Monsanto admits their technology doesn’t work!

Reyes, one of our agriculture campaigners in India, shares her immediate thoughts on this 'first-of-its-kind' admission by Monsanto

This was my Saturday’s lyrics to breakfast in sunny Bangalore: Monsanto has decided to tell the truth about something: its technology doesn’t work!, reports The Hindu. I’m going to need a second cup of chai to digest this, Monsanto speaking honest!? Indian farmers and scientist have been seeing this in their Bt cotton fields for a few years: pests become resistant to Monsanto’s genetically engineered toxins and thus farmers apply huge amounts of pesticides. Monsanto has always denied this, has the recent massive rejection of its Bt brinjal in India woken up its senses?

There’s something about EDSA…

EDSA, is the main circumferential road and highway of Metro Manila as it functions as an important commuting artery between the northern and southern parts of the metropolitan area. Moreover it is known for place in Philippine history as it served as a venue to some of the biggest political upheavals in recent times.

Yesterday, Greenpeace volunteers  unfurled banners along the stretch of EDSA to challenge presidential candidates to take up environmental concerns in their campaign platforms, especially since these issues impact on basic needs: clean energy, clean water and safe food.

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Greenpeace’s Von Hernandez among the top 20 most trusted Filipinos

“It’s an honour to receive the recognition and trust of the people in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change. The work to protect and conserve our fragile environment never stops. We cannot afford to give up fighting for our future” - Von Hernandez

Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Von Hernandez is among the top 20 most trusted Filipinos, according to poll results recently presented by the magazine Reader’s Digest this week.  The nationwide survey is the first Asian Reader’s Digest Trust Poll which asked respondents to rate 80 influential Filipino personalities on their trustworthiness. The list included celebrities, artists, scientists, philantrophists, journalists and politicians.

The ranking, which placed Von on the 18th spot, is the latest recognition given to one of Asia’s leading environmental activists. Von was hailed as one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2007. In 2003 he received the Goldman Environmental—the Nobel Prize equivalent for grass-roots environmentalists—for his work against
waste and incineration.

Von started working with Greenpeace International in 1995 as coordinator for the environmental group’s toxics campaign in Asia.  As an environmental activist of more than fifteen years he has initiated a number of environmental campaigns and projects in the Philippines such as the campaign for the rehabilitation of  the Pasig River, and the crusade to clean-up toxic contaminated sites in the former US military bases in Clark and Subic. He is also a founder and key driver of various environmental initiatives and coalitions both at the national and international levels including the Global Anti-Incineration Alliance (GAIA), Waste Not Asia,  Lakbay Kalikasan, the Ecowaste Coalition, the Sagip Pasig Movement, and the People’s Task Force for Bases Clean-up.

Since 2008, Von has been at the helm of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, steering the environment group in its work to campaign for solutions to climate change, protect the region’s ancient forests, eliminate water pollution, and promote sustainable agriculture.

Lea Guerrero

Tuvalu e! Not even the dead are safe.

Shirley Atatagi, one our political advisors, is currently in Tuvalu for the King Tides Festival sends us another update from the Pacific. Read her previous blog post here

Today marks the first day of the Tuvalu King Tides festival. The festival slogan is a call to arms: “Tuvalu e! The tide is rising” King tides are a lunar phenomena that occurs once a year and leads to the highest tides in this part of the world. By ‘highest’ I mean higher-than-normal and that never used to be a big deal, except that ‘normal’ is evolving.

Facebook, stay cool – just kick the coal

Facebook offices on University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA. Photo via Flickr

Facebook’s first ever data center, full of state of the art and energy efficient equipment, will be built in Prineville, Oregon in the north west of the US. Unfortunately the energy required to operate the data center will be supplied by the utility company Pacific Power, which is primarily fuelled by coal – the largest single source of global warming pollution in the world. We have called on Facebook to dump coal all together and instead use 100 percent renewable energy, taking the lead in being part of the solution to climate change.

It starts and ends with you…

“Do you know where the power lies?”

This was a question that was posed by the seminal So Cal punk band Rancid in their 1995 album …And Out Come the Wolves, a question that I myself was forced to answer when I first played it on our tape deck as a teenager.

The line is from a song whose title nowadays rings a bell when heard as it is entitled The 11th Hour a now familiar line as it has also been the title of a Leonardo DiCaprio documentary that speaks of the urgency for climate action.

Again I am reminded that we are in an age of do or die decisions as far as the environment is concerned. Pollution has escalated beyond that of local incidence but to a scale that now transcends national and geopolitical boundaries; the nuclear industry lobby has now seized the opportunity to posture itself as the silver bullet solution to the energy requirements that hopes to eventually phase out fossil fuels in order to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide that leads to global warming; and even the food we eat is now threatened with the poisons and yet-to-be known side effects of industrial farming and genetic engineering.

Step Juan: Stepping up for children with cancer

When longtime Greenpeace volunteer Tomas Leonor told us about Step Juan, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Step Juan, which was co-organized with the Cancer Warriors Foundation, was meant to raise awareness and funds for children with cancer by walking the island of Luzon from North to South.

Deep Green: Real Sustainability

Cultural habits – like people – go through stages when they face death. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross described this process as the ‘five stages of grief’ – denial, anger, bargaining and depression, before the final acceptance of reality. In human society, growth economics will eventually collapse in the face of ecological reality. We have witnessed decades of denial and anger about this end of growth, and society now appears to be entering the bargaining stage.

Trial for the Tokyo Two begins

An update from Sarah Burton, Deputy Program Director currently in Aomori, Japan on the first day of the trial.

It was Valentine’s night, and sure there was candle-light but it wasn’t a cozy tete-a-tete. Far from it. There was a bitingly cold wind as we stood vigil holding candles which read “ Justice” while we stood by an ice-sculpture in a square in the Japanese town of Aomori on the eve of the start of the trial of Junichi and Toru.

Stepping up to the challenge of our time

The 7x9 feet three panel mural painted by the University of the Philippines Artists’ Circle Fraternity to commemorate the 20th anniversary of SV Rainbow Warrior’s bombing.

To the dismay of my colleagues here in the Philippine office I am licensed to surf the web and even log on to this pesky website called Facebook –and come to think of it is indeed really interesting what you can find over there, as a few minutes ago I was able to come across Greenpeace International’s profile picture on their page and seeing it again (although technically I see it everyday as it is one of the first things that will always greet me as I enter the office) reminded me of the my first assignments when I started to become a part of Greenpeace, fulltime, not to mention one of the first people that I’ve been glad to call a comrade in the cause who is none other than –Tomas Leonor.