Today we're down at Kingsnorth for the Mili-band - building a human chain around Kingsnorth to say no to dirty coal. It's a fun summer fete for the climate, and we're updating live from the scene...
It was a pretty horrible day. I have never witnessed violence like that before. Emma, as strong a woman though she is, looked so small pinned under the arms of Cappitta. The rest of the day was spent waiting to give witness statements in the local police station and taking Emma to a medical centre.
News of our attempted inspection and the aggression we encountered spread far and in the days following we received many emails, blog comments and phone calls of support. Its reassuring to remember just how many people are behind what we have been trying to do. Thankfully Emma is fine now, and her bruises are fading.
On leaving Malta we had to wait for some stormy weather to pass before starting our search for illegal driftnetters in and around the Sicilian Channel. The United Nations banned "wall of death" driftnets in 1992. Stretching up to 50 miles, these floating nets would indiscriminately snare enormous amounts of marine life.
The EU banned their use in EU waters but unfortunately several countries are not respecting the ban. Italy is probably the worst offender, its driftnet fleet still operates and the government has chosen to look the other way. Driftnetters work at night during the new moon, to make it more difficult for the fish to see the nets, so this week there have been all-night rotas of people scanning the horizon from the bridge and lots of sleepy people at breakfast.
The good news is that we didn't find any! Apparently it's the first time that this has happened. Weather may have been a factor as rough seas make it difficult for them to work, and word gets around that Greenpeace are out searching, possibly keeping some pirate fishers away. But it could also be an indication that the increased controls we have fighting for are starting to take effect, for example we saw French navy ships patrolling the tuna grounds last week.
Unfortunately controlling illegal fishing won't be enough to protect the Med. Even the legal quotas being set for catches are far higher than can be sustainable. There is a lot more to be done in the push for marine reserves to remedy this.
So it has been a quiet week here, thankfully much calmer than the last one. If there are any illegal driftnetters still in the area, and we have many reports that there are, they will be operating at the next new moon. Unfortunately for them, so will we.
We've given HP, Lenovo and Dell - the world's biggest PC makers - a penalty point in our updated Guide to Greener Electronics,
for backtracking on their commitments to eliminate PVC plastic and
brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their products by the end of
2009.
Staff at the Dutch headquarters of 'Harmful Products' (as we've now rebranded HP') were greeted on arrival this morning by Greenpeace activists
confronting them with pictures of the pollution HP's toxic products
cause in Asia and Africa. The PC giant has already received a public
reminder of the need to reprioritise toxic chemical phase out, when
activists recently returned 'toxic laptops' to the company's Chinese
headquarters.
The Greener Electronics Guide is updated quarterly to reflect the progress (or lack of) which IT companies are making towards achieving truly green products.
It is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the
problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful
chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of
unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets
created by society's gizmo-loving ways.
There are a lot of tired but very happy (not
to mention sun-kissed) people around the office today. Those who manned the
Greenpeace field at Glastonbury
are reappearing and they have such tales to tell. (I would have asked one of them to write this update, but they're all worn out.)
The big theme this year was our ongoing Airplot
campaign and the field resembled Sipson village, complete with a replica of the
King William IV pub along with staff member Tracy (she was real, though), there was a
drive to get even more people involved. The signatures are still being counted
but it looks like many thousands more have become beneficial owners of the plot
of land we've bought down near Heathrow airport, including a certain Michael
Eavis.
Elsewhere on the field, hundreds of people
practised their climbing skills on the out-of-control tower, the clean energy
showers were as popular as ever and of course there was another Big No to
airport expansion (just see the video I put up yesterday).
So it's all over for another year and our crew
will be getting a well-earned rest. Until next year, of course.
I decided to give Glastonbury a miss this year, but it looks like everyone currently stuck in a seven-hour tailback in the car park had a rollickin' good time. Not just because of the sunshine or Blur's barnstorming set last night (slightly jealous I missed that), but the Greenpeace field was once again a marvel to behold.
With a replica of Sipson village - which will be obliterated by a third runway at Heathrow - and an out-of-control tower, it brought out Airplot campaign into the heart of Somerset, complete with a Big No' made from visitors to the field.
Thanks to the team from green.tv who were also at the festival with their cameras, the visual record below has been made for posterity, which features lots of very happy, very sunny people giving new runways the big thumbs down.
Dave is onboard the Arctic Sunrise, heading north up the coast of Greenland.
Blue and white icebergs are looming through the sea mist as I write this, from
the campaign office of the Arctic Sunrise, in Baffin Bay.
Our ship - an old sealing vessel - is just south of the wonderfully named Disko
Island, or Qeqertarsuaq, off the west coast of Greenland.
A seal just popped its head up, to check out who is passing by. And we just
crossed the Arctic Circle.
We're heading north along the west coast of Greenland
in a race against time. Our destination is the disintegrating Petermann
Glacier, one of Greenland's largest and most
northerly glaciers. An 87 square kilometer chunk of ice - larger than New York's Manhattan
Island - is due to crack
off from the glacier in the coming weeks. We intend to be there when it happens.Follow the expedition on twitter: @gparctic
To reach Petermann we need to navigate the Nares Strait.
At the top of the strait is an ice bridge which holds back the Arctic Sea
ice, stopping it from blocking the narrow passage. So we're now in a race
against the climate - with the warmer sea and air in the Arctic, the ice bridge
could break earlier in the year than ever, letting a deluge of sea ice into the narrow channel which would make progress further
north impossible. If we successfully get through, the Arctic Sunrise will be
one of the first ships to navigate the strait so early in the year.
