Greenpeace Blog

Climate actions in Gatwick, Essex and... Legoland?

Posted by jamie — 8 August 2008 at 11:39am - Comments

The Lego replica of Kingsnorth power station complete with 'Stop Climate Change' banner

The Lego replica of Kingsnorth power station complete with 'Stop Climate Change' banner © Hans Bricks

Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:

Article tagged as: aviation, biofuels, climate camp, climate change, coal, direct actions, kingsnorth, plane stupid

Jellyfish and chip supper?

Posted by jossc — 8 August 2008 at 10:46am - Comments

Mauve stinger and chips, anyone?

A new report by the Institute of Marine Sciences at the National Research Council in Barcelona links the rapid growth of jellyfish populations throughout the world's oceans to overfishing of their natural predators such as tuna and as a result of global warming.

Article tagged as: audio, jellyfish, oceans, raymond blanc, seafood see life, sustainable seafood

Biofuels failing 'green' standards

Posted by jamie — 7 August 2008 at 1:37pm - Comments

From today's Guardian:

"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.

"The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way."

But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:

"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."

Article tagged as: biofuels, climate change, deforestation, forests, renewable fuels agency

Carry on camping for the climate

Posted by bex — 6 August 2008 at 4:12pm - Comments

Climate Camp

See all Climate Camp updates.

While I've been stuck at my desk following the debates about Climate Camp police tactics, activists’ intentions and whether environmentalists are mostly ‘filthy adulterers’ (Julie Burchill, bless), the Climate Campers have been busy turning a quiet field into a living/working space powered by renewable energy, and debating the future of coal, the climate change movement and the planet.

Article tagged as: climate camp, climate change, coal, energy, kingsnorth

Update from Climate Camp

Posted by jamie — 4 August 2008 at 5:03pm - Comments

Climate Camp: no new coal

See all Climate Camp updates.

In a pleasant grazing meadow outside Strood, the Climate Camp is open for business and I'm here for a couple of days to see what's going on, cover it for the blog and, more importantly, get involved.

It's difficult to talk about the camp without touching on some of fractious actions of the police. Fortunately, nothing much happened and, after a frustrating period when we could all have been doing something more constructive, the police withdrew.

Article tagged as: climate camp, climate change, coal, kingsnorth

Ending whaling - the solution to climate change?

Posted by jossc — 4 August 2008 at 12:14pm - Comments
Ending whaling - the solution to climate change?

Interesting news in from Japan (where as you'll remember, the government recently took the bizarre step of prosecuting two of our activists for exposing corruption between their own Fisheries Agency and whaling company Kyodo Senpaku).

Whale expert and former councellor for the Institute of Cetacean Research (in whose name the commercial whaling operation which masquerades as 'scientific reseach' is officially conducted), Shigeko Misaki, has written a blistering letter to the Japan Times demanding that all whaling in the Southern Ocean should be ended:

Article tagged as: climate change, japan, japanese fisheries agency, southern ocean, whaling

Deep Green: peak oil changes everything

Posted by bex — 4 August 2008 at 10:59am - Comments

Deep Green - Rex Weyler

Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

Article tagged as: climate change, ecology, fossil fuels, oil, peak oil, rex weyler

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