climate change

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All aboard the Arctic Sunrise in Brazil

Posted by jamie — 20 February 2009 at 12:42pm - Comments

One of the great things about working for an international organisation is that my inbox is constantly filling with emails from around the globe detailing what other Greenpeace offices are working on. A thread I've been following particularly closely is the stream of messages coming from the Arctic Sunrise which is currently back in Brazil on a two-and-a-half month tour of the country.

The purpose of the tour - which goes under the name of 'Save The Planet Now... Or Now!' - is to highlight the important role Brazil (as the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet) can play in fighting it in the lead-up to the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

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Yorkshire says no to new coal

Posted by jamie — 12 February 2009 at 12:16pm - Comments

Ferrybridge coal power station in Yorkshire

The cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station

The decision on a new coal power station at E.ON's Kingsnorth facility in Kent is still expected later this year - the current rumour is around June but as with all government pronouncements you should take that with a very large pinch of salt. Whether it gets the go-ahead or not, it will have ramifications for the other proposed coal developments - including opencast mines - elsewhere in the country.

One of these is at Ferrybridge in west Yorkshire where half of the power station is due to go out of service in 2015. A more immediate threat is the opencast mine planned for the area, which will sit next door to an RSPB nature reserve at Fairburn Ings, and the group Yorkshire Against New Coal (Yanc) is standing in opposition to both plans.

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Living in the Age of Stupid

Posted by jamie — 4 February 2009 at 2:47pm - Comments

I have a confession to make - I've never seen The Inconvenient Truth. Or The 11th Hour (If you missed that one,  it was Leo DiCaprio's contribution to the climate change debate). It might sound slightly arrogant, but my sense is they won't tell me anything I don't already know. Plus it's over two years since Al Gore's Powerpoint slides made it into cinemas and with climate science accelerating at a furious rate, it's no doubt already looking a little archaic.

Greenpeace podcast: Airplot and a week of Heathrow drama

Posted by jamie — 3 February 2009 at 5:40pm - Comments

The latest episode of our podcast is all about Heathrow and the plan to build a third runway. James visited the plot of land we've bought on the proposed site of the new runway, while Joss went to find out why organisations from the National Trust to the RSPB are also opposed to the idea. Meanwhile, Christian went to see what happened at the latest Climate Rush event down at Heathrow's Terminal 1.

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Tar sands investment and 'oil at any cost' threaten BP's future profitability

Posted by jossc — 3 February 2009 at 3:40pm - Comments

Alberta, Canada - contaminated water from tar sands oil production fills a 2 km wide 'tailings' pool

Alberta, Canada - contaminated water from tar sands oil production fills a 2 km wide 'tailings' pool © Greenpeace

Last month our Emerald Paintbrush award presented to BP highlighted how far the company, which previously styled itself as going 'beyond petroleum', has moved back to its traditional profit source at the expense of its alternative energy division, and most likely its long-term profitability.

Investors may have been patting themselves on the back yesterday as BP posted record profits for 2008, but they should be wary - a quick trawl through the figures reveals major flaws in the company's long term investment strategy. Massive profits during the first half of the year (when oil prices reached over $100 per barrel) were undermined by a collapse in the final quarter, when prices fell back to around $40 per barrel.

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How cattle ranches are chewing up the Amazon rainforest

Posted by jamie — 31 January 2009 at 9:38am - Comments
by-nc. Credit: Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

For about three years now, we've been working on curbing the impacts of the soya industry on the Amazon rainforest in Brazil which, before the current moratorium was put into place, was replacing the forest with plantations on a massive scale.

However, there's another agricultural sector cutting deep into the forest which we're also going to tackle: cattle ranching. To assess the scale of the problem, Greenpeace researchers in Brazil have produced a new set of maps showing how the Amazon region has suffered.

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