Latest news with #SachiKitajimaMulkey
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Greenpeace to challenge $660M court judgement
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and Joseph WintersGrist A jury in North Dakota ordered Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace in 2019, alleging that it had orchestrated a vast conspiracy against the company by organizing historic protests on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 2016 and 2017. In its lawsuit, Energy Transfer Partners accused three Greenpeace entities — two in the U.S. and one based in Amsterdam — of violating North Dakota trespassing and defamation laws, and of coordinating protests aimed to stop the 1,172-mile pipeline from transporting oil from North Dakota's Bakken oil fields to a terminal in Illinois. Greenpeace maintained it played only a minor supporting role in the Indigenous-led movement. 'This was obviously a test case meant to scare others from exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest,' said Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. 'They're trying to buy silence; that silence is not for sale.' Legal and Indigenous experts said the lawsuit was a'textbook' example of a 'strategic lawsuit against public participation,' known colloquially as a SLAPP suit, a tactic used by corporations and wealthy individuals to drown their critics in legal fees. They also criticized Energy Transfer for using the lawsuit to undermine tribes' treaty rights by exaggerating the role of out-of-state agitators. The three Greenpeace entities named in the lawsuit — Greenpeace Inc., a U.S.-based advocacy arm; Greenpeace Funds, which raises money and is also based in the U.S.; and Greenpeace International, based in the Netherlands — are now planning their next moves, including an appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court and a separate countersuit in the European Union. As part of a previous appeal to move the trial more impartial court, Greenpeace submitted a 33-page document to the state Supreme Court explaining that the jurors in Morton County, North Dakota — where the trial occurred — would likely be biased against the defendants, since they were drawn from the same area where the anti-pipeline protests had taken place and disrupted daily life. The request included results from a 2022 survey of 150 potential jurors in Morton County conducted by the National Jury Project, a litigation consulting company, which found 97 percent of residents said they could not be a fair or impartial juror in the lawsuit. Greenpeace also pointed out that nine of the 20 final jurors had either 'direct personal experience' with the protests, or a friend or family member with direct personal experience. Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said the chances that the North Dakota Supreme Court will overturn the lower court's verdict are 'probably less than 50 percent.' What may be more likely, he said, is that the Supreme Court will reduce the 'outrageous' amount of money charged by the Morton County jury, which includes various penalties that doubled the $300 million in damages that Energy Transfer had originally claimed. 'The court does have a lot of discretion in reducing the amount of damages,' he said. He called the Morton County verdict 'beyond punitive. This is scorched Earth, what we're seeing here.' Depending on what happens at the North Dakota Supreme Court, Parenteau also said there's a basis for appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, based on the First Amendment free speech issues involved. But, he added, the move could be 'a really dangerous proposition,' with the court's conservative supermajority and the precedent such a case could set. A federal decision in favor of Energy Transfer could limit any organizations' ability to protest nationwide — and not just against pipelines. Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International, which coordinates 24 independent Greenpeace chapters around the world but is legally separate from them, is also fighting back. It countersued Energy Partners in the Netherlands in February, making use of a new anti-SLAPP directive in the EU that went into effect in May 2024. Greenpeace International is only on the hook for $132 million of the more than $600 million charged against the three Greenpeace bodies by the Morton County jury. Its countersuit in the EU wouldn't change what has happened in U.S. courts. Instead, it seeks to recover costs incurred by the Amsterdam-based branch during its years-long fights against the Morton County lawsuit and an earlier, federal case in 2017 that was eventually dismissed. If the damages awarded against Greenpeace International in U.S. courts aren't overturned through appeals, then it can potentially claim those same millions back from Energy Transfer in the EU case. Greenpeace International's trial will begin in Dutch courts in July and is the first test of the EU's anti-SLAPP directive. According to Kristen Casper, general counsel for Greenpeace International, the branch in the EU has a strong case because the only action it took in support of the anti-pipeline protests was to sign an open letter — what she described as a clear case of protected public participation. Eric Heinze, a free speech expert and professor of law and humanities at Queen Mary University of London, said the case appeared 'black and white.' 'Normally I don't like to predict,' he said, 'but if I had to put money on this I would bet for Greenpeace to win.' While Greenpeace's various entities may have to pay damages as ordered by U.S. courts, the result of the case in the EU, Casper said a victory would send an international message against 'corporate bullying and weaponization of the law.' Padmanabha said that regardless of the damages that the Greenpeace USA incurs, the organization isn't going away any time soon. 'You can't bankrupt the movement,' she said. 'What we work on, our campaigns and our commitments — that is not going to change.' In response to request for comment, Energy Transfer said the Morton County jury's decision was a victory for the people of Mandan and 'for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law. That Greenpeace has been held responsible is a win for all of us.' Nick Estes, an assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who wrote a book about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, said the case was about more than just punishing Greenpeace — it was a proxy attack on the water protectors at Standing Rock and the broader environmental justice movement. He said it showed what could happen 'if you step outside the path of what they consider as an acceptable form of protest.''They had to sidestep the actual context of the entire movement, around treaty rights, land rights, water rights, and tribal sovereignty because they couldn't win that fight,' he said. 'They had to go a circuitous route, and find a sympathetic court to attack the environmental movement.' Janet Alkire, the chair of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said in a March 3 statement that the Morton County case was 'frivolously alleging defamation and seeking money damages, designed to shut down all voices supporting Standing Rock.' She said the company also used propaganda to discredit the tribe during and after the protests. 'Part of the attack on our tribe is to attack our allies,' Alkire wrote. 'The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will not be silenced.'
