Recently in campaigns Category

The following is a message from Greenpeace:

Before we stop for a short break at the end of 2011 we'd like to thank you.

It is your continued support that enables us to oppose environmental destruction both here in New Zealand and around the world.

You've helped us tackle deep sea oil drilling, expose unsustainable tuna fisheries, confront deforestation in Indonesia and build the new Rainbow Warrior!

I won't try and list everything because we've made a video that does it better - watch it here:

Catch up with Lucy Lawless and Greenpeace news on AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Eco-Warrior Subsite

Greenpeace has released images from the Rena Ghost Birds Exhibit - Oil on Canvas as well as sending out an email about the event including a graphic video of the devastation that the oil leak caused.

The oil prints featured in this exhibition were made with birds killed by the Rena oil spill. They are just two of an estimated 20,000 birds killed after the shipwrecked Rena spilled 350 tonnes of oil into the Bay of Plenty.

Here are the photos of Lucy attending. Click here to view images

Last night (12 December 2011) we opened an art exhibition called Oil On Canvas.

The collection consists of over 200 original oil prints made with two dead birds dipped in the oil that killed them in the Rena oil spill.

Each image alone is both beautiful and tragic but seen as a collection the effect is really quite profound.

Like a countless assembly of small ghostly shadows silently urging us to do better.

I hope these art works can serve both as a stark reminder of the devastation an oil spill can cause, and as a memorial to the 20,000 birds and animals killed by the Rena oil. And also as a warning against risking a much greater disaster in the future. A Deep sea oil drilling accident could be a thousand times worse than the Rena.

When the Rena oil spill hit the Bay of Plenty, I went there as part of the Greenpeace clean-up crew. It was heartbreaking to see the impact the spill had on our beautiful beaches, the bird life and the communities that live in the Bay of Plenty environment. It's something I'll never forget.

The exhibition is open all week at number 2 Queen St so if you?re in Auckland you can see the original prints and the amazing video that goes with them. If you're not in Auckland you can see it online. The video is graphic but also very beautiful and moving. We are very grateful to Radiohead who supported this campaign by letting us use one of their songs in the video.

Please watch the video, leave a comment on the page and share it with your circle of contacts.

We must make sure that an oil spill like the Deepwater Horizon can never happen in New Zealand.

Ka kite,

Steve and the crew at Greenpeace

Where can you see the exhibit if you are in Auckland?

Where: 2 Queen St (corner of Quay St & Queen St) opposite Ferry Buildings

When: 12th - 16th December

More info: 0800 22-33-44

Auckland, December 13 2011: An exhibition of ten original prints and 30 posters, made from two birds killed by the Rena disaster, and some of the Rena's oil that washed up in the Bay of Plenty, has opened in downtown Auckland. The prints are accompanied by the message 'Rena did this. Deep sea oil drilling could be a thousand times worse.'

Guests at last (Monday) night's opening function included actor Lucy Lawless, a long time supporter of Greenpeace's campaigns, and a host of other Greenpeace supporters.

Greenpeace Campaigner Steve Abel said, "This memorial to the 20,000 birds killed by the Rena disaster is also a stark reminder of the dangers of opening up New Zealand waters to deep sea oil drilling."(1)

The birds, a little blue penguin and a diving petrel, were found dead and covered in oil on Matakana Island by Greenpeace volunteers when they were helping the local iwi, Nga Hapu o te Moutere o Matakana, clean oil off their beaches following the Rena spill.

Greenpeace has sent a news update which features Lucy outside her gate with the big No Drill No Spill Greenpeace sign.

This summer we're underlining the opposition to deep sea oil drilling with these No Drill No Spill signs.

Lucy Lawless with one of our signs on her gate at home in Auckland

Last year we saw the biggest protest march in a generation opposing mining conservation land. The Government was forced to back down then but yesterday it came out that they still plan on mining conservation land!

It's part of a agenda to mine the depths of the ocean and dig up more dirty coal - at the expense of NZ's good name, the climate and the natural environment, and we need to stop it.

There are two things you can do right now:

1. Sign the Petition - or if you're one of the 100,000 who already have - share the petition!
2. Put a sign on your fence or  a poster in your window
   We can provide posters or signs in various sizes and can help with installation. We can do signs for grass verges, front gardens, houses, fences or walls, and we have weather-proof posters or print-your-own posters. (Here's some pics of signs that have gone up in Auckland) If you want to print your own right now you can do that now.

Lucy attended 2011 TEDMED in San Diego in October 2011.

