Yesterday the EC published their new rules on emissions standards for cars. While the regulation is in the right direction it falls short on every key aspect. Here's a quick chart explaining the problem.

The overall difference between these two proposals? Roughly a doubling in the amount of CO2 emissions avoided by 2020.

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How do a bunch of hardcore activists take a break from saving the planet, kick back, and relax? They take a few Santa outfits, hitch themselves into their climbing gear, and perform a ballet on the climbing wall in the Greenpeace Action Warehouse in Hamburg, Germany for the amusement of their colleagues. The Action Warehouse is a big space that's a bit of a cross between Q's Laboratory, a banner factory, mountain climbing base station, a non-violent version of Langley's CIA training campus, and the Tracy Island headquarters of the amphibious Thunderbird crew from International Rescue. Please remember, these are trained professionals: don't try this at home.

Posted by brianfit at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It is cold, its rainy, and its dark!! No, I am not pulling a late one in the office in Amsterdam. I am looking over the city of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. To the naked eye, the city looks almost like all Mediterranean cities, its green, welcoming, simple and smells like the sea. But we are still waiting for our paper-work to clear so we can visit the city.

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Posted by Giona at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's the final hours of the UN Bali climate conference, and it looks like delegates will be up all night. Hope remains that they can overcome the US government's obstructionism.

But no matter what they end up with in Bali, they canna' change the laws of physics. This week, two new scientific revelations brought that home again: 2007 was shockingly warm and the arctic could be virtually ice free by 2012.

From the BBC:

This year has been one of the warmest since 1850, despite the cooling influence of La Nina conditions, according to scientists.

The UK's Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia conclude that globally, this year ranks as the seventh warmest.

From ABC News:

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

Our only chance is to stop dumping so much carbon dioxide into the air - less coal, less oil, more renewable energy and energy efficiency. We need a road map to binding cuts in CO2, and our team on the ground isn't going to sleep until it's done. Read their updates from the conference.

Posted by Andrew at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Magnificent animal gets silly name in internet vote, and every digital punk on the planet thinks they can claim credit because they posted a Vote for Mister Splashy Pants link on their blog.

Well, for the enlightenment of a few of you Spartacus wannabes out there, here's your actual share of the 119,367 votes which Splashy Pants got...

B3ta: If Greenpeace were previously unaware of why Mr Splashy Pants proved to be such a popular choice, they will now understand that the glorious blame lies firmly at the door of B3TA." (1,243 votes)

geenstijl.nl: Greenpeace PWNED! (12,760 votes)

Fark: "Behold the power of Fark" (660 votes)

Sorry, boys. We know you all want to do that chest pounding thing on top of the Empire State Building, but you weren't the top apes.

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Posted by brianfit at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The little guy in the foreground on this picture is Mario, he's a plumber. The green guy with the visor is Master Chief, he's a stone cold killing machine from the future. They're going head to head because we've launched our new 'Clash of the Consoles' website detailing how the different games consoles stack up against each other.

Master Chief works for Microsoft, little Mario is pitching for Nintendo. Sony sent the God of War. See how they get along with each other in our movie over here.

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nintendo has yet to respond directly to us about their recent low ranking score. However several people have forwarded their PR response to customer queries. Here’s our response:

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Posted by tomD at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

From responses to our collaborative Message in a Bottle climate video one user submitted this:

Great idea, well made and the line - "what does that mean?" is perfect. I can see this spawning a series - Boring (but important) conferences as bedtime stories.....

Posted by tomD at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From this morning's mailbag:

Oslo 9 Dec 2007

Little Håkon, the 3 year old son of a Greenpeace campaigner in Norway, Truls Gulowsen, delivered a wild wood anemone to Al Gore in Oslo today. Håkon and his father found the spring flower by the river blossoming in December. It should blossom in April!

Gulowsen sees a double meaning in this unusual phenomenon; It offers further evidence that climate and nature are severely disturbed. It can also be interpreted as a symbol of a new spring in our struggle against climate change.

With this simple flower Greenpeace congratulates Al Gore and IPCC for their Nobel Peace Prize.

Posted by brianfit at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a week of negotiations at the WCPFC with over 360 people from many corners of the planet you would think that we would be able to come to at least SOME agreements on how we're going to save the Pacific yellow fin and big eye tuna stocks right? Perhaps it was just me being naive but I was really expecting SOMETHING to happen. After endless days inside a huge room without windows and lots of serious people in suits, the two most valuable tuna species in the Pacific are no closer to recovery than they were before. The reduction in fishing effort that the scientists were recommending was totally ignored by Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea with Japan leading the pack and earning themselves not one but two "tuna destroyer" Greenpeace awards.

Yet again shortsighted economics continue to rule the day putting the environment, fish stocks, Pacific Island economies and the fishing industry itself at risk. This fisheries commission is now failing miserably just like all the others and as you can tell, I'm pretty frustrated about it! I came here with high hopes and of seeing measures get adopted that would ensure the sustainability of the last tuna frontier in the world. Tuna is very important to Pacific island economies and the last thing they need in addition to dealing with the effects of climate change is to have their fish stocks crash!

