Greenpeace interview

Junk Food and Health Food

30% of Americans and 25% of Europeans are fat. Many of them are teenagers. In fact there are even 'fat farms' for young people in the States, rhere are special camps where it's against the rules to eat • chocolate •hamburgers • popcorn • pizza, and other junk food. Instead there's a diet of fruit, vegetables, brown bread, fish and other 'health' foods. But why is junk food bad for us? The answer is simple. It contains a lot of sugar and fat. We need both of these things, but junk food simply gives us too much of them.

People in Europe and America eat 20 times more sugar and 5 times more fat today than in 1800. This is one reason why so many people die of heart disease.

Buteven health food isn't always healthy. Modern farmers and food factories use over 3,000 chemicals. Some are 'fertilizers' — these help crops to grow. Others are 'pesticides', which kill insects. A third group are 'hormones' — these make animals, like pigs, grow more quickly. Fi­nally there are 'additives' — a group of chemicals-which food factories use. They make food • look better • taste better • last longer.

In the 1955 each British person ate about 0.75 kilo of additives per year. Now it's 3 kilos per year.

So... are foods containing these chemicals bad for you? Well — if they're just one small part of your diet — no. But if you eat too many of them (and not enough fresh, natural food) — yes.

Another important food issue in the First World is meat. More and more people (they're called 'vegetarians') think it's wrong to kill and eat animals. In fact, today, 5% of Europeans and Americans are vegetarians. But the First World still eats a lot more meat than the Third.

People in America eat 110 kilos of meat per person per year. People in India eat 1.1 kilo per person per year.

□ Your opinion

What's your idea of health food?

CONCERN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

1. Read about Greenpeace. Look for the main moments in the history of this organisation as you read.

Q. What is Greenpeace?

A. Greenpeace is an international environmental pressure group which ac­tively campaigns to prevent people from damaging or destroying our world. Q. When was Greenpeace formed? A. It was formed by a group of North Americans in 1971.

Q. What have they done to prevent the destruction of the natural world since 1971?

A. A lot, but not enough. We are now near the end of the twentieth century and we, the human race, are destroying our environment at a dangerously fast rate. Greenpeace wants to warn people that time is running out and we all need to act soon, before it's too late.

Q. Is Greenpeace an international organisation?

A. Definitely. People from different countries need to work together to solve the problems that we all share.

Q. How many members does Greenpeace have?

A. In the UK, nearly a quarter of a million have joined Greenpeace, and in the rest of the world, there are over 2.5 million supporters.

Q. How many countries is Greenpeace active in?

A. At present there are national Greenpeace offices in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA. In addition, offices have been established in Ire­land, Norway and Latin America.

Q. Why are almost all those offices in developed, industrialised countries?

A. Mainly because the environmental crises started in these advanced countries. It was in these countries that a growing section of public opinion first saw the need for urgent action to prevent a major world environmental disaster from taking place.

Q. How is Greenpeace organised?

A. One representative is elected from each of the offices around the world and that person then goes to a yearly meeting of'councillors'. The councillors discuss how various campaigns are going and what they should spend money on. They also decide on policy, which the governing body of Greenpeace, the International Board, must then confirm.

Q. Where does Greenpeace get its money from?

A. All its finance comes from its supporters and the general public. People can pay a subscription each year or make individual donations. Money is also raised by selling things like Greenpeace t-shirts, Greenpeace badges and so on.

Q. Is Greenpeace supported by any political party or other group?

A. No. Greenpeace has a policy of complete independence from political par­ties, business interests and other outside organisations. The environment concerns everybody, and the problems that we face now cannot be solved by this party or that party alone.

Q. Greenpeace is obviously very concerned about some extremely serious prob­lems. What are they exactly?

A. Greenpeace is concerned about the way humans are threatening the survival of many species of animals and plants;- it also wants to stop the production of radio-active materials which are then released into the environment. At Greenpeace, we are also very unhappy about the way industries get rid of their toxic waste by dumping it in our rivers, seas and atmosphere.

Q. So how can you solve these problems?

A. We can either lobby governments and other authorities to persuade them to stop environmental destruction or we can take direct, non-violent action against the people who are responsible for the damage.

Q. What exactly is a 'direct action'?

A. Greenpeace will only use a direct action as a last resort. In other words, if we cannot persuade people to stop abusing the environment by normal methods such as lobbying, then we will try non-violent forms of protest. These are only used if there is no risk of harm to any person apart from Greenpeace activists, who sometimes risk injury themselves to protect the environment. Q. And what success have you had by using these methods?

A. Well, why don't we look at some of Greenpeace's achievements so that you get a better idea?...

The Greenpeace movement really began because the US government planned to carry out a series of nuclear tests in the Aleutian Islands, off Alaska. A group of North American and Canadian environmentalists chartered a boat to take them to the test area and there began their pro­test. As a result of the enormous publicity the protest created, only one test explosion was carried out and the rest were abandoned. The area is now a bird sanctuary.

A North Sea fishing trawler was converted into the Greenpeace cam­paign ship, Rainbow Warrior, to protest against the Spanish and Icelan­dic whaling industries. In the same year, the campaign to stop the dump­ing of nuclear waste in the Atlantic Ocean was set in motion. 1980

In the UK Greenpeace became concerned at the transport by sea of spent nuclear fuel to the giant nuclear reprocessing plant at Windscale (Sellafield) in north-west England.

Independent scientific researchers calculated that if there was an accident with one of the ships carrying the nuclear cargo, many people would die of cancer. Greenpeace blocked the entrance to the harbour at Barrow-in-Furness to try to stop the Japanese vessel, the Pacific Fisher, from un­loading its cargo of spent fuel, while at the same time, seven hundred people gathered in front of Barrow Town Hall to demonstrate against the arrival of the dangerous ship.

Greenpeace set out again to Mururoa in the South Pacific to try to halt nuclear testing in the area. They sailed in the Rainbow Warrior to New Zealand. While the ship was anchored in Auckland harbour, French se­cret agents blew the boat up by planting limpet mines on its bottom. The ship exploded and sank, and one of the crew members, Fernando Pereira, was killed. 1987

The pipeline at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant which let nuclear waste flow out into the Irish Sea was blocked by Greenpeace to make people aware of the pollution it was causing. Already in 1983, about 650 cubic metres of highly active nuclear waste had been discharged into the sea and local people were worried about the high number of cases of leukaemia among local children. One newspaper called the Irish Sea the 'Plutonium Sea'.

Greenpeace activists climbed to the top of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London, to protest against acid rain and the damage it is causing to our atmosphere and environment. Greenpeace asked people to boy­cott Icelandic fish so that the government of Iceland would do something to stop the continuing slaughter of whales. A world ban on the burning of highly toxic materials at sea was agreed.

The new Rainbow Warrior was launched.

Two Greenpeace campaigners climbed the House of Commons in Westminster, London, during the international 'Saving the Ozone Layer' conference, in an attempt to persuade governments to ban the use of CFCs immediately. The International Whaling Commission reported that the blue whale was almost extinct.

2. Read "Greenpeace " again. Look more closely at the aims, activities and main achievements of the organisation.

3. Work in pairs. You're very concerned about the environment and inter­ested in the Greenpeace effect. Interview a member of the Green Party to find out what exactly Greenpeace is and what it achieved by its ac­tions.

2 WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT...?

1. Work in small groups. What do you know about "global warming"? "ani­mal extinction"? "smog"? "acidrain"? "soilerosion"? "radioactivepol­lution"? "waste"? "famine"? "unhealthy food"? What impact could it have on humanity? Are there signs of it where you live?

2. Exchange your information with other groups.

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