Category Archives: Global warming

Apple responds to customers, starts down road to clean energy iCloud

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Authored by Gary Cook, Greenpeace International

This week, after hundreds of thousands of Apple customers and Greenpeace supporters asked the company to use clean energy instead of dirty coal, it announced a significant investment in local renewable energy to power its data center in North Carolina, US.

The announcement is a great sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal and comes on the heels of a Greenpeace demonstration at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino where activists delivered messages from customers and supporters around the world.

Clean our Cloud

Activists dress up as fully functioning iPhones to deliver the messages to Apple.

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Will the Bureau of Land Management subsidize Peabody’s plans to export coal to Asia?

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Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, will be bidding on Thursday for the privilege to mine hundreds of millions of tons of taxpayer-owned coal on a tract of land in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, hoping to score some bargain prices – so they can export much of it to Asia. Peabody’s offer last time for the South Porcupine tract – $366.6 million for 400 million tons of coal, just 90 cents a ton – was rejected by the BLM as too low, and a new auction was set for May 17.

This auction comes as the Bureau of Land Management is coming under increased scrutiny for subsidizing coal mining companies like Peabody at the expense of US taxpayers, ignoring the huge amounts of global warming pollution that will be generated when the coal is burned, and failing to account for Peabody’s plans to export increasing amounts of this US coal to foreign markets. Continue reading →

Broadcasting live from Apple’s headquarters

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by Brandy Palm

My name is Brandy and I’m here in our “iPod” to send Apple your messages. We’re right in front of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, in an eight-foot tall, ten-foot wide pod broadcasting audio messages from people like you to Apple’s employees and executives asking the company to power its iCloud with clean energy instead of coal. Continue reading →

Apple: the writing’s on the wall

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by Kat Clark

Clean Our Cloud Projection

Greenpeace activists project Facebook posts, tweets, and photos from supporters of the Clean Our Cloud campaign onto Apple's Cupertino headquarters early Tuesday, May 15, 2012.


For over a month now, our supporters around the world have been helping us tell Apple that they want a clean iCloud. Apple’s executives have thus far ignored the hundreds of thousands of people asking them to use their influence for good by building a cloud powered by renewable energy. So it was time for us to take your messages to Apple’s headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Right now, Greenpeace activists are projecting Facebook posts, tweets, and photos from supporters of the Clean Our Cloud campaign onto a wall of the company’s famous Cupertino headquarters. Continue reading →

What’s on ALEC’s polluter agenda tomorrow?

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Tomorrow, the American Legislative Exchange Council–known as ALEC–will host their 2012 Spring Task Force summit in Charlotte, NC. At tomorrow’s meeting, the corporate front group will round up its various committees and prepare to peddle new state-level legislation to attack clean energy laws, protect polluting industries, privatize education, and suppress voters, among other big business schemes.

Need a refresher on ALEC? It’s the group that brings state legislators to the table with representatives from major corporations in the sectors of energy, healthcare, tobacco, private prisons, and other groups to manipulate state politics to maximize their profits and limit their liabilities. These companies help craft template bills for state legislators to bring home and introduce in their respective statehouses.

Documents obtained and published by Common Cause now give us a roster of specific attendees at ALEC’s environmental meetings, a consortium of state legislators and a who’s who of the most offensive polluting political heavyweights including: Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Duke Energy and Peabody.  Participating legislators know well they’re walking into a dirty party, sometimes using state taxpayer money to foot the bill.

The corporations that fund ALEC are well known for their political spending on both sides of the aisle. ALEC funders include Koch Industries, known for its coordinated political spending against President Obama, and Duke Energy, which is laying down a ten million dollar line of credit to host the Democratic National Convention in their hometown of Charlotte, NC. But these polluting companies are co-conspirators under the banner of ALEC, where partisan politics are set aside to focus on the mission of destroying environmental protections, clean energy competition and liability for crimes against both people and the ecosystems sustaining us.

So what exactly are ALEC and these oil, coal, chemical and public relations companies focusing on tomorrow? Continue reading →

Photo of the Month – April 2012

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The April Photo of the Month by Michael Nagle shows the above ground entry way of Apple’s Fifth Avenue Store in New York after Greenpeace activists released black balloons with the message “Clean Our Cloud.”

Smoke Trails at Apple

I like the way the reflection of the black balloons trapped inside the glass cube seem to trail away from the Apple logo like dark sooty smoke merging with clouds outside and framed by the streetscape. The balloons evoke the air pollution caused by burning coal to create electricity. Continue reading →

A look at the coal plants behind the iCloud

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Clean our CloudHow does Apple’s $1billion iDataCenter in Maiden, North Carolina draw its power?

Apple is sending millions of dollars a year to Duke Energy, one of the few utilities in the US that is still building coal plants.

By making a substantial investment in their North Carolina data center, Apple obviously plans to stay put for decades to come. But Duke’s lack of interest in real, local investment in clean energy is completely at odds with Apple’s environmental commitments and history of powering its operations with renewable energy.

So which of Duke’s coal plants will make the electricity Apple is buying from Duke?

The oldest and most hazardous: Riverbend coal fired power station

Operating since 1929, the Riverbend coal fired power station is one of the oldest running coal plants in the US. The two massive coal ash dumps at Riverbend contain a toxic slurry of coal ash and heavy metals, and are separated from the Catawba River only by an unlined containment wall. The EPA has categorized these dumps as “high-hazard” and they abut Mountain Island Lake, a source of drinking water for 1.5 million local residents. The high-hazard designation means that if the earthen dams holding back these unlined pits were to break, the surrounding residents would likely be killed by the unleashed toxic brew.

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King Coal Beware – Citizens, government leaders step up to fight coal exports in Oregon

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Quit Coal in OregonAuthored by Greenpeace Field Organizer, Bethany Cotton

Today, 600 people rallied in Portland, Oregon against new proposals to export coal through the Pacific Northwest — to date, the largest demonstration in the state on this issue.

Robert Kennedy Jr., Hao Xin, Executive Director of Qiantang River Waterkeeper, Paul Lumley, Executive Director of Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and others gave rousing speeches, flanked by signs and banners reading “Export Clean Air,” “Fuel of the Dinosaurs,” and “Oregonians Say No to Coal Exports.” Speakers drew attention to the myriad health, environmental, and climate impacts associated with exporting coal and burning coal. Following the rally, many from the diverse and enthusiastic crowd marched through downtown Portland to the Riverfront and across the Steel Bridge – one of two rail bridges that could carry coal trains through the city.

Today’s event comes on the heels of a weekend of bold action. Hundreds rallied against coal exports in Bellingham, WA and a team of activists blocked coal trains headed for an export terminal in British Columbia near the US/Canadian border.

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Breaking: Activists Block Shipment of Mountain Top Removal Coal

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Activists Block Coal Shipment in North Carolina.

A set of train tracks in rural North Carolina is not the kind of place that brings iPads to mind.

But this railroad is part of the chain that links you and me – and anyone who uses the cloud – to the massive destruction caused by the coal industry. That’s why we’ve chosen this spot, outside Duke Energy’s Marshall coal-fired power plant, which is just 19 miles away from Apple’s iCloud data center, to send a message to both Apple and Duke that the energy revolution can’t wait. Continue reading →