Greenpeace: Protest at Fonterra Headquarters
Southland, Tuesday 17 November 2009 – The four Greenpeace activists arrested today after closing down a Southland lignite coalmine say they succeeded in drawing attention to Fonterra’s expanding use of coal for milk processing. They labelled the burning of around 450,000 tonnes of coal every year Fonterra’s climate crime with a large banner across the mine.
Greenpeace is now calling on New Zealanders
to attend a peaceful lunchtime protest outside Fonterra
headquarters 9 Princes Street, in Auckland, next Tuesday 24
November at 12.30pm to demonstrate their opposition to
Fonterra’s climate crimes.
Three weeks out from the
Copenhagen international climate talks, Greenpeace says
Fonterra remains the biggest block to New Zealand doing the
right thing on climate change and it is calling on John Key
to bring New Zealand’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter
under control.
Today's protest action at the New Vale
lignite coalmine follows September’s blockade of an
Indonesian shipment of palm-based animal feed entering Port
Tauranga and another shipment protest at Taranaki at which
activists also highlighted Fonterra’s climate
crimes.
Greenpeace New Zealand climate campaigner
Simon Boxer said the activists who shut down the New Vale
mine early this morning by blocking one of the entrances and
locking themselves to diggers realised they would be
breaking some laws.
“They see Fonterra’s
increasing climate pollution as a far greater crime and
decided to do what they could to stop the damage to the
climate and to take action to raise public awareness of the
issues.”
Boxer said Fonterra’s intensification of
dairying in New Zealand meant it has put profit before the
climate.
“Fonterra always goes for the cheapest
alternative like dirty lignite coal for energy or
unsustainable palm-based animal feed, grown at the expense
of Indonesian rainforests.
“The short term solution
is to switch to biomass for energy instead of coal and to
stop palm kernel imports. Long term, Fonterra needs to move
away from its intensive dairying model towards smart farming
to provide a secure base for our industry, our economy and
our
environment.”
ENDS