents.

AASHTO, of course, is looking out for itself. Its members are the professionals that use the tax funds collected to maintain and expand the highway system but they do have a point here. Thousands of 80,000 lb trucks cover the heaviest traveled sections of the highway system every day. “Today, the average Interstate highway mile caries 10,500 trucks. . .” As someone who appreciates the goods that trucks deliver, and likes to use the Interstate highway for myself once in a while, I can only say I am willing to pay the extra tax as long as it is wisely used. I don’t want to see a roadway in so-called “designer colors”. Nor do I want to see free driver massages paid for by that tax. Hmm, wait a minute! That is not a bad idea. Improves alertness!

[Source: Transportation Topics]

 

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American MINI fans want in on the diesel goodness too!

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Click the photo for a high-res gallery of the new Mini Cooper D

A couple of months ago the latest generation Mini went on sale in Europe in a Cooper D edition with the D being a reference to Dr. Rudolf and his magical oil burner. The 53.5mpg diesel Mini has never been an option for the American Mini buyers but an increasing number of them are starting to make their voices heard in favor of the idea.

The crew over at MotoringFile.com are now clamoring for the Cooper D with over 130 comments on the post. The desire for the diesel is sure to grow even more that BMW has announced that they will be adding their Efficient Dynamics system including start-stop functionality and regenerative braking to the entire lineup. That will boost the D up to over 60mpg. If I could get a Cooper D for a price in the low 20s I’d be all over it.

[Source: MotoringFile]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.