Category: Inspiration

My name is Emma Thompson. You may know me from films like Love Actually or Sense and Sensibility…or, you may not have the foggiest idea who I am. But today I’m writing to you as a Greenpeace supporter, like you.

Over the years I have been truly moved by everything we have achieved to protect the world’s rainforests and infuriated by companies that have chosen not to play their part. They promised that by 2020 rainforests would not be destroyed to grow acre upon acre of palm oil plantations. Palm oil that is in over half the products on our supermarket shelves.

That means we have 500 days to get companies to stick to that promise.

Which is why I have narrated a short, powerful animation following the journey of a little girl and her orangutan friend, Rang-tan. I hope this film makes more people realise the weight of this moment and the opportunity we have to pull back the curtain on unsustainable palm oil for the sake of Indonesia’s rainforests and the orangutans that live there.

Rang-tan is a short video we need people to see so that they know what the palm oil industry is doing to our rainforests and the orangutans living there. Please, sign the petition and watch the video.

Rang-tan shines a light on the impact the palm oil industry is having on the rainforests of Indonesia when they are cleared to grow palm oil that is used as an ingredient in our chocolates, soaps and snacks.

This year we can spread this story far and wide. The more people that see Rang-tan the more pressure we can put on brands and companies in the next 500 days.

Can you share Rang-tan, so that more people see what the palm oil industry is doing to our rainforests and the orangutans that live there?

Watch and share Rang-Tan here

We have fought banks funding deforestation and won. We have told brands to drop companies who destroy forests to make paper – they have. And we have taken giant leaps to clean up an industry that is driving orangutans to extinction.

Let’s get people talking and build on the monumental achievements we have had in the last decade. This is our moment to tell the world that now is the time to stand up for our forests and all the Rang-tans that rely on them for their survival.

Thank you,

Dame Emma Thompson

https://actions.sumofus.org/a/tell-rspo-to-sanction-nestle-and-pepsi-business-partner-indofood

It really gets my goat that the people we have elected to provide leadership are doing far from a good job at it! Here is a plan that was tabled DECADES ago that would provide incalculable benefit yet the powers that be engage in petty and not so petty scams and outrages, altered priorities and destructive actions!

THERE are renewed calls for the Bradfield Scheme to be developed as a way for Australia to mitigate future droughts and to help meet its future obligations as a food supplier to the world.

The massive agricultural scheme first proposed in 1938 aims to irrigate a staggering 1000 million hectares of land across Queensland and South Australia.

The calls follow the Queensland Government’s announcement that it would develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) as “a transparent and comprehensive assessment pathway” for the proposed $1.98 billion Etheridge Integrated Agriculture Project in the Gilbert River catchment near Georgetown.

The Integrated Food and Energy Development (IFED) project is expected to include the development of sugar and guar industries in addition to cattle, meat processing and aquaculture over 50,000 hectares.

The much larger Bradfield scheme was envisaged by Dr John Bradfield, a Queensland-born civil engineer, who also designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane’s Story Bridge.

The scheme would divert water from the Tully, the Herbert and the Burdekin Rivers, across the Great Dividing Range into the Flinders and then the Thomson River. The water would flow to eventually fill Lake Eyre.

Townsville based industry identity Tim McHugh, from livestock and property agency Hogan and McHugh, said Australia should revisit the long planned Bradfield Scheme as a way of positioning Australia as a major, and more importantly, reliable food supplier regardless of seasonal extremes.

“We are now in the worst drought I think that Australia has ever experienced, certainly in the lifetimes of the people who would directly benefit from Bradfield being developed,” Mr McHugh said.

“Bradfield remains the greatest agricultural project Australia could ever hope for and would impact across all of agriculture and the economies of the regions.

“The economic activity for all of Australia would be fantastic. It would allow the use and further development of existing infrastructure and result in new infrastructure and we really would be far better placed to be a food supplier to the world.”

Although officially abandoned in 1947 because of discrepancies in both claimed water flows and topography, the still popular Bradfield Scheme is regularly promoted. Advocates include Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, and former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who proposed a reduced scale version of the scheme.

Under the Etheridge Integrated Agriculture Project water would be diverted from the Einasleigh and Etheridge rivers into two artificial off-stream lakes and channeled to pumping stations which supply irrigation.

The project is expected to create more than 1700 jobs during construction and more than 1000 jobs during operation.

Substantial numbers of those jobs are expected to be made available to local Indigenous people.

“Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.” Leo Tolstoy – Writer (1828 – 1910)