climate change

I'll be adding to this map throughout the tour (zoom out to see events during the global tour).

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Some time yesterday morning (was it really yesterday morning?), I left the Greenpeace office, took a short tube ride eastwards, crossed a gang plank and fell through a rabbit hole into the weird and wonderful world that is a Greenpeace ship. And not just any Greenpeace ship, but our flagship Rainbow Warrior II, which is so tied up with Greenpeace's history. 

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With only one sleep to go until the Rainbow Warrior gets here, I was planning to tell you about her adventures over the past year, when she's been on a mission to get the planet to quit coal - trailing the odd campaign victory in her wake But then I noticed Captain Mike Finken has done it for me, on the Making Waves blog. Here's a snippet:

Has somebody put something in the water around Westminister? On Tuesday I found myself waxing lyrical about a new Tory announcement. Today it's Labour's turn. Frankly, I'm a little freaked out.

Ed Miliband - he who thousands of you congratulated when he got his new job as climate change secretary - has announced a new emissions reduction target for the UK. We will, he said, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 figures.

I still suspect I may have fallen down a rabbit hole but apparently it's true. Two weeks after formally telling the world they're opposed to a third runway at Heathrow, the Tories have issued an extraordinary warning to companies. Don't get involved in any contracts to build the third runway, they're saying, because we're "absolutely determined" to stop the project going ahead. (Oh, and they're opposed to a second runway at Stansted too.)

With the Rainbow Warrior on her way to the UK, we thought we'd put together a slideshow to share a few of the highs - and lows - of her remarkable history. Our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior has travelled from South America to the South Pacific, the Antarctic to the Atlantic - an icon for environmentalists around the globe.

The ship coming to the UK is of course the Rainbow Warrior II; the original vessel was sunk in 1985 by French government agents trying to foil protests at their nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. (The ship's name was inspired by a Native American prophecy which foretells a time when human greed would make the world sick, and warriors of the rainbow would come together to save it.)

Cars are responsible for 12 per cent of all CO2 emissions across the EU

Once again our government's green credentials have been put to the test and found wanting. Presented by the EU Parliament with a perfect opportunity to force Europe's motor industries to reign-in their gas guzzling, climate damaging ways, they opted instead to give in to the demands of the car lobby.

There've been two new blows to the UK's prospects of tackling climate change in the last couple of days.

First, City Airport got permission to increase flights to and from the airport by up to 50 per cent - despite the presence of dozens of flashmobbers registering their opposition outside Newham Town Hall (where the decision meeting was taking place), and local planners, teachers and campaigners from a number of organisations inside the hall. And despite the fact that the airport representatives couldn't and didn't even try to answer the accusations that they'd lied and their noise figures were inaccurate.