Indonesia mulls DICAPRIO ban:
US tech giants Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon expressed support Friday for President Barack Obama’s program to fight climate change, which was put on hold in February by the US Supreme Court.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan” calls for a 32 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by electric power plants by 2030 from 2005 levels.
A group of 25 US states, most of them led by Republican governors, challenged the program before the Supreme Court which by a 5-4 vote put it on hold until an appeals court can rule on the arguments.
On Friday, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon filed a brief with the DC Circuit court in support of the program, noting that collectively they are among the biggest US consumers of electricity.
The administration’s plan “will help address climate change by reinforcing current trends that are making renewable energy supplies more robust, more reliable and more affordable,” the brief said.
The tech giants noted their own efforts to limit the impact of their activities on the environment, in particular by turning toward renewable energy sources for their power needs. Hollywood actor Leonardo Dicaprio may be banned from returning to Indonesia over his criticisms that palm oil plantations are destroying the country’s rainforests and endangering wildlife, an immigration official said Saturday.
The Oscar winner made a one-day visit to protected Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra last weekend and uploaded photos to his Instagram account , expressing concerns over species whose habitats are threatened.
“The expansion of palm oil plantations is fragmenting the forest and cutting off key elephant migration corridors,” he posted. “A world-class biodiversity hotspot, but palm oil expansion is destroying this unique place.”
Heru Santoso, the spokesman for the Directorate General for Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, said that Dicaprio used his visit to discredit the palm oil industry and the Indonesian government.
“We support his concern to save the Leuser ecosystem,” Santoso said. “But we can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media.”
Slash-and-burn practices destroy huge areas of Indonesian forest every year during the dry season, creating haze that pollutes neighboring countries and causes massive economic losses as well as contributing to Indonesia’s carbon dioxide emissions. The fires are often set to clear land for agriculture, including palm oil plantations.
Santoso said companies and organizations that objected to Dicaprio’s comments have the right to request that immigration authorities bar him from reentering Indonesia, though none have done so yet.