Press Release

Nelson Environment Centre joins global day of action against Mobil.

12 July 2001, Nelson;

The Nelson Environment Centre joined the global day of action against Mobil today by hanging a 6m banner on Haulashore Island at 6:30 am this morning. The banner reads: "Mobil Funds Climate Chaos".

Like many other protests planned around New Zealand and the rest of the world the NEC protest is intended to draw attention to the fact that Mobil is a global warming villain.

Mobil lobbied George Bush to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty to prevent global warming. As soon as Bush entered the Whitehouse he ditched the Protocol exactly as Mobil wanted.

We urge Mobil in New Zealand to take some responsibility for where their profits are going and send an urgent message back to ExxonMobil in the USA to stop undermining the Kyoto Protocol and stop fueling global warming.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2,500 of the world's global warming experts, have said that global warming is happening now. The IPCC identified the burning of fossil fuels which release billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year as a major cause of global warming.

Mobil is the largest fossil fuel company in the world. It funded George Bush's election campaign over $NZ 2.5 million. It made $NZ45 billion in profits last year, is spending $NZ 17 billion on new fossil fuel exploration but is not investing in renewable energy. Mobil can afford to invest in alternative energy but instead it carries on raking in the profits from fossil fuels, while denying the reality that global warming is a very real threat.

Global warming threatens the existence of some low-lying Pacific Islands. At least two small islands, Tebuatarawa in Kiribati and Tepuka Sevilivili in Tuvalu, have already disappeared beneath the sea. The Ministry for the Environment is about to release a climate impacts report which shows almost all sectors of New Zealand will be affected by global warming".

For more information see the StopMobil website - www.stopmobil.net

Nick Young Nelson Environment Centre (03) 545 6040 www.nec.org.nz

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