climate change

Slideshow of the latest images from the action

It’s been a hectic day - but a successful one.

We heard at our ship’s briefing this morning at 0800 that our friends were going to attempt to get on Chevron’s massive Stena Carron rig in the next couple of hours and stop it from moving.

A short but sweet clip of Greenpeace climbers Anais (from Germany) and Victor (from Sweden) in their Portaledge on the anchor chain of the Chevron drilling ship, the Stena Carron, off the Shetland coast.

According to Victor the weather is fine, both he and Anais are "very happy", and they have enough food to stay for two weeks!

Whilst they remain in position, the giant ship cannot move. It was due to leave anchor to drill for oil in the deep waters of the Atlantic off Shetland's west coast.

Greenpeace activist Victor, hanging off Chevron's Stena Carron rig

A few moments ago, our activists started taking action against a massive oil platform, stopping it from drilling a deep water well off the Shetland Islands.

Using speedboats to reach the huge 228m long drill ship, they climbed up the giant rungs of the anchor chain, and are now preventing the ship from moving to its drill site.

It all started two days ago, when a handful of activists slipped off the Esperanza - which we knew would be monitored - and boarded a ferry in Aberdeen bound for Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.

Then this morning, at a sign that the drill ship was about to move, they started the action.

Victor, one of the climbers, describes what it's like on the Stena Carron's anchor chain

The ship is operated by oil giant Chevron, and was due to sail for a site 200km north of the Shetland Islands and drill a well in 500 metres of water.

More than 10,000 of us have sent an email to Chris Huhne - the Energy Secretary - calling for a moratorium on deepwater drilling in UK waters.  On top of that, last month we sent a letter to the government threatening legal action in an effort to stop the granting of new permits for deep water drilling.

But it's not enough. Deepwater drilling is continuing unabated.

We saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico only a few months ago. The world's biggest oil spill - a direct consequence of reckless deepwater drilling. It's time we go beyond oil and stop gambling with our environment and the climate.

Follow the latest at GoBeyondOil.org and find out how you too can take action.

Under pressure: Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne © CC/David Spender

Climate campaigner Louise Hutchins reports from the Liberal Democrat party conference:

Here in Liverpool amongst the Lib Dem faithful, there is a mood of embattled determination to give their leaders the benefit of the doubt – for now. There's also a keen awareness that delivery on some of the party's touchstone issues is urgently needed to stem the haemorrhaging of support seen in opinion polls.

If you're on London's South Bank over the next few weeks, watch out for a new open air exhibition featuring the work of regular Greenpeace photographer Jiri Rezac. He's been to the tar sands works in Canada and the images he's brought back clearly show the extent of the devastation caused by this insane venture to both the environment and local populations.

The slideshow above is just a taste of Jiri's work featured in the exhibition which you can see near City Hall by Tower Bridge until 14 October. It will then be touring around the UK - details are still to be confirmed but check the Tarnished Earth website for updates. 

Belatedly, here's a video from the Esperanza featuring climbing superstar Sim, one of the four activists who scaled Cairn Energy's rig last week. As well as revealing Sim's personal reasons for wanting to stop the drilling, there are some spectacular shots from the action itself.

Great news - Britain's wind farms generated record levels of power on Monday, providing 5 per cent of all power supplied to the National Grid over the course of the day.

The Grid confirmed that 40.5GWh out of a total 809.5GWh was provided by wind farms over the 24-hour period, with wind output peaking at 1,860 megawatts at 8.30pm.

A National Grid spokesperson said that, including direct output from turbines not conected to the grid, "about 10 per cent of total electricity demand would have been met by wind power. It is a pretty big landmark for the industry."

The Northern Lights above the Esperanza © Will Rose / Greenpeace

We had a fairly quiet weekend on board the Esperanza - especially compared to the "all systems go" mode we were in last week during the action. Yesterday Babu, our wonderful cook, had a well deserved day off and some of us volunteered to prepare brunch and dinner in the galley for the rest of the crew.