May 2010

The Chinese river dolphin is just one of the thousands of species lost in recent times (© Idolector)

The great Douglas Adams once said: "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." He was no doubt talking about writing deadlines but another deadline is fast approaching, one Adams would have been very interested in and one which is far more significant than whether a manuscript gets delivered on time.

Back in 2002, parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - or in other words, most nations on the planet - agreed on a target to stem the loss of biodiversity by 2010, which by no coincidence is also the International Year of Biodiversity. There are still more than six months to go before that deadline officially expires but the results of the global efforts already being called and it's not good news.

Leading British painter and environmentalist Kurt Jackson is a long-time supporter of Greenpeace. As the artist in residence at last year's Glastonbury Festival, he created an amazing series of paintings and sketches - including portraits of Radiohead, Massive Attack, Lily Allen and Tinariwen as well as landscapes capturing the essence of the festival.

This is going to be a bit off-topic but stick with me as given the circumstances I think it's relevant for this blog. That a party can get 23 per cent of the vote but only claim 9 per cent of the seats in parliament seems grossly unfair. As does the notion that another party can garner 36 per cent of votes, and see that translated into 46 per cent of seats. Yet, more or less, that's what our electoral system has delivered.

As I write, the eventual outcome of the general election is still in the balance and with parliament well and truly hung (although I prefer the less pejorative phrase 'balanced parliament'), it's anyone's guess as to who will actually form a government. But it's clear that the Lib Dems are going to have a major influence on whatever form that government eventually takes.

Okay, so Nestlé has received tens of thousands of emails, not to mention hundreds (maybe even thousands) of phone calls about the palm oil in its products, but we're still not seeing much in the way of affirmative action. So how about putting a huge advert in a major international newspaper to remind the executives that we're still expecting to see some major announcements very soon?

Over the last six weeks Greenpeace campaigners and active supporters have been energetically campaigning to raise the level of debate about proposals to spend £97bn on new nuclear weapons.

Together we’ve been lobbying candidates, writing to newspapers, polling people on the streets and doing much, much more behind the scenes - helping to make nuclear weapons an election issue for the first time in decades.

The past few days have seen a couple of pretty important meetings in Spain about the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (the CFP). You might not have seen much coverage, which isn't that surprising when there's an election going on, nor when you appreciate that very few people know what CFP stands for. Amongst fishy circles, the acronym is often re-interpreted, but I'm too polite to say what the F would stand for.