Heroes Not Felons: The Climate Change Activists Leading The Way By Scaling The Fonterra Factory Walls

The Greenpeace activists who recently scaled the walls of the Fonterra Te Rapa Factory to hang a sign ‘Fonterra’s Methane Cooks the Environment’ have my full support. To hear that seven people have been arrested in response to this activism is disappointing.

Fonterra is New Zealand’s biggest climate producer according to data from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and Greenpeace. Greenpeace say that Fonterra has the third highest methane emission of all dairy companies in the world. Further, data from the EPA has shown that animal agricultural companies in New Zealand – including Fonterra, Silver Fern Farms, Affco, Anzco and Open Country Dairy - are collectively responsible for more than half of these emissions. Fonterra is the biggest individual contributor.

If we want a habitable world for not only humans, but all species of animals and plants, then we need to take climate change seriously. Techno-fixes and offsetting carbon schemes are at best fanciful and at worst distracting from what is a dire emergency.

Fonterra is committing ecocide – and this should be made a crime.

Climate change causes extreme weather events on a global scale – including forest fires, heatwaves, floods and cyclones. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed in 2019 that “Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate”.

The significance of the 1.5°C mark is that scientists say that beyond that all survival on Earth is at risk and the impacts of climate change will be severe. Top climate specialists are sceptical that we will be able to meet the target of 1.5°C, and indeed we are likely to go well beyond this by the end of the century.

As I write this article Hurricane Milton is making landfall in Tampa Bay, Florida – with deadly consequences. There have already been 19 confirmed touchdowns of this storm and 116 Tornado warnings. Major floods are underway across the state. Gas stations in Tampa are without fuel due to mass evacuations and it is now unsafe for people to leave. They are hunkering down – some will meet their deaths. At least 215 people- mostly from North Carolina - are already dead and many more are missing.

The ripple effect compounds the issues. For example, two major polluting power plants are in the pathway of Hurricane Milton including two power plants with coal ash ponds. The arsenic, lead, selenium and chromium from these sites will overflow into drinking water.

For the often forgotten animals caught up in this disastrous hurricane, at most risk are those on factory farms. Several countries in Florida have extreme livestock density and over 70 % of cows are factory farmed. Broiler chickens, pigs and laying hens are all at risk (along with the cows) of drowning in devastating floods while trapped in farms. Horses on Florida ranches will equally be swept up in the floods.

Closer to home we have experienced similar extreme severe weather events including flooding in January 2023 with cyclone Gabrielle. Countless animals on the East Coast of the North Island were swept away in floods; ecosystem damage was extensive and access to safe water, food and electricity was limited. People died and homes were displaced and damaged. Later the same year heavy rain and storms caused extensive flooding in the South Island.

So I say hats off to the activists, and indeed all of those people working hard to expose the dystopian dairy farming system. Direct Action is a form of activism that skirts social norms to expose the disturbing exploitative relations that lie at the heart of industrialised animal farming.

There is a lot to expose as profit margins are the bottom line.

Fonterra has recently declared a net profit this year of $1.17 billion . Last year the record high of 1.6 billion earned Chief Executive Officer of Fonterra Miles Hurrell a total annual compensation of NZ$4.6 million.

The arrest of the Greenpeace protestors is a one dimensional and distorted view of what matters most in our society. We need to speak up for the future of our planet and the animals that inhabit it. We should be demonstrating compassion for people who have no way of escaping the devastating consequences of climate change. We should be thinking of future generations and not current day profit.

I pose the question – what kind of society have we become when we value the financial interests and reputation of a company over a climate emergency that puts the lives of all of us at risk? How can we stand by while big companies like Fonterra continue to produce excessive methane emissions that are contributing to the climate emergency that is destroying lives of humans and non-humans on a global scale?

Speaking to power is not easy – but it is necessary for social progress and change. The protestors are heroes – they are not felons and the fact that they are being arrested speaks volumes about our current exploitative economic system. Industries like Fonterra put profits before the environment and regardless of the corporate spin, the data indicates that they are a huge contributor to climate change emissions.

There is no need for dairy to be a driving economic force in our society anymore. Transformation to more sustainable plant-based agriculture is the vision for liveable society in the future.

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