On board we're got a diverse, international crew, hailing from countries
that include China, India, Australia,
New Zealand, the Ukraine, the US,
Canada, Cyprus, UK,
Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands. Ice navigators,
captains, engineers, cooks, filmmakers, ice climbers and climatologists.
Ours is a three-month Arctic expedition to bear witness to the accelerating
impacts of climate change and conduct scientific research that will help us
better understand its ongoing effects the Greenland ice sheet, and rising sea
levels. We've already got glacier and climate expert Jason Box on board - the
first of several scientists we'll be working with during this trip, which will
reach way beyond the normal realms of scientific research.
After Petermann, we plan to head to Greenland's
east coast to research the effects of warm sub-tropical waters of the island's
glaciers. Finally, as the Arctic ice reaches its annual low point, the expedition
will push into the melting pack ice north of the island of Svalbard.
It's been a long time since there were polar
bears at London Zoo, but the famous attraction still houses many other species
which are threatened by the effects of climate change. So I can't help but
wonder whether this fact registered with Gordon Brown (himself an endangered
species) as he stood up at the zoo to present his blueprint for a global climate
action plan.
The polar bears' old habitat has apparently been converted
into a simulacrum of the Australian outback and it was beside this arid
landscape that Brown chose to lay some groundwork for the international climate
talks in Copenhagen
this December. According to my colleague Doug who went along, jokes about it
not being the outback but a vision of the Pennines
in 50 years time buzzed around the crowd.
Brown is proposing a global climate fund which
will provide money from developed countries to developing ones to help them
mitigate and adapt to climate change. This is by no means a new idea, but now
there's a number on it - a 'working figure' of £60bn per year by 2020, derived
from a combination of private funds, public purses and the carbon markets. Let's
hope it gets worked up rather than down.
A significant sum, but small change compared
to the billions (or is it trillions now? I've lost track) which have been
thrown at the banks and corporations of late, and almost certainly not as much
as countries further down the economic ladder would be hoping for. There was
also no mention of exactly how much the UK would contribute, only that it
would be a "fair share".
Still, it's something and without sums of at
least this magnitude, the chances of a global consensus at Copenhagen are fairly slim. Brown also
mentioned his desire to bring aviation and shipping emissions into the deal,
while climate secretary Ed Miliband is creating a war
room to encourage ministers to push the Copenhagen agenda on every overseas visit.
Our glorious leader has so often waxed lyrical
about the UK
being a driving force on the international stage when it comes to climate
change (and yet actually done so very little) that it's easy to be fiercely
cynical. Tell us another one, Gordon, we've heard this all before. Yet maybe
this means there's change in the air - it might be more fun to write
witheringly scathing blog posts slagging off another ham-fisted initiative, but
I'd rather Brown rolled up his sleeves and did his bit to pull the global
community towards some kind of meaningful decision.
Just a quick reminder of the sorts of things you'll be missing out on if you don't take that step through the grass arch to visit the ever-stimulating Greenpeace field at this year's Glastonbury festival.
So head on down to the Greenpeace field, where you can (in no particular order):
sign up to become an Airplotter and help us create a spectacular aviation intervention to stop Heathrow expansion.
scale the climbing walls of our action training centre
conquer the famous Greenpeace skateboard ramp
take a solar power shower
feast organically at Café Tango
get some expert advice about how to make your world a bit greener
In this video interview, Bill discusses how the US politics of climate have changed with the election of Obama, how the UK government needs to respond, and whether he's optimistic about the future.
By the end of today, we will have seen two significant developments in the political landscape of climate change. First, the UK has indicated for the first time that it believes serious money will be needed from developing countries at Copenhagen.
A good moment to get an insight into the interaction between science and politics over the pond. For the first of the Greenpeace meets series, occasional interviews in which we'll hook up with (hopefully) interesting authors, activists, scientists and policy wonks to download their wisdom, I went and had a coffee with veteran US environmental guru Bill McKibben.
Bill has spent the last twenty years writing, agitating and organising to make governments take strong action on climate change. His take is very much that until there is a mass movement that both gives politicians the space to act, and forces them to do so, change will be halting.
With that in mind, he's currently crossing the globe organising for 350.org - the campaign group he founded, which calls for climate targets to be focused on lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a level of no more than 350 parts per million. (Hence the name. We're currently at 388.)
The podcast goes in-depth on the science behind 350.org, Bill's take on what Copenhagen will deliver for the global climate movement, and 350.org's plans for a global day of action on October 24th.
Listen to the podcast interview - just click the play button below.
Obviously, 350.org and Greenpeace overlap a lot in our views of the problems and the solutions, but idea of Greenpeace meets is to get other people's points of view, not just repeat what we think!
With December's crucial Copenhagen climate change summit fast approaching, we talk to 350.org founder Bill McKibben about the politics of climate change in the US, the challenges of building a successful mass movement, and how we set about not only restricting the amount of new CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere, but reducing the levels that are already there.
350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit
for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere - it's measured in "Parts Per Million".
So below 350 ppm is where we need to be to avoid runaway climate change. Currently the figure is around 390 and rising.
350.org will coordinate an international day of action on October 24 at hundreds of iconic places around the world - from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef - with the aim of sparking a global movement to unite the public, media, and our political leaders behind the 350 goal.
'Boom and bust' of deforestation
The economic arguments for 'developing' forest areas into agriculture and other industries are looking even more shaky.
A Time Comes - trailer
Director Nick Broomfield has made a 20 minute film celebrating the spirit of direct action. This Bright Green Pictures film tells the story of the Kingsnorth Six, a group of Greenpeace volunteers who scaled the 220m chimney at a coal fired power station in Kent in 2007 to protest against government plans to build new coal plants across Britain. The film premiers on http://www.guardian.com on May 31st and will premier on YouTube June1st.
