Planet Over Profit: Laws To Hold Corporations Accountable
Greenpeace is one of the world’s top environmental organisations, founded in 1971 in Canada, and now headquartered in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). It’s know for campaigning against climate change. But also campaigns against deforestation, over-fishing and nuclear threats.
It has over 3 million members and offices in over 55 countries, making it one of the world’s top environmental action groups. All due to a small group of activists, protesting against US nuclear testing on Amchitka Island.
These underwater tests sparked major protects, after they killed 2000 sea otters and thousands of fish. Even today radioactive Tritium has been detected in surface water. The island is now part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (which Trump is due to open up for drilling of oil and gas).
Its main success in the UK was the ban on plastic microbeads, and of course it’s known for its campaigns against whaling in international waters.
It’s main campaigns include:
- Tax the super-rich for a greener England
- Campaigns against polluting companies
- Stop deep-sea mining
- Ban private jets
- Stop sewage polluting our rivers & seas
- Protect & restore England’s nature
Previous successes attributed to Greenpeace include:
- A major legal win on oil drilling
- A sandeel fishing ban, to protect puffins
- A seabed mining moratorium
- Historic UN ocean treaty
- A ban on disposable vapes
- A landmark Global Ocean Treaty
How to Help Support Greenpeace
Greenpeace Shop is the online clothing store, with profits supporting Greenpeace, which does such wonderful work to help our planet and all creatures.
There is such an easy to help one of England’s main environmental charities. Next time you’re stocking up on casual clothing (t-shirts, hoodies, beanies), just shop at their online stores. Everything is organic cotton, made with green energy and sent in zero waste packaging. It’s a no-brainer!
Like many charities, it pairs with Teemill (an Isle of Wight company) to print-on-demand illustrated t-shirts and sweatshirts, all printed on organic cotton, and sent in zero-waste packaging.
Organic cotton is much better for the planet (and fibres last longer, so works out more affordable long-term). Also better for people with eczema, you can even send clothing back at end of life, to be made into new items.
The range is for men, women and children and is available in a wide range of lovely illustrations, to celebrate and protect our natural world. If you like, you can add on a nice organic cotton grocery tote, to stop using plastic bags.
What does Friends of the Earth do?
Friends of the Earth is one of the world’s largest grassroots environmental networks, founded around 1970 to campaign for environmental and social justice. It now operates in over 70 countries and has 5000 local groups that focus on climate justice, protecting biodiversity and opposing corporate unsustainable development.
It’s actually an offshoot from the US group Sierra Club, which does good work on the other side of the pond. This is much older (founded in the late 1800s) and helped to establish many of the USA’s National Parks (including Yosemite, home to North America’s tallest waterfall and 3000-year old sequoia trees).
It’s presently suing the government, after Trump has rolled back climate regulations.
Its main campaigns right now include:
- Moving away from fossil fuels
- Removing sewage in our rivers & seas
- Campaigning for a fossil-free future
- Hold polluting business accountable
- Protecting forests and opposing legal logging in Brazil and Malaysia.
- Campaigning against GMOs and for nature restoration.
- Playing a role in the anti-nuclear movement
- Reducing the UK’s importation of illegal mahogany wood
Previous successes of Friends of the Earth:
- The closure of England’s last coal-fired power station
- Winning legal action to stop planned mine in Whitehaven (Cumbria)
- Stopped gas being stored in protected marine area
- Won court victory to stop oil drilling in Surrey
- Securing climate promises from 8 new Mayors
How to Support Friends of the Earth
Threads of the Earth is the online clothing shop, with profits supporting Friends of the Earth, which does such wonderful work to help our planet and all creatures.
It pairs with Teemill to print-on-demand illustrated t-shirts and sweatshirts, all printed on organic cotton, and sent in zero-waste packaging.
This is such an easy way to help one of England’s main environmental charities. Next time you’re stocking up on casual clothing (t-shirts, hoodies, beanies), just shop at their online stores.
Everything is organic cotton, made with green energy and sent in zero waste packaging. It’s a no-brainer!
The range is for men, women and children and is available in a wide range of lovely illustrations, to celebrate and protect our natural world.