I have actually been dreading writing this update because it felt like all I had was bad news but there is a light shining at the end of this tunnel because the Greenpeace oceans team, as usual has a few tricks left up their sleeve :-)

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Posted by Lisa at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Right now, our team is in Bali for the UN climate conference. It's what I've heard described as, "probably the most important meeting about a meeting that will happen in your lifetime". :D

Ok, ok, joking aside, if we're going to beat this global warming thing, we need governments to get off their bottoms and take real action. And without a good outcome in Bali, that's not going to happen. Basically, governments need to ensure there's route map to agreeing deep cuts in global greenhouse emissions. And they need a good push to do so.

While doing some pushing, our political team in Bali is blogging from behind the PR firewall, read their updates on the climate blog. Here are a few of my favorite quotes...

Clair, on the Canadian government's admission that global temperature rise needs to be kept under 2°C:

Adopting a position that warming should stay as far below 2°C as possible is a definite champagne cork popping event, had it not been for the fact that Canada’s domestic climate policies seem to be 6 degrees of separation away from supporting this position.

(Read more)

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Posted by Andrew at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Greenpeace Brazil campaigner Paulo Adário has been named one of the country's 100 most influential people by Globo's magazine Epoca. Paulo's been using that influence for years to help protect the Amazon. You can read stories about his work: in English, in Portuguese.

Posted by Andrew at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mister Splashy Pants' characteristic dorsal fin is clearly visible in this snap of visitor statistics to this weblog.

Get yer Mister Splashy Pants gear here: http://www.cafepress.com/greenpeace

And if you haven't voted for your favourite whale name yet, the contest ends tomorrow: Vote!

Then make sure that whatever name you choose, you take action to make sure that humpback doesn't get harpooned.

Posted by brianfit at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Early Monday morning I arrived at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting not as a human but as "SheSeeMe" the bigeye tuna. I passed out leaflets that laid out clear solutions to the increasing problem of overfishing in the Pacific and made it clear to the Commission that the world was watching. Within a matter of minutes nearly every one of the 360 or so delegates was holding one of these little pieces of wisdom. Even the Governor of Guam took one and patted me on the fin, thanking me. Being a fish out of water actually turned out to be fun and with my task complete I transformed back into human form and returned to the meeting to observe the proceedings along with the rest of the Greenpeace delegation.

The opening kicked off with a warm welcome from the Governor of Guam who noted the importance of fisheries to Guam and and to Pacific identities. He also reminded everyone in the room that "the world was watching". The Chairman of the Commission then gave a speech where he challenged the countries represented here to take the action and responsibility required to protect and maintain the tuna stocks. His compelling words left a lump in my throat as we moved into the official proceedings. I glanced around the room and felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of people here from across the world. There are Pacific nations and also nations that have or want to have fishing fleets here.

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Posted by Lisa at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week we published our latest Guide to Greener electronics with new companies added - Microsoft, Sharp, Philips and Nintendo. Nintendo being new and coming our bottom with 0/10 certainly made the biggest splash with many big news sites, tech blogs and gaming websites picking up the story. This made for some amusing headlines on several gaming sites. However there was also criticism from some technology sites (Arstechnica, BoingBoing, Guardian) and several angry emails from the public, mainly focussing on Nintendo getting 0/10.

Here I'll address some of the common points raised in detail, this from BoingBoing and lots of other blogs and several emails:

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Posted by tomD at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This one slipped by me until I saw it on eco-geek just now. As their press release says, Google is going to, "develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal".

Looks like wind, solar and "advanced geothermal" are likely initial technologies. Google plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this plan, but as eco-geek points out - it's an investment, not charity:

It's important to point out that this, like all of Google's seemingly philanthropic efforts, is an investment scheme, not a giveaway. Google wants to turn its gold into more gold, and investing in these technologies is a fantastic way to do that. That's not to say that they aren't doing a "good" thing...in fact, this makes far more sense to me than purely philanthropic efforts.

Sounds good to me? How about you? Want to bet against Google when it comes to technological investment?

Posted by Andrew at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Greenpeace Australia has launched a gift giving website for the holiday season where you can buy stuff more interesting than t-shirts and other normal Greenpeace gifts. (Although we all still like t-shirts.)

Pictured at left is the Protection for one Paradise Forest tree. However, my favorite remains the Super Kryptonite bike lock ("More useful than you might think"). And I tell you, that deckhand is a bargain mate!

Posted by Andrew at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just found this excellent little news piece by Al Jazeera on Pacific tuna specifically shot in Guam this summer. Check it out!

Posted by Lisa at 5:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not too long ago I remember reading that fish stocks in the Pacific were relatively healthy and that it was the only region in the world where tuna was not being overfished. But a lot has changed in just a few years and scientists are now saying that Pacific tuna stocks are severely threatened from overfishing and that the situation is critical. The Pacific countries are now faced with a very difficult challenge and the fate of many economies is at stake.

I am in Guam right now at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting where more than 20 nations will be negotiating agreements on the region's fisheries, which mainly consist of 4 tuna species (yellow fin, big-eye, skip jack and albacore). The greatest concern is over the decline in yellow fin and big eye stocks which are the tunas that are sold to the sushi and sashimi markets.

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Posted by Lisa at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)