Greenpeace Blog

With the government's long-delayed decision on a third runway at Heathrow rumoured to be imminent, the intrepid women and men of the Climate Rush will be making their suffragette-inspired opposition felt at the airport next week.

MPs return from their winter holiday on Monday 12 January, so that evening at 7pm the Climate Rushers will hit Heathrow Terminal 1 for a peaceful picnic. Terminal 1, for those not familiar with the airport, deals principally with domestic flights, the sort of short-haul journeys which could easily be made by other, less climate-wrecking forms of transport. And they are inviting all of us who are fed up with the obvious lack of action on this most serious of issues to join them.

Remember the palm oil tanker which the Esperanza prevented from docking in Indonesia last month? That same tanker - the Isola Corallo - arrived in European waters on Christmas Eve en route to Rotterdam, and was met by a group of Greenpeace activists who painted 'Forest Crime' along its hull.

I was on board the Esperanza during that first Indonesian action against the Corallo and it's brilliant to see this tanker - which is carrying 29,000 tonnes of palm oil belonging to Sinar Mas, Indonesia's largest producer - becoming the centre of attention once more here in Europe. It draws a thick line across the globe between the causes of deforestation in Indonesia and demand for products like palm oil on this side of the world.

Read the full story on the Greenpeace South East Asia website and find out more about the Indonesian end of the story in our latest podcast.

Exciting footage just in from the London HQ of international energy giant BP. After discovering internal company documents which reveal that the company, which has been stying itself 'Beyond Petroleum', is actually still spending 93 per cent of its budget on oil and gas extraction, we sent a crack team of smartly dressed greenwash-busters to locate BP boss Tony Hayward and present him with our coveted Emerald Paintbrush award for this year's most outstandingly brazen piece of greenwash.

Find out how they got on below:

But remember folks, this is just the tip of the greenwash-berg. With so many companies desperate to trumpet their 'green' credentials, even if the reality is very different, there are bound to be many more potential award winners out there. So if you know of, or work for, one of them, be sure and drop us a line so we can consider them for furture Emerald Paintbrush presentations...

The tension built as the judges deliberated. Then at last the results were were all in and - ta-da! It was time to announce the winner of the first annual Greenpeace 'Emerald Paintbrush' award for greenwashing above and beyond the call of duty. Cue a quick roll on the drums, and step forward into the spotlight - BP!

The energy corporation with an income larger than most of the world's nation states has spent a lot of time and money restyling itself as being 'Beyond Petroleum' in recent years, but a trawl through their accounts quickly reveals just how empty that assertion really is - 'Back to Petroleum', more like it.