July 2009

As organisations go you can imagine that Greenpeace would be keen to practice what they preach and ensure that their own operations are as environmentally friendly as possible. So to help along the 'greening' of the UK office I'm the 'Energy Intern' for Greenpeace UK.

It's big energy money week! Get your annual financial thrills as the big international oil companies - Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and the rest - publish their quarterly financial reports results this week, all at once!

And if you like a gory financial thriller, they promise to be quite a good read, because profits are tanking. Take Shell, for example. When your quarterly profits fall by 70% in one year, you know something's gone a bit wrong. ExxonMobil's are down by 66%. BP's profits have more than halved. The global economic downturn is kicking in.

This is my last day working in the UK office, and the last chance to introduce myself. I'm Reto from the Swiss Greenpeace office, where I work as a web editor. Here, I've had the pleasure to work with the UK web team during July.

This month has been an impressive experience: living and working in a really big city like London for the first time is quite different from living in Switzerland. In terms of population, Switzerland is as big as London. Luckily, the London office is located in a nice neighbourhood with good pubs and restaurants nearby, so I've really enjoyed it.

When Hewlett Packhard staff arriving for work at the company's California HQ checked their phone messages yesterday morning, they found a recorded message from Star Trek's Captain James T Kirk waiting for them. Actor William Shatner urged them to question their boss, Mark Hurd, about the reasons why HP recently reneged on its promise to phase out dangerous toxic substances from its computers by 2009.

If you're missing Flight Of The Conchords after the recent series finished, this video might help ease the pain. Our colleagues in New Zealand have recruited Rhys Darby - otherwise know as Murray the hapless manager - to their Sign On campaign, creating pressure for deep emissions cuts from the NZ government, and Rhys has written a little poem to mark the occasion.

Nick from the office in Auckland says they're keen to hear from New Zealanders based overseas as well, so if that's you head on over to the website and, erm, sign on.

We know tar sands are destructive, bad for the climate, and expensive to exploit. But could they also be a colossal financial liability for BP and Shell?

If, in the runup to Copenhagen, you have a sneaking suspicion that world leaders might still be more attached to the realpolitik of energy than the green-tinged adoption of strong climate policy, a new report from Greenpeace, Platform and Oil Change International may provide a glimmer of hope.

The suspicion is that whatever grand statements are made by the Obamas, the Lulas or the Browns of the world as they thrash out their meta-climate policy at Copenhagen, for the moment they're going to remain much more motivated by ‘energy security' than greenhouse gas stabilization.

Whaling activist Junuchi Sato of the Tokyo Two descibes his experiences at the hands of the Japanese criminal justice system...

While Japan's criminal justice system may look OK from a distance, once you get close enough to smell and taste it for yourself, it becomes repulsively clear just how curdled and rotten it is.

Two great video diaries from Aussie explorer Eric Philips, aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise on their mission to document the impact of climate change on the Arctic: