July 2011

The environment and the world have a new hero, a reluctant hero perhaps, but someone who in good conscience could not stand by and watch a grave injustice take place without trying to prevent it. Without taking a stand at a risk to his own liberty. His name is Tim DeChristopher, and he joins the pantheon of brave men and women who have made a difference – brave men and women whose actions ricochet and multiply into widespread social change.

Since we launched our campaign to turn VW away from the Dark Side the response has been phenomenal. Over a quarter of a million people have joined the Rebellion and a huge proportion – over 40,000 of them – are Volkswagen drivers.

VW’s official response so far has been to act ‘surprised’ and point to their most efficient cars as proof of their environmental credentials.

I’m writing from Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These days I am torn between outrage and bitterness when I hear about the unbelievable violence that has once again been unleashed on the heart of the Congo’s forest.

By Eoin from our International office:  Hats off to Puma, the third largest sportswear company in the world, for publicly committing today to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals from its entire product lifecycle and across its whole supply chain by 2020.

This morning something momentous happened.

Our Jedi-o-meter hit 250,000.

One quarter of a million people - from all corners of the galaxy - calling on Volkswagen to stop blocking progress on climate change.

You did it! Today John West, the last of the major UK players to resist a shift to sustainable tuna, finally committed to change their tuna. After more than 51,000 emails, a lot of negotiation, some interesting stickering initiatives, and becoming utterly isolated amongst the UK industry, John West have changed their policies.

Recently word came to our Greenpeace office in Indonesia that a Sumatran tiger was stuck in an animal trap on the border of an Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) concession. It was trapped for six days in total without food or water. After a week of suffering forest officers arrived to evacuate the tiger – but it was too late. The tiger died during the rescue attempt.

Warning: this blog contains images and video footage that may upset you.

A lot of people on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere have been asking us a lot of questions about the interdict (injunction) - most of which we can't answer; we're gagged from saying anything that might be interpreted as asking others to do certain things on our behalf. We're so gagged that we probably can't even tell you what those certain things might be, in case that's seen as suggesting you do them.

So, in the public interest, we've decided to publish the full interdict (pdf). Feel free to download it, share it and discuss it; we'd be interested to hear your thoughts (although obviously we may not be able to reply).