March 2008

Another country is well on the way to making the switch as last week Argentina joined the rapidly growing list of nation states getting ready to use only energy efficient light bulbs.

If the Argentinean president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner gets her way, by the end of 2010 mandatory efficiency standards will be introduced which will effectively ban incandescent bulbs. Better yet, she said her decision came as a direct result of the campaign run by our office in Buenos Aires.

And earlier this year, Italy followed Ireland's example to become the second EU country to propose similar efficiency standards and is also expected to remove incandescents from sale in 2010. All these bulb bans are a small but vital step in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and introducing minimum energy efficiency standards on all electrical equipment has to be the ultimate goal.

Boarding the Galina III yesterday © Greenpeace/Karl Joseph

Yesterday afternoon, the crew of one of our ships - the Arctic Sunrise - swung into action in the French port of Caen. Their mission: to prevent a shipment of Amazon timber, acquired from companies linked to illegal logging activities, from entering the EU. And after nearly 24 hours, they're still going strong.

The timber is aboard the Galina III and, as it tried to enter the port, five Greenpeace volunteers (including a group from the UK) climbed aboard where they attached themselves to two of the ship's cranes. Since then, the Galina has been unable to dock to unload its cargo, a mixture of timber species with wonderfully exotic names: amarelao, macaranduba, ipe, garapeira, cumaru and jarana to name a few. And as I write, the team on the cranes is still holding out.

The anti-coal storm gathering around the head of Business Secretary John Hutton, the government minister championing new coal-fired power stations, is growing daily. Latest to weigh-in on the side of reason are the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). As you can see from the following quote, they are less than impressed with Hutton's stance;

If the UK government must use coal, the dirtiest fuel source there is, then it must also wait until CCS facilities are up and running. There is no rationale for using coal again until its climate damage can be contained.

Image reproduced with kind permission of Private Eye Magazine and Clive Goddard.

Luckily for BAA, the Queen doesn't seem to have taken offence at apparently being banned from Heathrow in the run up to climate camp last year. This morning, she tootled off to Hounslow to officially open Heathrow's new Terminal 5 (although the public opening won't happen 'til the 27th).

Five of the 'Kingsnorth Six' at the top of the 200m chimney

Today five six of our volunteers faced their first court hearing over the shutting down of one of Britain's dirtiest power stations, at Kingsnorth in Kent, last October. They pleaded 'not guilty' at Maidstone Crown Court to charges of criminal damage and trespass. The charges relate to climbing a 200m smokestack on the site and painting a message to the prime minister - "GORDON BIN IT" in huge letters down the side. They took action because the government is considering considering proposals for a new generation of coal-fired plants.

News from the Sunshine State reminds us that nuclear power is only an option for companies with very deep pockets. Or a hand in their customers' pockets, to be precise.

Progress (ha!) Energy have tripled the estimate for the new plant it's planning to build in Florida, saying that the new price tag will be an eye-watering $17 billion, and they haven't even got permission to start building yet. How are they going to pay for this? Why, by bumping up bills for its existing customers of course. "You can't avoid the notion that nuclear has an upfront cost for the customer," said Jeff Lyash, president and chief executive of Progress (double ha!) Energy Florida. "It does."

And that's just the beginning. We all know that, once the diggers move in, the costs for a nuclear power station take on a mysterious life of their own, spiralling ever upward. Just look at the delay-ridden, cash-sucking plant currently being built in Finland. It's the same in this country as well, with costs for dealing with existing waste (never mind the waste generated by a hypothetical fleet of new nuclear power stations) going repeatedly skywards.

So if the day comes when another load of nuclear power stations are being built here, remember it won't be private companies picking up the elephantine costs: one way or another, it'll be us.

Alex Steffen of Worldchanging recently wrote an excellent piece called Who Will Tell the People? And How? about the yawning chasm between the reality of climate change and the failure of government to bring in the massive changes needed. Talking about US emissions cuts, he writes:

We're running into a situation here where the acceptable political action is to move from A to C, but where realism demands that - if we want to dodge a catastrophic collision with ecological reality - we move from A to say Q. And that gap, between C and Q, is large enough to lose a future in.

As you're reading this blog, you probably don't need reminding about the catastrophic collision with ecological reality Steffen mentions. With stakes this high, the changes needed (Steffen's A to Q) are profound, fundamental and cross all facets of human existence - from our energy and transport systems to, dare I say it, our social and economic systems.