GREENPEACE LAUNCHES SANE ENERGY CAMPAIGN IN SCOTLAND
London, 20 May 1997
The environmental organisation Greenpeace has launched its new campaign to convert Britain to 'sane energy'.
At a mobilisation event in Edinburgh today, the Chair of Greenpeace UK Robin Grove-White, addressed a large audience with a call for support in the campaign to stop oil exploration in the Atlantic frontier .
The drive for sane energy is part of Greenpeace's Atlantic Frontier campaign. It opposes new oil developments in the Atlantic on the grounds that there are already more fossil fuels in reserve that can be burnt without causing dangerous climate change.
"This campaign is too big and difficult for us alone" said Grove White who is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change at Lancaster University. "We all use oil - only by acting together will solutions be found". The drive for sane energy calls for an immediate investment in renewable energy sources such as solar power and a phase out of fossil fuels. Greenpeace argues that this is the only way the world can begin slowing the pace of climate change and achieving a halt in sea and temperatures rises before they pass safe limits.
Arguing that there is a gap in public perception between the idea that, "environmental issues are either too big and impossible for people to get engaged with (like global warming) or too small to be worth telling your neighbour about (like lagging the roof). Our task", Grove White said, "is to bridge that gap." Greenpeace hopes to demonstrate to the public that climate change is a global problem which can be addressed through sensible energy policies and which they, as individuals, can help support.
To enlist public support, Greenpeace today launched a new cinema commercial, a major new internet site featuring "time travel" to the year 2050 to see the effects of unchecked climate change, and a petition aimed at Tony Blair. The latter calls on the Prime Minister to help "prevent climate change by stopping new oil exploration in the Atlantic and investing in clean energy such as solar electricity".
_Greenpeace launches sane energy campaign/2 Also addressing the audience, Deputy Executive Director of Greenpeace, Chris Rose, called on Tony Blair and Robin Cook to "give a lead to all nations in starting the process of ending fossil fuels", using the opportunities of the UN Earth Summit II (23-27 June, New York) and the Climate Convention talks in Kyoto, Japan, this December.
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