If you like running or working out, you can even buy adorable organic cotton sweatshirts and joggers, with hedgerow wildlife and hedgehog emblems:
Client Earth
ClientEarth is an organisation, sure to cheer you up, if you feel a bit in despair about the state of the planet. Founded a couple of decades ago by a New York environmental lawyer), he moved to London and the organisation has been helping to clean up the planet, ever since:
- 90% of the world’s forests have already disappeared
- 1 million of the planet’s species are facing extinction
- 7.25 million tons of plastic end up in oceans each year are forced from their homes, due to climate change.
If this makes you scared, fear not. This organisation has clout, as the top bods here are top lawyers who know the law, and how to work it.
From exposing greenwashing and ensuring environmental laws are put into practice, it’s like having the ‘environmental hot squad’ on your team.
Not just campaigners who march down streets, these are the ones who can tick the boxes, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, to really bring about effective change.
And will even stand up to top governments, to force them to follow the laws they serve on others, to protect the environment.
Thanks to ClientEarth, even the EU (that makes laws for 27 countries) is finally amending its own laws, to ensure that people can take the EU to court, if they don’t follow protect the planet.
ClientEarth has so far brought a whopping 140,000 cases to court (companies and local governments).
There are lawyers across 14 countries, so people can easily find an expert to argue their case. It also has 25 active cases to defend wildlife and habitats.
This organisation is an unsung hero of the environmental world.
Recent victories include:
- Ensuring BPA plastics have hazardous warnings
- Preventing illegal logging plans in Poland
- Preventing a Bulgarian river valley, being turned into a motorway
- Stopping KLM airlines promoting flying as ‘sustainable’
- Helped bring the upcoming ban on a bee-killing pesticide
- Stopped a generation of new European coal-fired power plants
- Won 3 clean air cases in the UK
- Helped to write the EU fisheries law (to stop over-fishing)
Ongoing campaigns include:
- Challenging construction of hydroelectric Balkan power plants (which would impact wildlife)
- Training over 1500 environmental judges and prosecutors in China
- Trying to stop a new airport in Portugal’s most important wetland, a migratory route for birds travelling from North Europe to Africa. ClientEarth says ‘We’re stepping in’.
We’re quite interested in founder James Thornton, so let’s learn more about him. Named ‘one of the 10 people who could change the world’, is it not refreshing that instead of continuing his lucrative Wall Street career, he called out those who need to hear the environmental urgency, and won?
Always fascinated by the natural world, he wanted to be a biologist, but ended up an environmental lawyer. His first victory was to win over 80 cases, to force the US Reagan administration to clean up polluted water.
How Can We Help ClientEarth?
Of course, all charities rely on donations, and this organisation strongly relies on business and big donations, as it costs millions to take governments and big businesses to court. One donor says:
It would be really easy to be despondent about the enormity of the challenge which faces the world, and everything in it. But we can do something, and we could turn things around.
We need to enforce existing legislation and make politicians bring in new legislation, where necessary. So I am delighted that I have been able to help, in a small way.
An Upbeat Book on Environmental Justice
How to Be Hopeful is an upbeat book to help you become grounded and empowered, amid the world of climate anxiety.
This is an active and evidence-based book on how to stop climate change. To help you:
- Accept your fears, but keep positive
- Source solutions-focused news
- Track positive trends
- Act from your unique gifts
- Practice interspecies etiquette (be animal-kind!)
- Gather strength from circles of support
Author Elin Kelsey PhD leads workshops for environmental organisations and youth climate activists . She lives in California and British Columbia (Canada).
Is it Too Late to Stop Climate Change?
The authors of the book Not Too Late write:
It’s late in the game, but the game’s not over. Climate scientist Michael Mann says ‘The solution is already here. It all comes down to political will and economic incentives’.
The good news is we know what to do and how to do it:
- Leave fossil fuel in the ground
- Build renewable energy systems
- Foster regenerative agriculture
- Design energy-clean transit alternatives
The only obstacles are political (fossil-fuel industry and government allies don’t want to give up short-term profits, even though it may cause long-term harm).
People often don’t get that we can really do this. Imagination is a super-power. We have to believe the world can be different. Then act on it.
