Greenpeace is turning the headquarters of Fonterra into a virtual flood zone this morning, in a climate protest in downtown Auckland. Police have just arrived on the scene.
Piles of abandoned flood-damaged furniture are being placed at the doors of the dairy giant to remind the Government that Fonterra is the nation’s biggest producer of the climate emissions which helped fuel the summer’s deadly and destructive storms.
“Some of the damaged household goods we are ‘returning to sender’ today are from my community. Climate storms saw firefighters killed, houses down hillsides and three devastating floods in three weeks,” says Greenpeace Aotearoa climate campaigner Christine Rose. (see Vincent Heeringa’s piece on the role cimate change played in the recent floods)
The Greenpeace action comes as an opinion poll shows 54% of New Zealanders want the Government to act with more urgency on the climate, [1] and an international study reveals that climate change amplified rainfall during Cyclone Gabrielle by 20-30% [2].
Greenpeace is installing flooding images around the windows that make the Fonterra headquarters look as if it’s underwater.Crime tape being deployed along with the ruined remains of people’s household items, to highlight the liability of Fonterra and the intensive dairy industry for de-stabilising the climate.
Messages from activists painted on mattresses abandoned after the recent climate disasters read “Big Dairy, Big Storms.”
Fonterra is New Zealand’s worst climate polluter and among the world’s worst dairy emitters of superheating methane gas, which is making extreme weather conditions worse and more frequent.
“Everyone deserves to live in a flourishing environment with a safe and stable climate, but big dairy’s greenhouse gas emissions are putting everything we know and love at risk,” says Rose.
“People and the environment bear the brunt of cyclones like Gabrielle while Fonterra and the big dairy industry get off scot free.”
The intensive dairy industry sits outside the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which is the Government’s central climate management tool.
Greenpeace says current proposals to manage emissions through the agri-industry designed ‘He Waka Eke Noa’ scheme, are just greenwashing, and too weak to make the reductions needed.
“Today is Fonterra’s interim results reporting day. It is profiting from the destruction of nature and people’s homes, communities and livelihoods. It’s not too late to avert worse climate chaos, and the NZ Government must regulate the country’s worst polluter to protect current and future generations – what Chris Hipkins seems to be doing now is a big u-turn on climate just when we need stronger action.” say Rose.
Fonterra reports show profits have risen by 50% in a year when climate change is beginning to bite for ordinary New Zealanders.
“The evidence of climate change damage is clear. Now is the time to revoke the big dairy license to pollute, to phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and bring agriculture fully into the Emissions Trading Scheme,” says Rose.
Source: Greenpeace
Photo: Bryce Groves
