Nature Alert: Greenpeace Demands Neste Drops Palm Oil From Diesel Fuel Production

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Greenpeace Demands Neste Drops Palm Oil From Diesel Fuel Production

Greenpeace Demands Neste Drops Palm Oil From Diesel Fuel Production

published Fri 06:21 PM, updated Fri 07:46 PM

Greenpeace activists staged a demonstration in front of Helsinki's Fair Centre where the annual general of Neste Oil was being held on Friday. Greenpeace is demanding that the company stop using palm oil in the production of diesel fuel.

The demand was presented by a representative of Greenpeace forest protection campaigner Matti Liimatainen, who holds Neste Oil stock. Greenpeace argues that palm oil cultivation destroys rainforest and speeds up climate change. Neste Oil's Vice President for Renewable Fuels Simo Honkanen dismissed the claim in an address to the meeting.

Also, in a statement issued Friday, the global wildlife protection organization WWF called upon Neste oil to commit to the use of responsibly produced palm oil. The reference was to so-called RSPO-certified palm oil. Neste Oil's Simo Honkanen told YLE that the company will use RSPO-certified palm oil as it becomes available on the market.

Neste Oil produces bio-diesel fuel from palm oil imported from Malaysia.

The company has plans to double production this year to 170,000 tons at its Porvoo refinery. Next year it plans to produce 800,000 tons at a new facility in Singapore and a similar refinery is planned to start up in Rotterdam in 2011.

YLE

A photo is visible at this link.

http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/04/greenpeace_demands_neste_drops_palm_oil_from_diesel_fuel_production__662079.html

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.