Japan Times
29-01-2025
- Japan Times
In meat- and fish-loving Japan, veganism is making a comeback
This story was produced by All is quiet at 10:30 a.m. on a Thursday in Shibuya, Tokyo's famous commercial district. In an alleyway just steps from one of the busiest train stations in the world, a short line of tourists huddles outside of a bar. Finally, half an hour later, the door cracks open and, greeted with a soft ' irasshaimase ,' or 'welcome,' the parties shuffle in to sample one of the rarest dishes in Japan: faux-fish sushi. 'Nowadays, there are many Her restaurant attempts to fill a relatively unclaimed niche in the local food scene. Even in Tokyo, where much of the country's vegan population lives, plant-based versions of traditional Japanese food remain challenging to find — most vegan options are Western-inspired dishes like curry rice or vegan hamburg steak. Vegan Sushi Tokyo is open only for lunch: Although rave reviews keep pouring in from customers, the small business still doesn't have a storefront of its own and rents out the interior of a bar by day. It serves 10-piece nigiri lunch sets, which include a plant-based Japanese-style 'egg,' 'shrimp' tempura and beads made out of seaweed that look nearly indistinguishable from salmon roe. Maeda became a vegan six years ago, due to her growing concern over environmental and animal rights issues. It's a familiar origin story for those who have come to defy the typical Japanese diet by giving up meat, fish and dairy. 'In terms of the vegan movement, I think we're maybe behind other countries. The number of vegans is very small,' Maeda said. 'But there are more and more vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Tokyo, I think because of tourists — especially from countries with many vegetarian people.' Nigiri served at Vegan Sushi Tokyo. Although rave reviews keep pouring in from customers, the small business still doesn't have a storefront of its own, and rents out the interior of a bar by day. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist Outside large cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, vegan options quickly vanish. In a culture that prizes convention and scrupulous attention to detail, individual accommodations — like vegan menu substitutions — are often frowned upon. And as in many other countries, vegan options are sometimes stigmatized as less nutritious. But recently, things have been changing. The anticipation of a tourism boom for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo pushed the Japanese government to encourage new vegan businesses and menu options in major cities. And in the years since, restaurants like Maeda's have sprung up, offering novel adaptations of traditional dishes. Under pressure from Japan's pledge to nearly halve its carbon emissions by 2030, the government has also begun collaborating with vegan activists and advocates and awarding grants to alternative protein startups. Though challenges remain, it's gotten easier and easier to go vegan in Japan over the last decade. 'Climate issues and animal issues are growing,' Maeda said. 'For me, I can't imagine going back to eating meat again.' Only for tourists? Convincing people to eat less meat is key to reaching international climate goals. Up to 20% of planet-warming greenhouse gases emitted annually come from animal agriculture alone — all the cows, pigs, lambs, chickens and other animals (not including fish) that people raise for meat, milk, eggs and the like. According to one study from the University of Oxford that looked at the diets of over 55,000 people, vegans — defined as those who eschew all animal products — create 75% less climate pollution through their food choices than those who eat a meat-heavy diet. For most of the last two millennia, the Japanese diet was a model of climate-friendly eating due to Buddhist and Shinto objections to meat and dairy consumption — although fish has long been a staple. Beginning in 675, meat-eating was banned by official imperial decree. Kazue Maeda, co-founder of Vegan Sushi Tokyo, serves customers at the restaurant, where the recommended lunch set includes a tray of faux-fish sushi. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist The ban set the stage for the flourishing of shōjin ryōri , a traditional cuisine that arrived in the sixth century along with Buddhism and aligns with the religion's prohibition against killing animals. In the 13th century, the cuisine developed into a spiritual movement focused on simplicity and balance between one's mind and body. A typical shōjin ryōri set meal is vegan, highlights seasonal produce and is designed around sets of five — five colors, five flavors and five cooking methods. While it can still commonly be found in the dining halls of Buddhist temples, modern chefs have taken shōjin ryōri into the mainstream, including in Michelin-starred restaurants, where they emphasize the concept's focus on harmony with nature by using local ingredients and minimizing waste. It wasn't until 1872 that Emperor Meiji lifted the meat-eating ban, seeking to usher in an era of westernization. Meat consumption grew quickly as domestic beef production boomed and animal