Greenpeace Blog

Nobel peace prize winner Al Gore would be proud. A few months ago, he said "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power stations." The people of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales have taken him at his word (albeit one step further back in the supply chain) to shut down work on Britain's biggest ever open-cast coal mine.

Rich countries have paid only $67m into a UN fund designed to help the world's poorest countries adapt to climate change, according to a new report published today by develoment charity Oxfam. Although this may sound a lot, in fact it's less than what Americans spend on suntan lotion each month, and only a tiny fraction of the real amount needed. Oxfam estimates that the true cost of successful adaptation is likely to be at least $50 billion a year, and far more if global greenhouse-gas emissions are not cut fast enough.

At a side meeting of the Bali climate change conference today, Greenpeace launched a new proposal that will encourage and reward countries for reducing emissions from deforestation. It's long, complex and full of acronyms but with forest destruction responsible for around one-fifth of our greenhouse gas emissions, it could represent one of the best chances we have of slashing global emissions.

It tackles a subject which is a big stumbling block in attempts to stop deforestation: money. There's not enough of it, at least not in the right places. Most countries with large tracts of forest, such as Indonesia, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are still developing and see them as sources of much-needed finance. Even though the link between deforestation and climate change is now being widely acknowledged, these governments rarely have funds available to protect their forests.

Question: switching from a computer running on Windows to one running on Linux could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50 per cent. True or false?

And the answer is (cue long drawn-out tension building drumroll): TRUE!