climate change

Here's a powerful video just in from last week's Climate Change Day of Action march against the E.oN headquarters in Coventry.

Great news just in from Poland, where work on the giant Jóźwin IIB open-cast pit and coal mine near Konin has been suspended. Following a legal challenge submitted last December by Greenpeace, a Polish court has ruled that there were problems with the environmental assessment process undertaken before work began on the site. Construction has now been halted while the process is reviewed.

This is a big victory - Jóźwin IIB was the site for our most recent Climate Rescue Station, set up last winter to remind delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in nearby Poznań that tackling climate change and building new coal-fired power stations are fundamentally incompatible aspirations. It will be particularly well-received by many of the peaceful activists who were attacked by mine workers at the end of last year during the protests.

There are some alarming stories in the press today about how much of the Amazon rainforest will be lost due to climate change. According to a new report from the Met Office's Hadley Centre, up to 85 per cent of it will disappear if we see a 4C rise in global temperatures.

It's a nightmare scenario and on the face of it, it makes you wonder if we shouldn't just throw in the towel - I have to admit to the occasional dark thought along those lines myself. But on the contrary, information like this illustrates yet again how crucial it is that we address climate change and deforestation together, and do it now before we get locked in to huge temperature rises.

Bailing out the planet in Brussels © Eric de Mildt/Greenpeace

Hundreds of Greenpeace volunteers from 16 countries arrived in Brussels today and set up a barricade around the conference centre where EU finance ministers are meeting to discuss funding options to tackle climate change. Linking arms to block the exits, the volunteers were determined not to let the politicians out until they agreed a proposal to bail out the planet.

(Twitter was a-buzz with regular updates from the scene - look back over the #climateaction tag.)