Greenpeace Blog

Video: buying Congo timber for beer and soap

Posted by jamie — 13 September 2010 at 12:22pm - Comments

In these next two episodes, actress Marion Cottilard continues her journey through the Congo rainforest. Here, she sees first hand the wreckage left behind by the logging companies working in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As we've heard many times before, the companies get permission to log from the local villages by promising to build schools and clinics, but these often never materialise and if they do, they're hopelessly inadequate. Or logging rights are sold for salt, beer and soap when the timber fetches thousands of dollars.

Ice ice baby

Posted by lisavickers — 10 September 2010 at 11:29pm - Comments

We're now in the Atlantic Ocean heading for Europe - escorted by sea gulls gliding alongside us as the swells rock us from side to side.

Captain's Blog: New generation

Posted by lisavickers — 9 September 2010 at 4:40pm - Comments

Waldermar, captain of the Esperanza, writes about his personal motivations for bringing the ship to the Arctic... 

I'm from South America, the land of the Incas, the Guaraníes, the Wichis, the Tobas, the Mapuches, the Onas, and other native nations.

Behind the scenes of the oil rig action

Posted by jamie — 9 September 2010 at 3:43pm - Comments

Belatedly, here's a video from the Esperanza featuring climbing superstar Sim, one of the four activists who scaled Cairn Energy's rig last week. As well as revealing Sim's personal reasons for wanting to stop the drilling, there are some spectacular shots from the action itself.

Wanted: your ideas to save species from extinction

Posted by jamie — 8 September 2010 at 7:00pm - Comments

By every measurable factor, biodiversity is up the creek with no sign of getting a paddle any time soon. International attempts to reverse the downward trend of species numbers through the Convention on Biological Diversity have failed, and the goals set by the CBD for this year have been missed.

Turbines are go! British wind power hits record levels

Posted by jossc — 8 September 2010 at 4:55pm - Comments

Great news - Britain's wind farms generated record levels of power on Monday, providing 5 per cent of all power supplied to the National Grid over the course of the day.

The Grid confirmed that 40.5GWh out of a total 809.5GWh was provided by wind farms over the 24-hour period, with wind output peaking at 1,860 megawatts at 8.30pm.

A National Grid spokesperson said that, including direct output from turbines not conected to the grid, "about 10 per cent of total electricity demand would have been met by wind power. It is a pretty big landmark for the industry."

Leaving the Arctic under northern lights and shooting stars

Posted by lisavickers — 6 September 2010 at 2:40pm - Comments

The Northern Lights above the Esperanza © Will Rose / Greenpeace

We had a fairly quiet weekend on board the Esperanza - especially compared to the "all systems go" mode we were in last week during the action. Yesterday Babu, our wonderful cook, had a well deserved day off and some of us volunteered to prepare brunch and dinner in the galley for the rest of the crew.

Unjust sentence for Tokyo Two

Posted by jamie — 6 September 2010 at 10:12am - Comments

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, two Greenpeace activists known as the Tokyo Two, exposed widespread corruption in Japan's whaling programme, yet in return, they have been handed a one year suspended prison sentence.

Arctic defenders deported from Greenland

Posted by lisavickers — 4 September 2010 at 2:47pm - Comments

Sadly, all four of our climbers will not be coming back to the Esperanza after all. Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt are flying home to Germany, USA, Finland and Poland respectively. Their personal belongings are still on board and they are going home in spare clothes bought for them by friends in Greenland. I'm sure they'll be glad to see their families again but we're really going to miss them on the ship and we haven't finished our 'Go Beyond Oil' tour yet.

Arctic defenders still in police custody

Posted by lisavickers — 3 September 2010 at 7:00pm - Comments

We are still waiting for our climbers to be released but hoping they will be back on board the Esperanza soon. They are sorely missed - especially Timo's lovely guitar playing in the evenings. Anais is talking about preparing a "Welcome Back!" banner for them and every time the captain or our campaign leader walks past we keep asking "any news?". The answer is still no. Nobody knows exactly when they will be out and perhaps they wont be allowed back to the ship at all.

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