<story><title>Cadbury ‘pushing orangutans towards extinction by wrecking habitat for palm oil’</title><url>https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/orangutans-palm-oil-habitat-rainforest-cadbury-mondelez-oreos-indonesia-greenpeace-a8630801.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kokey</author><text>To put this into perspective: palm oil for biofuel and heating currently makes up around 60% of the palm oil imports into Europe.&lt;p&gt;Greenpeace has been targeting European food companies over palm oil where the majority of the increased palm oil demand from Europe that has directly caused the clearing of rainforest to meet this demand, has been for biofuels because the EU had a mandatory biofuels component in fuel.  This biofuels policy was driven by anti-nuclear organisations like Greenpeace, and yet they blame food producers whose demand has actually been sustainable without the need for massive clearing out of forests before biofuels came into the picture.&lt;p&gt;The EU has now moved to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel, but it&amp;#x27;s only being phased out slowly until 2030.  This is being replaced by rapeseed oil in Europe.  Unfortunately protecting the seeds of this crop was one of the biggest uses of neonicotinoid pesticides which is blamed for the decline in bee populations.  The EU now also put a moratorium on using these pesticides so now older and more harmful pesticides are being used instead and with the increased demand I am worried about the impacts we&amp;#x27;ll see in the future.&lt;p&gt;Yet Greenpeace targets food companies.  It&amp;#x27;s because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation and they just use the environment just as a tool to that end.  They target retail brands while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>avar</author><text>I disagree with the pseudo-scientific stance Greenpeace and other similar organizations have about nuclear power, but saying they&amp;#x27;re to blame for our use of palm oils for biofuels is ridiculous.&lt;p&gt;Sure they campaigned against nuclear, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they approve of whatever other means the EU has been using as an alternative, as they themselves say on their website[1].&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure if they got their way we wouldn&amp;#x27;t have nuclear &lt;i&gt;or&lt;/i&gt; &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; biofuels, and would just be paying a higher tax rate to scale up our sustainable energy production. That the EU has been dropping nuclear power without that investment in sustainable energy isn&amp;#x27;t Greenpeace&amp;#x27;s fault.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.greenpeace.org&amp;#x2F;archive-eu-unit&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;campaigns&amp;#x2F;Climate&amp;#x2F;Transport-oil-and-biofuels&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.greenpeace.org&amp;#x2F;archive-eu-unit&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;campaigns&amp;#x2F;Clim...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Cadbury ‘pushing orangutans towards extinction by wrecking habitat for palm oil’</title><url>https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/orangutans-palm-oil-habitat-rainforest-cadbury-mondelez-oreos-indonesia-greenpeace-a8630801.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kokey</author><text>To put this into perspective: palm oil for biofuel and heating currently makes up around 60% of the palm oil imports into Europe.&lt;p&gt;Greenpeace has been targeting European food companies over palm oil where the majority of the increased palm oil demand from Europe that has directly caused the clearing of rainforest to meet this demand, has been for biofuels because the EU had a mandatory biofuels component in fuel.  This biofuels policy was driven by anti-nuclear organisations like Greenpeace, and yet they blame food producers whose demand has actually been sustainable without the need for massive clearing out of forests before biofuels came into the picture.&lt;p&gt;The EU has now moved to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel, but it&amp;#x27;s only being phased out slowly until 2030.  This is being replaced by rapeseed oil in Europe.  Unfortunately protecting the seeds of this crop was one of the biggest uses of neonicotinoid pesticides which is blamed for the decline in bee populations.  The EU now also put a moratorium on using these pesticides so now older and more harmful pesticides are being used instead and with the increased demand I am worried about the impacts we&amp;#x27;ll see in the future.&lt;p&gt;Yet Greenpeace targets food companies.  It&amp;#x27;s because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation and they just use the environment just as a tool to that end.  They target retail brands while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cbzbc</author><text>Greenpeace has been targeting non-sustainable practices in biofuel production - and the ill thought out legislation that led to this for at least the last 10 years, so it is factually incorrect to say that they have been &amp;#x27;staying silent&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Palm oil for biofuel&amp;#x2F;heating constitutes 55% of palm oil imports, but food and feedstock usage accounts for 40-45%, so it&amp;#x27;s still a significant area of use&lt;p&gt;Understandably a campaign in this particular area is going to be more visible to the end consumer because of the companies that it targets.&lt;p&gt;And everything is political.</text></comment>