Salon.com > John Vidal

The man who put the green in Greenpeace

Wed, 04 May 2005 15:20:00 +0000

The all-black former trawler flaunting the skull and crossbones was steaming through a flat, calm sea past the Faroe Islands way north of the Shetlands. It was summer 2000 and through binoculars from the bridge of the M.V. Sea Shepherd it was clear that everybody ashore had turned out to watch this nautical specter sent to harass the islanders for their annual habit of slaughtering minke whales.

Even as a Danish navy frigate and a helicopter shadowed the ship's every movement, the young volunteer crew prepared their grease bombs, water cannons and booby traps to repel possible boarders. The radio crackled. "Sea Shepherd. You are not welcome. Repeat. You are not welcome. Turn around or you will be arrested as terrorists."

Up on the bridge, both with their feet up, both totally unexcited by the mayhem they were causing in Faroese and Danish government circles, were two men: Sea Shepherd's veteran vegan-warrior skipper, Captain Paul Watson, and his friend and mentor, an older, slighter man with a ponytail, a gas mask and a notebook. While it was clear that Captain Watson had effectively declared war on the Faroese, no one could see that Bob Hunter was wearing a bulletproof vest.

“Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye”

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:57:00 +0000

The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be around the corner. But last week, a group of ultraconservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.

They called Colin Campbell, who helped found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Center, because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, was a vice president of Fina and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.

"Don't worry about oil running out; it won't for very many years," the Oxford Ph.D. told the bankers in a message that he will repeat to businessmen, academics and investment analysts at a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, next week. "The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he says.

A blow for corporate censorship

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:50:00 +0000

Twenty years ago last month a small anarchist group called London Greenpeace -- nothing to do with the environmentalists -- began a campaign to "expose the reality" behind what they called the advertising "mask" of McDonald's. As they handed defamatory leaflets to McDonald's customers in the Strand, London, no one could have foreseen the chain of events that led directly to Tuesday's ruling in the European Court of Human Rights, and to Dave Morris and Helen Steel's handing out more offending leaflets Tuesday outside the same restaurant.

The "McLibel" two, beaming below a DIY banner reading "20 Years of Global Resistance to McWorld," said they were "elated." "It's a great victory," Steel said. "[This judgment] shows that the British libel laws are oppressive and unfair. I hope that the government will have to change them, and there will be greater freedom of speech for the public."

But it was barely necessary for the European court to decide that the trial was "unfair." Anyone who visited the austere Court 11 of the Royal Courts of Justice between June 28, 1994, and December 16, 1996, when the epic 313-day libel case was in progress could tell at a glance that the two defendants were at a horrendous disadvantage.

In the grip of giants

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:56:00 +0000

Global food companies are aggravating poverty in developing countries by dominating markets, buying up seed firms and forcing down prices for staple goods including tea, coffee, milk, bananas and wheat, according to a report released Thursday.

As 50,000 people marched through Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, to mark the opening of the annual World Social Forum on developing-country issues, the report from ActionAid highlighted how power in the world food industry has become concentrated in a few hands. The report says that 30 companies now account for a third of the world's processed food; five companies control 75 percent of the international grain trade; and six companies manage 75 percent of the global pesticide market.

It reports that two companies dominate sales of half the world's bananas, three trade 85 percent of the world's tea and one, Wal-Mart, now controls 40 percent of Mexico's retail food sector. It also says that Monsanto controls 91 percent of the global genetically modified seed market.

Bones of contention

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:38:00 +0000

If you want to understand human evolution, it may be worth starting with Johannes Daak from the remote village of Akel in the heavily forested center of the Indonesian island of Flores. Johannes, from the Manggarai ethnic group, reckons he is 100 years old and says he owes his longevity and enduring strength to having only ever known one woman. He says he owes his stature to his ancestors.

Johannes is no more than 4 feet 1 inch tall, give or take an inch. His grandfather and father were also tiny, and so is his son. All of them had "normal" size mothers, but for some reason, only the males in his family seem to be small. Next month, two researchers from Indonesia's leading Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta will head to Akel and nearby Rampasasa village to measure Johannes' family and other "little" people who live there. The size and proportions of their limbs and skulls will then be compared with those of the most celebrated skeleton in the world -- Homo floresiensis, aka the hobbit, the little lady of Flores, ebu, or, in the shorthand of the scientists who found the skeleton in a Flores cave called Lian Bua, LB1.

“The best thing you can do is make people rich”

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:30:00 +0000

Climate change, predicted by the U.N. to change the way most people live over the next 100 years, is the least important of the world's immediate problems, says a group of economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, who were asked to prioritize how money should be spent on helping the world's poor.

The team of six American and two other economists, brought together by controversial environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, said it is not worth spending money on climate change because the effects are expected to be far in the future. They recommended that people become rich first and that money be spent on HIV/AIDS, water and free trade. But they were immediately castigated by international development and environmental groups, who accused them of "understanding nothing about the real world."

Lomborg, a Danish statistician whose bestseller "The Skeptical Environmentalist" created storms of protest when it was published two years ago by throwing doubt on climate change science, is hailed by free marketeers around the world but is reviled by many scientists. Yesterday he told a meeting of European right-wing think tanks how he had brought together what he called the "Real Madrid" team of "galactica" economists.

It’s a jungle out there

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 13:59:00 +0000

Last week President Bush held up a rifle at his ranch and declared that he was a conservationist. The man who wants to open the Arctic to oil companies and who has ripped up more than a hundred environmental protection laws was unapologetic. "There's a big difference between conservationists and preservationists," he said. "Conservationists care. And we take action."

The gun clubs, fur trappers, turkey shooters and elk stalkers of America loved it. The president, they said, had claimed the high ground from the feared and hated animal welfare and environment groups -- the preservationists -- but he was also implicitly backing governments and industries wanting an end to animal protection.

Bush had highlighted a schism in the global wildlife debate between those who say that endangered wildlife is best protected when it is traded "sustainably" and those who argue that international trade neither helps people nor protects species. The divisions will be exposed next week in Bangkok, Thailand, at the annual meeting of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Officials from more than 160 countries, representatives of more than 500 pressure groups and up to 10,000 observers will meet to debate whether to add some 100 plant and animal species to the 34,000 already listed.

Future population explosion in poor countries

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:22:00 +0000

The world is heading for wildly uneven population swings in the next 45 years, with many rich countries "downsizing" during a period in which almost all developing nations will grow at breakneck speed, according to a comprehensive report by leading US demographers released yesterday. They predict that at least an extra 1,000 million will be living in the world's poorest African countries by 2050. There will be an extra 120 million Americans, and India will leapfrog China to become the world's most populous country. One in six people in western Europe will be over the age of 65 by 2050.

But the populations of some countries will shrink. Based on a number of factors, including analysis of birth and death rates, Bulgaria is expected to lose almost 40% of its population.

Britain is expected to grow faster than any other major European country. Within 20 years, the authors expect it to have four million more people, at which point its growth is expected to tail off, adding only a further 1.5 million in the next 25 years to eventually reach 65 million. By then it will have overtaken France as Europe's second or third largest country, depending whether Russia is classed to be in Europe or partly in Asia.