March 2010

Before sun-up yesterday morning a Greenpeace team scaled the mesh and barbed wire fence surrounding the US Air Force base at Kleine Brogel in Belgium.

Their mission? To block the runway and prevent nuclear capable F-16 bombers taking off for their morning training session.

I've tried several times to write a 'wrap-up' blog for this year's CITES meeting. But usually I end up just banging my head against the keyboard in despair.

This CITES meeting was a turning point – the governments in the room decided that they weren't there to restrict trade to protect species, but rather there to protect trade as best they could. Nowhere was that more evident than the marine proposals.

Sharks were shafted, corals crushed, and bluefin obliterated, as the assembled governments played politics, and wrung their hands earnestly over the adverse economic effects of actually protecting any of these endangered species. Conveniently ignoring the fact that it's their inability to restrain trade which endangered them in the first place...

Campaigners leave the High Court victorious this morning after the result of a judicial review into the planned third runway at Heathrow declared that the plans were 'untenable'.

UPDATED 20 April 2010: Fantastic news! Both the climate and common sense have scored a major victory at the High Court today, where the Government's plans for a 3rd runway at Heathrow have been dealt a huge blow.

The chancellor promises £1bn for clean energy projects, but much more will be needed

Although heavily trailed by the chancellor’s supporters as an environmental budget, in the end it turned out to be a lot less than a comprehensive green win.

Despite Mr Darling’s assurances that he gets the need for tougher carbon reduction targets, he backed away from raising fuel duty and found more money for motorways under pressure from road lobbyists.

Scott Douglas has created this engrossing presentation to highlight the key stages in our Nestlé campaign, and the impact it's had on Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere. Thanks to the whizzy graphics it's not as deathly dull as it sounds, and very interesting are the figures on the reach of the campaign so far, or how many people have seen messages about it.

Press the play button to start and move to the next slide, and it might look more impressive on the Prezi site.

A week on from launching our Nestlé Palm Oil campaign, it's time to take it to the next level. Nestlé's response has been weak - they're trying to greenwash their way out of trouble. We need to put them on the spot.

Unfortunately, they've also been busy trying to prevent as much criticism as possible reaching their HQ. They've deleted Facebook pages, deleted people's comments, got our video pulled off Youtube for a couple of days, and finally blocked your emails to their CEO Paul Bulcke, telling him to sort it out.

So it's time to be a little more direct. We'd like you to call up the company's customer service line, and tell them that using unsustainable palm oil from areas of destroyed rainforest is simply unacceptable, that they need to cut all ties to the company Sinar Mas - including through intermediaries like Cargill - and that they need to do it now.

Want to give them a call? We've written up some talking points here to help you.

Here's our campaigner Ian calling Nestle earlier today to show just how easy it is:

Sandra Butcher, senior program coordinator, international secretariat, Pugwash. This article first appeared in Comment is Free on Monday 22 March.

Gordon Brown told the Foreign Press Association in London on Friday that he would highlight the upcoming "moments of opportunity and challenge". He said we "must now urgently do more to build upon that brief moment of collective international will", and he reminded us that "global problems need global solutions".

Despite this rhetoric, and earlier UK statements promoting the ultimate goal of a nuclear weapons-free world, in reality Brown's comments on nuclear weapons were tepid, sadly leaving him in some ways behind the Tory party lines as discussed by shadow foreign minister David Lidington last week at the Royal Society. There was certainly no sign that Brown intends to encourage his government to show transformative leadership in this area.

When we plan campaigns, we often have a reasonable idea of how much interest they'll get. Some are designed to speak to a small, specific audience who are in the right place to get things done, while others are broader in appeal. Our Nestle campaign certainly fell into the second category but never once did I think we'd see the level of response witnessed over the last few days. As one of our campaigners said last week, we're beyond wildest dreams territory.