products became a symbol of power and status. As reports spread that Emperor Meiji drank milk twice a day, dairy consumption became more popular, too. Today, Japan ranks 11th in beef consumption globally, and its per capita milk consumption is 68% higher than that of the average East Asian country. Japanese people buy eight times more meat than they did in the 1960s, and in 2007, families began eating it more than fish. But interest in plant-based foods appears to be growing. Japan's market for plant-based foods tripled between 2015 and 2020, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries expects it to double again by 2030. These shifts have taken place as the Japanese population at large has expressed a readiness to shift toward plant-based products for health, animal welfare and climate-related reasons, according to a 2022 analysis in the Journal of Agricultural Management. Although no official government statistic exists, a 2021 survey found that 2.2% of Japanese people identify as vegan — a potentially higher percentage than in the United States, where estimates range from 1% to 4%. Vegan activist Azumi Yamanaka eats a vegan lunch at Brown Rice in Omotesando, Tokyo. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist Though vegan restaurants have been on the upswing since 2017, Japanese vegans still lack a wide variety of options. According to HappyCow, a popular directory of vegan and vegetarian restaurant options, Japan has fewer than six vegetarian restaurants per 1 million people in Japan, more than a fifth of them in Tokyo. By comparison, there are nine vegetarian restaurants per 1 million people in the U.S. 'Even many chefs still don't know what vegan is, they don't know the concept,' said Azumi Yamanaka, a vegan activist in Tokyo, during a recent lunch at Brown Rice, a sleek vegan restaurant with an organic, health-focused menu in the capital's Omotesando district. 'They don't realize that adding a small piece of bacon or fish is still meat. I still have to explain it,' she said, while picking at a slice of roasted lotus root with her chopsticks. When Yamanaka became vegan 16 years ago, most people in Japan hadn't even heard of the term 'vegan,' she said. But in recent years, she said, being vegan has become a somewhat fashionable subculture — judging from social media trends and an upswing in photogenic vegan cafes, which she said get more young people interested in becoming vegan, too. Even if trendiness is an effective way to draw people toward plant-based lifestyles, Yamanaka said Japanese who commit to veganism are motivated by a variety of issues, including sustainability and animal rights. The country imports between 40% and 60% of its meat but depends on domestic factory farming to produce much of its dairy supply. Its animal protection laws have been given low grades by international animal welfare organizations. Other factors include the country's relatively high rate of lactose intolerance, which some estimate affects the majority of the population. Food allergies are also a factor for many of the country's vegan converts. Between 2010 and 2019, the prevalence of allergies to eggs and milk, along with peanuts and wheat, nearly doubled among Japanese children. And eggs are the country's most common food allergy. Still, Yamanaka said city governments and companies don't care about expanding vegan options until they want to market to tourists. 'They believe vegan products won't sell, aren't understood or have failed in the past,' she said. 'Many consider them only for foreign visitors.' Mumokuteki, a natural lifestyle store with a cafe, serves up soy milk-based ramen on its all-vegan menu at its location on busy Teramachi shopping street in the city of Kyoto. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist Tourism is certainly a huge economic factor in Japan. In 2024, 'Before 2019, the vegan environment was not so good,' said Mayumi Muroya, chair of the Japan Vegan Society, the largest vegan and plant-based industry organization in Japan. 'The reality is that many of the foreigners visiting Japan are vegans and vegetarians. And with the Olympics coming up in 2020, the government knew the number of visitors was going to increase hugely.' In the run-up to the Games, which ultimately took place a year late because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government created food guidelines to help restaurants offer more vegan options and distributed subsidies to help them pay for those options. In December 2023, Muroya's organization became the first-ever permitted by the government's Japanese Agricultural Standards to officially certify vegan products. Adoption requires in-person inspections, and fewer than 10 businesses have been certified. A different nonprofit, VegeProject Japan, started unofficially certifying products as vegan in 2016, and its marker has become the most widely used vegan label in Japan — showing up on instant curry pouches, protein bars and some cosmetics. Recently, in an effort to make dining easier for tourists, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government began offering subsidies to vegan businesses with foreign language menus available that