To make a green and peaceful world possible, it is going to take all of us having the courage to stand up for what we know is right.You and other courageous people are taking action every day in big and small ways. Read about the amazing things you are making happen by supporting Greenpeace below.
Making Oil History
This year, you made history. After close to a decade of fighting to end oil and gas exploration, we announced a significant win. The Government agreed to a ban on all new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. And last week, that ban became law.
This win sends a clear message: the time has come to use clean energy to run our homes, cars, businesses, and economy. Oil is history. Your support for this campaign means you are making that happen. You are helping to find a realistic and effective solution to dirty fossil fuels.
But the fight is not over. The Austrian oil company OMV has been granted an extension to their existing drilling permit in the wild and remote Great South Basin – effectively a new permit!
And – despite the strong warnings of climate scientists, the obvious wishes of New Zealanders and our Government, and the very real risk of catastrophic oil spills in these precious habitats – OMV still intends to drill for oil.
So together, we will resist them. And just as we did with Petrobras, Anadarko, Statoil and Shell before them, we will see them off.
Click here to sign and share OMV’s eviction notice – It will be delivered to them in a way they’ll never forget.
You’re making a clean energy future possible
Solar energy generation is the future for NZ
With a recent UN report warning there is only ten years to halve global emissions, there has never been a better time to take action. Thanks to your support, we have launched a new plan to get the New Zealand government to harness the power of the sun. It’s simple, but effective. Stop funding dirty fossil fuels and invest in clean energy instead. This would reduce our climate pollution (and lower our energy bills!).
Thousands of Kiwis have signed the petition for the Government to put an end to oil and gas subsidies. The petition demands the Government instead spends that money (up to $88m a year) on solar panels and batteries for 500,000 Kiwi homes. Thank you for making a clean energy future possible. We couldn’t do it without you.
Saving the Southern Seas
Drone footage of Bunda Cliffs in the Great Australian Bight. The Bight is a pristine stretch of ocean off the southern coastal fringe of Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. It is a globally significant whale nursery, home to one of only two southern right whale calving grounds in the world, and a feeding area for blue whales, humpback whales, orcas and sea lions. It is also one of Australia’s most important fisheries. In fact, 85% of marine life in the Great Australian Bight is found nowhere else on earth.
The same whales that we fought so long to save from seismic blasting don’t stay in New Zealand’s waters. They migrate. While we may have kept new offshore oil drilling away from New Zealand, greedy oil companies are circling like vultures over Australia’s Great Australian Bight, getting ready to drill as early as next summer. But with all of us working together, we can win permanent protection for this wild and pristine ocean. These oil companies want to use the same kind of extremely risky deepwater drilling that you’ve campaigned against for years in New Zealand. The kind that starts with seismic blasting and ends with a heightened risk of an oil spill.
The Bight stretches across the Southern coast of Australia and is one of the most pristine, beautiful oceans in the world. It’s also unbelievably wild – battered by strong winds and currents. Waters so rough and deep that oil drilling has never, and should never, be attempted. The big oil company Equinor (formerly Statoil) are getting ready to drill as soon as next summer. The Great Australian Bight is a major breeding ground for whales. The Bight is a precious place full of whales, sea lions, and flourishing ecosystems that would be destroyed by an oil spill.
You’ve already made oil history by putting an end to new offshore oil drilling in New Zealand. Now you are making sure our whales don’t get caught up in a catastrophic oil spill in the Bight. The Rainbow Warrior just wrapped up its tour of New Zealand and is heading across the ditch to Australia to demand Big Oil stays out of the Great Australian Bight. The crew will be joined along the way by Traditional Owners, scientists, community activists, artists and more because this is the movement of people vs oil. And, with you on-board, we’ve surely got what it takes to win against dirty oil companies. Sign the petition today to show your support.
If we stop oil drilling in the Bight, we send a message to Big Oil that exploiting new oil frontiers anywhere, is no longer worth it. We can make oil history around the world. The Australian Government are lagging behind when it comes to oil. They need to know that you and I, and the whole world, are watching their next move.
How you are saving rivers
Clarence River New Zealand
Back in April, thanks to your efforts, the government ended its $480 million funding of irrigation schemes for industrial dairy across New Zealand. This is now preventing the development of new destructive irrigation schemes.The Hunter Downs and Hurunui irrigation schemes would have taken water from braided rivers and expanded industrial dairying in Canterbury. They would have been a disaster for rivers and the environment.
But in the last few months, both schemes failed because they couldn’t get enough farmers on board. You lobbied councils not to invest. Your support meant headlines ran about what a disaster they would be for the environment. And of course, you helped push the government to drop the $480 million fund in the first place.
The failure of these schemes proves that without massive funding from central Government, they are not viable. When we campaigned together to stop government funding of irrigation schemes, we were protecting our rivers. Industrial dairying is still polluting our rivers and warming our climate. And there are areas where it is still expanding. But this shows that we can stop expansion in its tracks by targeting the systems that industrial dairy relies on.
Banning the bag is just the beginning
A sealed plastic bottle with carbonated water found drifting in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The crew of the Greenpeace ship MY Arctic Sunrise voyage into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch document plastics and other marine debris. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a soupy mix of plastics and microplastics, now twice the size of Texas, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean.
Together, we demanded the Government eliminate single-use plastic bags from Aotearoa with a campaign which involved the support of many different organisations and individuals. Best of all, it worked! In August, the Government announced a proposal to phase out single-use plastic bags by 2019.
Banning the bag is great news, but it doesn’t stop the deluge of other single-use plastics pouring into our oceans: about a truckload every minute! These plastics are choking our oceans and injuring and killing sea creatures. Yet, every day corporates like Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Nestlé produce tonnes more disposable plastic items, many of which end up in our waterways and seas.
That’s why we’ve launched a new four point plan which calls upon the Government to enact a plan to end plastic pollution in New Zealand. The Government thinks we can recycle our way out of this problem, but we can’t. These kinds of false solutions neglect to hold corporate plastic polluters to account for the damage they do to our oceans.
By getting the Government to use a combination of bans, bottle deposits schemes, and levies, we can make corporate plastic producers responsible for their plastic waste. We have a chance to lead the world and pave the way for a future free from plastic pollution. But we can’t do it without your help! Join the movement.
Thank you for everything you are doing to take on the impossible. We are everyday people connected around the world, embarking on a billion acts of courage. Donate today.
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