Greenpeace Blog

The Rainbow Warrior - big city, bright lights and night watches

Posted by bex — 21 October 2008 at 5:50am - Comments

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I'll be adding to this map throughout the tour (zoom out to see events during the global tour).

See all Rainbow Warrior tour updates or get them by email.

Some time yesterday morning (was it really yesterday morning?), I left the Greenpeace office, took a short tube ride eastwards, crossed a gang plank and fell through a rabbit hole into the weird and wonderful world that is a Greenpeace ship. And not just any Greenpeace ship, but our flagship Rainbow Warrior II, which is so tied up with Greenpeace's history.

Article tagged as: climate change, coal, coal ship tour, energy, give coal the boot, rainbow warrior, ships

Activists urge Italy to quit coal

Posted by jossc — 20 October 2008 at 10:21am - Comments

Activists fron Arctic Sunrise take the "Quit Coal" message to Sardinia

As the Rainbow Warrior arrives here to embark on the UK leg of of her worldwide "Quit Coal" tour, activists from another of our ships, Arctic Sunrise, have been busy putting coal in the hot seat in Italy.

"Small variations in global temperatures have vast consequences. The last Ice Age was only six degrees colder than today. A global rise of just 0.8 degrees has melted the Arctic."
Johann Hari: Don't kill the planet in the name of saving the economy »

Five of them scaled a 150 metre crane at a new coal-fired power plant in Civitavecchia, near Rome, to drop a banner highlighting the fact that Italian government policy effectively opposes the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile another five activists painted "No Carbon" and "Quit Coal" in giant letters on the power plant's dock from an inflatable boat.

Article tagged as: arctic sunrise, co2 emissions, coal, EU, italy, kyoto protocol

Manokwari, here we come

Posted by jamie — 17 October 2008 at 4:14pm - Comments

Manokwari dancers on the bridge of the Esperanza

A dance troupe from Manokwari take a tour of the Esperanza's bridge © Greenpeace/Rante

After nine days at sea, the Esperanza pulled into Manokwari harbour this morning - that's Manokwari in the Indonesian province of West Papua, not any other Manokwari you might be thinking of. Crowds of people were already on the dock and despite the overcast skies, we received one of the colourful and exotic welcomes I'm becoming accustomed to on this trip, with traditional dancing and singing to greet us when we disembarked.

Article tagged as: esperanza, forests, indonesia, PNG

A year in the life of the Rainbow Warrior - on a mission to stop coal

Posted by bex — 17 October 2008 at 3:32pm - Comments

Rainbow Warrior

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With only one sleep to go until the Rainbow Warrior gets here, I was planning to tell you about her adventures over the past year, when she's been on a mission to get the planet to quit coal - trailing the odd campaign victory in her wake But then I noticed Captain Mike Finken has done it for me, on the Making Waves blog. Here's a snippet:

Article tagged as: climate change, coal, coal ship tour, kingsnorth, mike finken, quit coal tour, rainbow warrior, ships

Marine reserves can save our seas

Posted by jossc — 17 October 2008 at 2:07pm - Comments

Apo Island Marine Sanctuary, Philippines

Latest updates from the impressive ProtectPlanetOcean web site provide convincing support for Greenpeace's long-held contention that marine reserves provide the best long-term solution to the problems of overfishing and pollution which threaten the world's marine ecosystems. In case you've forgotten marine reserves are protected areas, national parks at sea where no fishing or other extractive industries (such as oil, gas or gravel extraction) are permitted.

The site has pulled together studies of 124 marine reserves around the world - scientific peer-reviewed research published in academic journals - to provide a clear picture of what has happened where reserves have been established.

Article tagged as: destructive fishing, marine reserves, oceans, overfishing, pollution

Labour: we will cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050

Posted by bex — 16 October 2008 at 6:28pm - Comments

Greenland

Has somebody put something in the water around Westminister? On Tuesday I found myself waxing lyrical about a new Tory announcement. Today it's Labour's turn. Frankly, I'm a little freaked out.

Ed Miliband - he who thousands of you congratulated when he got his new job as climate change secretary - has announced a new emissions reduction target for the UK. We will, he said, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 figures.

Article tagged as: climate change, ed miliband, emissions, targets

Tories: "we will stop a third runway"

Posted by bex — 14 October 2008 at 5:15pm - Comments

Heathrow Airport

I still suspect I may have fallen down a rabbit hole but apparently it's true. Two weeks after formally telling the world they're opposed to a third runway at Heathrow, the Tories have issued an extraordinary warning to companies. Don't get involved in any contracts to build the third runway, they're saying, because we're "absolutely determined" to stop the project going ahead. (Oh, and they're opposed to a second runway at Stansted too.)

Article tagged as: airport expansion, aviation, climate change, heathrow, heathrow expansion, third runway

A history of the Rainbow Warrior, in pictures

Posted by bex — 10 October 2008 at 6:09pm - Comments

With the Rainbow Warrior on her way to the UK, we thought we'd put together a slideshow to share a few of the highs - and lows - of her remarkable history. Our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior has travelled from South America to the South Pacific, the Antarctic to the Atlantic - an icon for environmentalists around the globe.

The ship coming to the UK is of course the Rainbow Warrior II; the original vessel was sunk in 1985 by French government agents trying to foil protests at their nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. (The ship's name was inspired by a Native American prophecy which foretells a time when human greed would make the world sick, and warriors of the rainbow would come together to save it.)

Article tagged as: climate change, coal, coal ship tour, give coal the boot, kingsnorth, rainbow warrior

Stocks crash – massive reserves desperately needed

Posted by jossc — 10 October 2008 at 5:24pm - Comments

Wasted lives? Bycatch from a beam trawler

Our oceans are the last global commons, and as such are about as effectively regulated as Dodge City when the West was at it's wildest. As recently as 40 years ago they were considered to be an inexhaustible resource. No amount of fishing could possibly make a dent, it seemed, in the teeming mass of ocean life which constantly replenished itself. It was a one-sided arms race, with increasingly advanced fishing techniques maximizing catches: GPS; sonar; trawl nets big enough to catch a jumbo jet; bottom trawling; fish aggregating devices and open-water 'ranching' are just some of the methods employed to extract maximum profit from the seas.

Article tagged as: destructive fishing, marine reserves, overfishing

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