want to be certified with one of these labels — the Japan Vegan Society's certification costs an estimated ¥165,000 ($1,060). Inclusive eating The beloved and beleaguered tourism hub of Kyoto has also begun investing money into making the city's vegan options more visible — both to accommodate foreign visitors and due to the city's pledge to meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Japan has used SDGs as the basis for a public awareness campaign on climate change, conservation and sustainability. Despite its small size compared with Tokyo and neighboring Osaka, Kyoto has long been considered an easier place to be vegan than the rest of the country. As both the former capital and a youthful university town, the city is awash with historic businesses maintaining the traditions of a preindustrial Japan and a distinctly crunchy-granola youth culture. Although the population is a sixth of the size of Tokyo's, it has half as many vegan options. And recently, the local government partnered with Kyoto Vegan, an environmental organization that was founded in 2020 to expand and increase awareness of vegan options in the city. 'After 2020, the city asked if they could collaborate with me,' said Chisayo Tamaki, who founded the group. Kyoto Vegan founder Chisayo Tamaki says the city of Kyoto can't achieve its net zero carbon emissions goal without the support of vegans. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist Kyoto Vegan receives most of its funding from a subsidy from the country's national tourism agency, but it is also supported by the city as one of its 'Do You Kyoto 2050' projects. The initiative aims to cut carbon emissions down to zero by 2050. 'They can't achieve that goal without the support of vegan lifestyles,' said Tamaki. In its plan to reduce its carbon footprint, Kyoto considers veganism to be the 11th most effective way to cut down emissions, below expanding electric vehicle usage and above teleworking. To meet its goals, the city government is also collaborating with the Plant Based Lifestyle Lab, an initiative backed by a group of private companies to promote and research plant-based foods technologies. 'That's why there are a lot of vegetarian and vegan products on the market these days. Because the government is asking companies to make them,' said Tamaki. For her, it's a welcome change from just a few years ago when she was told vegans were 'demanding' or 'picky.' In many ways, people in Japan face the same barriers to veganism as anywhere else. There are the logistical limitations — the lack of options on restaurant menus and at grocery stores. But there are also the psychological ones, like the stigma of being considered picky, exclusion from social activities and misinformation about health and nutrition. In 2021, Muroya — the chair of the Japan Vegan Society — tried introducing monthly vegan lunches at an elementary school near Tokyo, the first attempt of its kind in Japan. Despite working with the school's nutritionist to design the menu, Muroya's effort ran into barriers like the national school-lunch calcium requirements, which promote milk, and pushback from parents worried their children wouldn't get adequate nourishment. (Research shows that well-balanced vegan diets are healthy for most people, as long as they take supplements to provide some vitamins and minerals.) Muroya's program lasted for only a year, but she said the school still regularly does 'meat-free Mondays.' Two friends catch up over lunch at Choice Kyoto, a long-standing vegan cafe serving Western-style dishes in Gion, the city's ancient entertainment district. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to being vegan in Japan is the country's culture of conformity — which considers standing out to be troublesome. 'Having a different opinion from everybody else is very controversial. Everybody wants to move together as a community,' Yamanaka said. 'Some people fear coming out as vegan at school or work due to potential bullying.' Although she said she hasn't faced much adversity in recent years, former coworkers pressured her to eat meat. For Yamanaka, the best way to make a more sustainable, less meat-intensive Japan is to bridge the gap between vegans and nonvegans. She said that when people discuss various issues that can motivate veganism — like sustainability, factory farming and allergies — as well as the popularity of veganism among tourists, more local governments and businesses can be convinced to make more options available. Local plant-based businesses are already making an effort to appeal to as many customers as possible. At Universal Bakes, a cult-favorite plant-based bakery in Tokyo's trendy Shimokitazawa neighborhood known for its vegan croissants and savory tarts, the ethos is to provide allergen-free food, not necessarily animal-free. 'I want people to understand that vegan food isn't just for a select few. It's an inclusive eating style,' Yamanaka said. 'Reaching beyond the vegan community is essential for creating a vegan-friendly world.' The first guests of the day line up outside the door of Vegan Sushi Tokyo in the Shibuya district. | Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist
