August 2010

As debate rages here in the UK about the financial cost of building a replacement for the Trident nuclear weapons system, it's timely to reflect on the impact of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima which happened 65 years ago today. Bear in mind that just one of the 48 nuclear warheads carried by a UK Trident submarine has approximately eight times the destructive power of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Tata's port project could spell game over for a major turtle nesting site © Greenpeace

Guest blogger Ashish Fernandes, oceans campaigner from our New Delhi office, explains how corporate giant Tata is taking legal action against Greenpeace India over an online turtle game.

It's been five years since Greenpace India started its campaign against the Dhamra port project on the east coast of India which threatens a host of wild species including horseshoe crabs and crocodiles. The port happens to be a stone's throw away from one of the world's largest nesting sites for the olive ridley sea turtle and India's second largest mangrove forest, which is a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance to boot.

The port is nearly built, but it's clear that we're still a huge thorn in the side of the company behind this ecological disaster, the giant TATA Steel corporation, which is a 50-50 stakeholder in the project. In the UK, the TATAs are known for their takeovers of steelmaker Corus, Tetley Tea and the Jaguar and Land Rover brands.

In June, Oscar-winning French superstar Marion Cottilard - currently playing in Inception at all good multiplexes - took a trip to the Congo rainforest with Greenpeace campaigners to see for herself the effect that the logging industry is having on the forest and the people who live there.

Glastonbury is the big fixture in our festival calendar but throughout the summer our events crew are setting up shop at other big country bashes. They're getting people involved with our campaign to save the rainforests (see our new forest defenders making monkeys of themselves in the slideshow above) as well as providing plenty of activities to provide an alternative to the music stages.

Latitude and Womad have been and gone, but this weekend it's their first visit to the Big Chill. If you're heading that way look out for the Banksy backdrop where you can put yourself in the picture and declare your support, like hundreds of other people have already done.

Not plenty more where that came from © Greenpeace/Cobb

If you're reading this in the UK, you ran out of fish today.

Basically, the UK eats more fish than its waters produce and, thanks to some nifty fish-counting from the clever folks at NEF, that equates to the 4th of August being the day we use up our year's fish supply. In comparison to the EU as a whole, we fair a month better but then we are a country with quite a lot of seas, certainly in comparison with, er, Austria and Romania. Yet, for almost five full months we are relying on fish from somewhere else. And that might be okay, if there was plenty of it to go around. But of course, as the old saying should go, there aren't plenty more fish in the sea.

The BP stations we closed down last week have all long since opened again but the effects our thirst for oil is having on the planet continue. The oil spill in the Gulf is now officially the largest accidental spill ever, and the environmental havoc being wrought in China, Nigeria and elsewhere doesn't get the same news coverage but is just as disastrous.

Meanwhile, lobbyists working for BP and other oil pushers are busy trying to hobble laws and legislation which could set us on the road to reducing our oil dependency and making the transition to a cleaner energy future. One such piece of legislation is the Fuel Quality Directive and if its full potential is realised, it could prevent fuels from dirty sources like tar sands being sold in Europe.