Climate Change

Climate change: English country floods

Flash floods have killed at least 150 people in Pakistan in the last 48 hours. The floods have buried homes built of corrugated iron and wood, sent mountains of mud crashing into villages and turned dried canals into roaring rivers.

Torrential rains that began before dawn on Monday wreaked havoc in Pakistan's mountainous north-west, where rivers of mud slammed into villages burying homes and killing more than 120 people. Many more people are still missing and authorities fear they are buried beneath the mud.

Update: 23rd July

0600 hrs: As dawn broke over the conference center in Bonn, our emotional roller coaster hit another trough, as word came through that the rumors of a deal that we had heard of a few hours earlier, had run onto the rocks again.

Most of us had been up all night, as well as most of the night before, and the strain was just enormous. As I left the conference center to run back to the office, the banner the students had hung in the trees stood out against the dawn, a forlorn plea for sanity and a stark reminder of the simplicity of the fundamental issue - to either move forward, or move backward in our fight to protect the climate.

Standing 24 feet above the high-tide line, Greenpeace volunteers and sunbathers at Smathers Beach Wednesday marked the loss the beach could face if global warming continues at its current pace.

"The Keys are going to go under," said Kitsy McMullen, Greenpeace climate impacts campaigner, as the group opened its Take Back the Earth Tour in Key West.

Rising sea levels threaten shorelines and coral reefs everywhere, and Greenpeace activists say President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy plan is likely to speed up the effects.

The US Greenpeace students staged a mock wedding between Donny P (Perlman) and US Head Delegate Paula (Dobrianski), demonstrating for those who still had any doubt that the love between the US government and the fossil fuel industry is the kind that of love that only money can buy.

We also sounded the climate alarm today, reminding delegates of the urgency of the problems they are trying to solve.

However, police stopped Greenpeace from relieving delegates from the ear splitting siren in front of the conference centre. Just as the banner was taken down signalling the end of the intended short, sharp climate alarm, the police took away the activists who could have switched the siren off. Oh well, so the police had to drive the truck through Bonn with a very loud alarm still screaming. At least they gave it a police escort with flashing lights!