What’s in that water bottle you’re drinking out of, or that dish you’re feeding your child from. What about that chair you’re sitting on, or that receipt you just got from the store?

It’s hard to say.

We all assume that chemicals used to make ordinary products are tested for safety — but they are not. From baby bottles made with bisphenol A (BPA) to carpets containing formaldehyde, dangerous chemicals are in our homes, places of work, and the products we use every day. With each new scientific report linking toxic chemical exposure to a serious health problem, it becomes more obvious that the law intended to keep harmful chemicals in check — the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 — is not working.

Why? Well, as you can imagine the chemical industry doesn’t want you to know if their products are toxic, because then, you know, you might not buy them! Remember how the tobacco industry tried for decades to discredit the science around smoking? They also don’t want to be told not to sell a product because it can make people sick. A recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune on brominated flame retardants reveals how the chemical industry is deceiving the public, even under oath!

But our families cannot afford to keep living in this toxic economy, and we should not have to choose between the things we need to live a good life and our health.

What’s needed is a real law that protects the 99.99% of us who are exposed to toxic chemicals every day for the profit of the 1% that run the chemical industry. We need to fix the broken TSCA and move forward to a green and healthy marketplace that provides what we need without exposing us to the risk of cancer, birth defects, diabetes, or any of the other illnesses linked to toxic economy.

Folks from all over the country are headed to Congress next week to tell Congress to fix this law and protect our environment and our families. Please take a minute to give them your support by signing this petition.

Adding to a growing list of defections, Eli Lilly, BB&T Bank, and PepsiCo have announced they will not fund the Heartland Institute in 2012.  They join State Farm, USAA, and others who have stopped financial support of the Chicago front group after

Heartland Institute's billboard

Heartland released a billboard featuring a picture of Ted Kaczynski next to the text “I still believe in Global Warming. Do You?”

Sign our petition asking the rest of Heartland’s corporate sponsors to stop funding climate science denial.

Just for background, Heartland’s fringe positions on science and loose grasp of reality is no secret in corporate circles. Heartland’s climate stance is so extreme that ExxonMobil, the great patron of climate science denial, dropped them years ago – saying they could no longer support groups that “serve as a distraction” to the climate issue.

Heartland peddles its own pseudo-science that contradicts the vast majority of scientists in the world, and observable reality.  As James Hansen recently wrote in the New York Times, climate change can be conclusively linked to recent extreme weather conditions like the major heat wave that killed hundreds across Europe and the excruciating drought the western U.S. is still suffering from. (At right: A cow stuck in the mud in Texas, photograph by Jay Janner, 2011)

However, in part because the effects of global climate change have become perceptible to most Americans, fewer and fewer people are buying Heartland’s BS about climate science.

Which leads to the Big Questions: – where does Heartland get the money to buy crazy billboards?

Where do they get the money to pay for climate denying school curriculum?

With Exxon gone, which anti-science corporations still support Heartland’s looney climate denial meetings?

For starters: Pfizer.

Pfizer, the giant drug company, is a leading sponsor of the Heartland Institute. But wait you say, doesn’t Pfizer have a strong statement about the serious threats posed by climate change and the necessity of cutting greenhouse emissions?  Yes, yes they do. But, Pfizer also has a history of saying the right thing to the public while doing the exact opposite behind closed doors.  Take healthcare reform for example; Pfizer publicly supported president Obama’s Healthcare reform while quietly giving the Heartland Institute hundreds of thousands of dollars to savage the president and the healthcare law.

Side note: Pfizer is no stranger to being called out for their affiliations to unsavory corporate front groups. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the group that helped for-profit prison companies write and pass immigration bills that put more people in jail – and helped gun groups write and pass the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, (which protected the killer of teenage Trayvon Martin) counts Pfizer as a corporate sponsor.  At a protest calling for Pfizer to drop ALEC, eight people were arrested outside of Pfizer’s gates. In a telling show of corporate hubris, Pfizer never even responded to the demonstrators requests.

Nucor, the steel manufacturer, is also a Heartland funder.

According to leaked internal documents from the Heartland Institute, Nucor directly funds Heartland’s climate work.  Like Pfizer, Nucor talks openly about solutions to climate change, and their website proudly proclaims “Concerns about climate change not taken lightly by Nucor.”

Other corporate bad actors still funding Heartland include Comcast, Reynolds American inc, and Golden Rule Insurance.  Tell these companies that their support of climate denial must be stopped, by signing this petition.

PolluterWatch: Greenpeace Investigates Heartland Institute Leaked Documents – click to see a list of companies that dropped Heartland and ongoing investigations.

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Full story here: Shocking images from the BP Gulf disaster

The White House and BP have been hiding the truth about the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.

After almost two years after Greenpeace submitted a Freedom of Information Request for images and information related to the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster, we finally received the first batch of files. The images are disturbing and beg the question: What else about the Gulf disaster is the White House and Big Oil hiding from the public?

The (horrible) picture below is of a “critically endangered” Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. 

Here some more of the images that we are releasing today. Take action and demand that the White House immediately make publicly available all the images, files and documentation before they reach a settlement with BP.

“These images of dead sea turtles, completely covered in oil, present a very different picture than what we were told by US officials,” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist with Greenpeace. “While the White House was trying to keep the emphasis on rosy stories of rescued animals being released back into the wild, they were sitting on these images of garbage bags full of Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles.”
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Guest post by Greenpeace Activist Network volunteer Jess Hutcheson.

My heart was definitely beating faster than normal, but I took a deep breath, stood tall and walked toward the store.  We started attracting attention right away because of our tiger face paint.  As we approached the entrance I held my “Be Noble – Stop Deforestation” sign up high and started talking to some of the customers.

“Have you heard Barnes and Noble is printing books on destroyed rainforest?  Help us tell them to adopt a sustainable paper policy that does not involve killing endangered tigers.”

We proceeded into the store, where employees were less than pleased to see us.  While we waited for the manager, we continued to tell customers about how Barnes and Noble was sourcing their paper from a company cutting down rainforest in Indonesia, destroying the last remaining habitat of the Sumatran tiger.

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