August 2009

The Arctic Sunrise is in Greenland to survey melting glaciers and observe the effects of climate change. In this latest update from the tour, Indian journalist Gaurav Sawant decribes his experiences aboard and ponders the implications for the sub-continent. But first web editor Juliette sets the scene...

India seems (and is) quite far away from Greenland and the Arctic. Yet, with the world's second largest population and with major cities like Mumbai (parts of which lie just a few metres above sea level), the country cannot ignore what is happening. India is now a major player in international politics. If its population and leaders start making climate change the political priority, the world will listen.

You may have already seen this on our Making Waves blog, but for the sake of completeness (and to help demolish the climate denial zombie that's risen once more) here's Brian's piece on the arctic sea ice controversy.

The right-wing, conservative, climate-denial blog-and-twitosphere is abuzz with the news: Greenpeace admits live on the BBC that it lied about arctic melting.

That's not true, it's being promoted by the handful of global warming skeptics still standing, and we're hitting back. You can help us by tweeting, blogging, and sharing this clarification on Facebook.

Every once in a while in my meanderings through the web, I come across something that really hits the spot - like this amazing animation from Phil Reynolds, for example. Phil's taken an idea from Charles Clover's book about overfishing, The End of the Line, and he uses it beautifully to illustrate the problem of 'bycatch' - the non-commercial species which are also killed during the process of bringing our favourite fish species to the table.

It's not just on this country that people get so riled about climate change that they're driven into taking drastic action, action such as, oh I don't know, climbing a chimney stack in a coal-fired power station.

A new series of videos from our Indian office (compiled into one above) showcases six activists who explain why they climbed the chimney at Kolaghat power station in October 2007 and spent a few days in jail after their arrest.