TEDMED had 50+ Speakers and 700 Attendees who explored the future of medicine, healthcare and technology in San Diego from October 25 - 28, 2011.

CNN reports about her presence at the convention

Lucy said: "It's like a beauty pageant for brilliant people, where you sit in the audience and all these geniuses comes out and like, parade their incredible brilliance in front of you,"

"I'm not a geek, but I love geeks," she said. "I love these people who have focused all their attention on like, lasers, on some particular area."

Read the article

| Watch The Video

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TEDMED, www.tedmed.com, the annual conference where cutting-edge science and technology leaders "connect, understand and inspire" to advance the art of health and medicine with new ideas, the latest science and innovative technology, today announced its headline speakers. The conference's roster includes more than 50 preeminent leaders in health, medicine, science, technology, business, government, academia, media and the arts. They will gather in San Diego at the Hotel del Coronado from October 25 -28 for the 2011 TEDMED conference.

Speakers, attendees and participants will range from Nobel Prize-winning scientists (Dr. Peter Agre) to sports superstars (Lance Armstrong, Diana Nyad), inventors (Dean Kamen), and the U.S. Surgeon General (Dr. Regina Benjamin). Topics to be explored by TEDMED speakers will range from genomics to telomeres, new drug development, next-generation medical imaging and dozens more as each speaker addresses a specific question about health and medicine.

More than 700 TEDMED attendees including researchers, physicians, technologists and policy experts will foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning. Institutions of excellence represented by speakers and attendees will include Biomedical Engineering Institute of the Imperial College of London, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Cornell Medical College, DEKA Research and Development, Fungi Perfecti, Insightec, Intellimedicine, Intuitive Surgical, Johns Hopkins, Merck, Mt. Sinai Medical School, Novocure, O'Reilly Media, Organovo, PEPSICO, Pfizer, Physcient, Telome Health, the VisualMD, Walgreen Co., Weight Watchers, University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco Medical School, University of Southern California Medical School, University of North California Chapel Hill Department of Chemistry, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Office of Technology and the X-Prize Foundation.

TEDMED will continue to be the health and medicine event of the year where speakers and sponsors will unveil innovations on stage and in the TEDMED Innovation Showcase. Last year's conference attendees were the first to see Bionic devices that allow paralyzed individuals to walk; a machine that prints 3D tissue on demand; a pill that contains both a camera and tiny surgical tools that can be remote-controlled once inside the patient's body; and GPS-enabled smartphone apps that provide real-time health data to patients.

Just received the following from Lucy and it's a message to the NZ Government in regard to saying no to deep sea oil drilling. On 9th November 2011, Lucy added her name to a petition for a stop to the Government's plans for deep sea oil drilling off New Zealand's coasts, and for a halt to plans to expand the coal industry. Greenpeace petition calling for a shift to clean sources of energy. The number of people signing the petition has surged since the Rena disaster, and the total is now over 100,000. (Read the full press release)

Dear New Zealand Government,

I and many other New Zealanders are putting you on notice that your courting Deep Sea Oil Drillers is totally unacceptable to us.

Petrobras [the Brazilian oil company that is intending to drill for oil in up to 3100 metres of water off the East Cape, is the part-owner of an oil field northeast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where a serious oil leak has developed] already has an uncontrollable leak off their own coast which is spewing filth into their own marine environment.

Why are you giving offshore oil companies carte blanche to risk OUR fisheries, OUR coastal way of life, OUR clean green brand upon which all our premium exports rely?

Do you work for us or for them?!

Your answer, please?

Lucy Lawless

The petition exists in hard copy form, and online at: http://greenpe.ac/nodeepseaoil

The following is a press release from Greenpeace and it regards the message Lucy sent to the NZ Government about in regard to  saying no to deep sea oil drilling.

PRESS RELEASE: Petrobras field the source of serious deep sea oil leak off

The Spring 2011 Greenpeace e-Magazine has an article about Lucy's Rainbow Warrior III Dinner and Artwork donations to raise money for Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior III. Lucy's contributions raised $34,500 for the Rainbow Warrior III.

Lucy Lawless has been a passionate Greenpeace supporter for many years, participating as an ambassador for our Sign On campaign and taking to the streets in protest against plans to mine our precious national parks. She?s one of New Zealand's most vocal environmental advocates and is never afraid to stick her head above the parapet. So when Greenpeace International prepared to launch a celebrity auction in aid of the Rainbow Warrior III, Lucy was again more than happy to lend her name to our efforts.

