Greenpeace Blog

Japanese whalers' begin search for humpbacks

Posted by jossc — 19 November 2007 at 11:53am - Comments

A humpback breaching

The Japanese whaling fleet is at sea again, heading down to the Southern Ocean to begin its annual whale cull. And this year their plans are bigger than ever, targeting 1,000 cetaceans including 50 endangered fin whales, 935 minkes and, for the first time, 50 threatened humpbacks.

Once again this slaughter will be justified in terms of gathering 'scientific' data about whale populations, even though 18 years of this have yet to yield any concrete results. And once again the whale meat will end up being sold commercially in Japan, despite the tiny and declining market, and minimal demand from the rest of the world.

"Biofuels can be good," says UN; scientists not so sure

Posted by jamie — 16 November 2007 at 6:22pm - Comments

The head of the UN Environment Programme has warned that the biofuel market could crash if suitable environmental standards aren't established. According to the BBC, "Achim Steiner... said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed." The story also picked out Indonesia's tropical peatlands for special mention of what it terms "biofuel folly". (Nice phrase, I'll have to remember that one!)

Mind you, Steiner was making those comments in response to an independent group of scientists who criticsied the stance taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on biofuels, which was described as "naive".

Article tagged as: biofuels, climate change, deforestation, forests, indonesia, IPCC

Hachette makes it onto the good books

Posted by jamie — 16 November 2007 at 1:27pm - Comments

We've had some excellent news in the Book Campaign as Hachette Livre, the largest book publisher in the UK, have finally produced an environmental policy which includes some great commitments to making sure the paper they use will be forest-friendly. With imprints such as Hodder & Stoughton, Orion and Little Brown, they publish nearly one-fifth of all books sold in this country, so it's a very big deal.

Article tagged as: book campaign, books, deforestation, forests, FSC, hachette, paper, successes

Rainbow Warrior in palm oil blockade

Posted by jamie — 15 November 2007 at 6:08pm - Comments

The Rainbow Warrior blockading the MT Westama which is carrying 30,000 tonnes of palm oil

View from the Rainbow Warrior of the MT Westama, laiden with 30,000 tonnes of palm oil © Greenpeace/Christian Aslund

Events in Indonesia have stepped up apace, and the Rainbow Warrior is currently blockading a tanker in the port of Dumai in Sumatra. The tanker, the MT Westama, is carrying 30,000 tonnes of palm oil and the Warrior is positioned so that tugs can't reach the tanker to assist it out of the port.

Exporting the palm oil is a company called Permata Hijau Sawit - their suppliers are known to be involved in the destruction of rainforests and peatlands in Riau province, temporary home of our Forest Defenders Camp.

I'll post back when I know how it turns out, but in the meantime read the full story on our international site.

Update: After two days, the blockade finally came to an end on Saturday.

Article tagged as: climate change, deforestation, direct actions, forests, indonesia, palm oil, rainbow warrior

Video: saying 'yes' to St Pancras

Posted by bex — 14 November 2007 at 1:23pm - Comments

This morning, we celebrated the opening of the international terminal at St Pancras - and reminded Gordon Brown that there's no need for that third runway at Heathrow.

Here's the video:

 

 

Article tagged as: airport expansion, aviation, direct actions, heathrow, heathrow voices, rail, transport

Greenpeace says 'yes' to something shocker as the St Pancras international terminal opens

Posted by jossc — 14 November 2007 at 9:09am - Comments

A Greenpeace banner says 'yes!' to the new international terminal at St Pancras station

Who'd have thought it? © Greenpeace/Will Rose

Update (12:40): Watch the video

Seizing the rare opportunity to welcome some good news, Greenpeace climbers scaled the front of St Pancras station this morning and hung a huge banner proclaiming 'YES' in 3-metre-high letters to show support for the new high-speed rail link to Europe, which finally got under way today with a jaunt to Paris and back for selected journalists and politicians - including PM Gordon Brown.

Article tagged as: aviation, climate change, heathrow, rail transport, transport

Images from a vanishing forest

Posted by jamie — 13 November 2007 at 3:01pm - Comments

Lately, I've been working a lot on our palm oil campaign, so my spider senses are highly atuned to anything coming out of Sumatra and Indonesia in general. But two stories I found this morning, both on New Scientist, really underlined what's going on west of Java.

The first article features some astonishing images from the Zoological Society of London, caught by a motion-sensitive camera left in the middle of the forest. The impressive snaps include a herd of elephants and a golden cat, but the stand-out picture is of an inquisitive and rare Sumatran tiger, it's eyes glowing in the camera's flash. Take a look at the slideshow - they're incredble.

Article tagged as: climate change, conservation, deforestation, destructive logging, indonesia, palm oil

Greenpeace drops in on the World Energy Congress

Posted by bex — 12 November 2007 at 7:16pm - Comments

Quit nuclear madness - the World Energy Congress

Yesterday, the World Energy Congress opened in Rome. Among the attendees was Italy's prime minister, and one of the main sponsors was ENEL, Italy's biggest energy company whose main shareholder is the government.

The World Energy Congress has a plan that lets global warming emissions keep increasing until 2030, and proposes an expansion of nuclear power. ENEL for its part plans to get around the inconvenient fact that nuclear power was voted out of Italy in a referendum 20 years ago by building a new reactor in nearby Slovakia instead of in Italy.

Article tagged as: climate change, direct actions, nuclear power

Keeping in touch with Greenpeace

Posted by jamie — 12 November 2007 at 6:04pm - Comments

Keeping up with everything that's happening at Greenpeace is a challenge - I work here and sometimes I find it a struggle. But we have got some nifty services to make that a whole lot easier and instead of coming here to find out what the latest news is, we can come to you instead.

For instance, there's a automated service which will send an email when we publish new stories or information on the site. It's a daily digest so you won't be bombarded with emails, and if we don't publish anything you won't receive anything. Also included are links from our del.icio.us page which we use to bookmark interesting news items, blog stories and videos from elsewhere on the web, so you can see what we've been reading in the office.

Follow this link to subscribe to (almost) daily updates from this blog (it takes about two seconds), but we also have email updates for other sections on the site such as press releases, report or videos. Or you can pick the campaign topics you're interested in and updates on those - here's the full list.

Article tagged as: email, RSS, take action, what you can do

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