Greenpeace Goes Grey!

We all know Greenpeace from their mediagenic actions against Walehunting and other environmental crimes. Over the last couple of years, the activist multinational has gone a new way with some own business initiatives where they take responsibility for the issues they target.

It is part of a trend where nowadays activists have grown up and have become eco-entrepreneurs. But who will tackle the dirty businesses when the most professional activists have moved to the business table? Can Greenpeace still be as sharp in it's critics when it is part of the same game?

In Germany, Greenpeace Energy offers us "honest" energy. Let's be honest then. Alltough Greenpeace promises that we as customers can take part in building new, clean energy power plants, the reality is that this only counts for a very small part of the energy, as one can easily read from their website.

The largest part of this German Greenpeace Energy comes from hydro powerplants in Austria and Norway. Some of those powerplants are older than Obama, so where's the change, really?

Is hydro power energy from abroad really the solution, Greenpeace? I've seen a lot of hydro power plants fucking up with nature, and although it is preferable above nuclear or coal, it is still an industry that's disturbing our nature. And what guarantees are there that the Norwegean energy I buy from Greenpeace is not exchanged with German nuclear power to a Norwegian costumer, in the end?

A wave of critics on eco-energy in the media is coming along with a comeback of nuclear energy in Europe. This kinds of critics does not really help us forward to clean energy either, but the only way to keep the green movement alive is to keep it trustworthy. So in this case it is better beating the critics than ignoring them.

As the German newspaper Zeit argues in a critical article, just buying certificates from abroad does not necessarily bring anything. The fact that half of The Netherlands changed to green energy because of a taxbonus did not do anything to the 85% dirty energy.

Okay, it is complicated for an independent eco-energy businesses to offer German produced eco-energy in Germany because of a complicated system of renewable energy support. But since the rise of a market for eco-energy it has brought us all but the promised rise of green energy. In the end we seem to be greenwashing our own energy bills.

We, conscious consumers, are mislead and made stupid. In the end, joining the international trade of certificates or byuing clean energy from abroad is maybe a handy means for governments or business to polish their green image, for Greenpeace it should be different.

I just want to have honest clean energy, Greenpeace. If you think you're big enough to get me that, well, go ahead and offer me that über-honest energy. Locally produced and sourced energy, possibly supporting a system where cities and municipalities become responsible for their own energy production. Without mixing and trixing. It's time to move forward...

In the meantime, I would suggest Greenpeace to sell that Greenpeace Energy and come over to the other side: to get on the barricades for a more honest and cleaner energy policy without being part of the tricks that keep consumers stupid.

Or should we some day come to Greenpeace and chase them with banners and ships and all?

A critical consumer of "green" energy

Eco Cho: Websearching Against Climate Change

Planting some trees to reduce your emissions is not that sufficient. A lot of CO2 reduction programs are more about cooling down your conscious than about cooling down our planet. Okay, mostly it does not hurt to plant trees, but it still hurts that we are meanwhile cutting down rain forests for European "Bio" Diesel. Or flying more because we think we can compensate it anyway.

But what about planting trees while googling around the web? The tree planting search tool Eco Cho just let's you use the search services of Yahoo and Google, but plants a tree per 500 searches. Okay, that's a lot of searches, but if everyone on earth would use a tree planting search engine, that would mean a lot of trees!

Well, you can at least compensate your computer's emissions with it ;)

via: Lohas.de
See also my earlier article Virtual Activism on online tree planting

Switching off the light on global scale: join Earth Hour on March 29, 2008

It's night and the sky is... orange....green...or pink. In a large part of the world real darkness is unknown, caused by electric light pollution from cities, street lamps and green houses. Researches shows that unlighted highways are as safe as lighted, and offices and green houses can also function without lamps at night. There is more and more awareness for the topic, and some great initiatives to turn of the light.

During Earth Hour on Saturday, March 29 at 8 pm, cities across the globe will be powering off electric light for one hour. Lights and unnecessary electrical items will be turned off from San Francisco to Bangkok. 24 cities, thousands of businesses and millions of people are expected to participate.

And if we can organize this successful for an hour a year, why not do it a bit more often?

Romantic nights stop global warming
The event takes place from 8 pm-9 pm local time, regardless of the location. There is no reason for not joining. The only thing that could happen to you is paying a bit less on your energy bill. A good opportunity for romantic candle light dinner and a moment where people on global scale will be aware of the energy they use. With all the attention for climate change, this event has a huge potential.

sources: Grist Magazine, Triplepundit, Earthhour.org