In true Kiwi fashion, Lucy ended up being one of the most generous celebrities involved, not only offering a dinner date to the highest bidder, but donating an iconic Michael Parekowhai artwork that has hung in her home since the early days of Xena: Warrior Princess. "I think we will fill the space with some family photos now, but it is heartbreaking to see [it] go", Lucy said.

Click here to read the Greenpeace NZ e-Magazine

The auctions finished on 22 September 2011...

Dinner With Lucy Lawless

The bidding war was frenzied as the three bidders went head to head for the prize of dinner with Lucy Lawless. What made it more nerve wracking for the bidders was that the CharityBuzz auction site reset the timer back to 9 minutes remaining on the countdown clock.

Every time someone bid, it was reset which must have driven the bidders totally crazy. When the dust settled and the winner emerged $12,500 was the winning bid for a dinner with Lucy Lawless.

Congratulations to JudeH for winning the dinner!

You're My Best Friend, Photographic Prints by Michael Parekowhai

You're My Best Friend, Photographic Prints by Michael Parekowhai which Lucy bought with her first Xena pay packet didn't quite have the last frenetic bidding as the dinner but it jumped from the overnight bid of $10,500 and it jumped to $22,000 where it eventually sold.

Congratulations to Nilgiri for winning the artwork!

At the end of the day both bidders won but Greenpeace was the biggest winner. Lucy generated $34,500 for the Rainbow Warrior III. Greenpeace sent out a news update that they were on target to get $90,000 but I suspect that is going to be much higher now.

Find out more why Lucy was auctioning herself and the other items by going to the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Rainbow Warrior III Subsite

Wednesday, 9 November 2011, 3:38 pm
Press Release: Greenpeace New Zealand

Lucy Lawless and Jim Salinger join 100,000 Kiwis in saying no to deep sea oil

Auckland 9th November 2011 - Actor Lucy Lawless and climate scientist Jim Salinger today added their names to a Greenpeace petition calling for a shift to clean sources of energy. The number of people signing the petition has surged since the Rena disaster, and the total is now over 100,000.

The petition also calls for a stop to the Government's plans for deep sea oil drilling off New Zealand's coasts, and for a halt to plans to expand the coal industry.

"I'd urge anyone who wants to protect our coasts from an even worse oil spill than that which we saw in Tauranga, to sign this petition," said Lawless.

She continued: "By doing so, they'll also be doing something positive about the climate crisis that this planet is facing."

Climate scientist Jim Salinger said: "Opening up the final, extreme frontiers of the oil industry, whether they are in New Zealand or the Arctic, is only going to make global warming worse now and in the future.

"Decisions we make today will determine the severity of climate change that our children and grandchildren will have to deal with. I urge all New Zealanders who care about the future of humanity on this planet to sign this petition," said Salinger.

Steve Abel, Greenpeace NZ climate Change Campaigner, said: "People simply aren't buying John Key's line that the Rena spill has no relation to the risks of deep sea oil drilling. What the Rena demonstrated was that even a small oil spill, in shallow waters near one of New Zealand's biggest ports, can't be controlled, and will have devastating impacts.

"Yet the Rena spill was not even 0.1 per cent the size of the Deepwater Horizon deep sea oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year," Abel said (1).

BP alone has set aside more than US $40 billion to cover its share of the cost of the disaster.

"Given that international oil giants like Shell, Andarko and Petrobras are planning to drill in New Zealand waters at depths even greater than the 1500 metres the Deepwater Horizon was operating in, the risk of a catastrophic spill happening here is very real," Abel said.

"Imagine waiting helplessly for hundreds or thousands of times more oil than that which came from the Rena to wash ashore. We must never expose ourselves to that sort of risk."

Abel concluded: "The economic impact of deep sea oil drilling on New Zealand's clean green reputation needs to be properly evaluated. To understand the extent of the risks posed by deep sea oil drilling, the Government needs to extrapolate the economic, ecological and cultural impacts of Rena. But as long as they maintain that there is no relation between the two, then they are burying their heads in the sand."

The petition exists in hard copy form, and online at: http://greenpe.ac/nodeepseaoil

(1) While the Rena has so far spilt 350 tonnes - a significant amount that will have long-lasting, serious impacts - BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico last year spilt 650,000 tonnes of oil.

Klippart sent over a new artwork based on Lucy's environmental advocate (or as everyone is calling her, an Eco-Warrior). The images are from Lucy's tree planting on Murawai Beach event which was held recently.

Click on the thumbnail for the larger scan

You can find more of Klippart's Lucy artwork by going to the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Artwork Gallery