November 2011

Last week, senators in Brazil approved a text that condemns the Brazilian forests, a deal between government and agribusiness made in back rooms and secret meetings. They also rejected an amendment that calls for a 10-year moratorium on deforestation in the Amazon.

I don't know if you read our Get Active blogs, written by our brilliant community of Greenpeace volunteers? It turns out that Cairn Energy do. Last week, Cairn's lawyers sent us a terse email warning us that we were in breach of the draconian interdict they've taken out against us.

Earlier this year one of our long-standing and generous supporters, Frederick Mulder, offered to help Greenpeace fundraise for the Rainbow Warrior. As an international art dealer specialising in Picasso, he gifted us a number of limited edition pieces, all part of a series of unique linocut posters created by Picasso for the southern French town of Vallauris between 1951-65.

Well here we are again, several thousand people gathering in a conference centre to talk about climate change and, supposedly, work towards a deal to actually do something about it. There are good guys and bad guys: campaigners say a deal is possible while journalists sound pessimistic. We’ve been here before, right? Yes, but Durban really is important and maybe, just maybe, this time it’s a little bit different.

Right now, 50 activists are blockading the Department for Transport with two immobilised cars parked in front of the entrance. Why? Because our government is trying to scupper EU legislation that will block tar sands oil - the dirtiest, most polluting form of oil there is - from being sold at UK petrol pumps.

Documents obtained by The Cooperative and Friends of the Earth Europe through Freedom of Information requests and shared with Greenpeace reveal numerous high-level meetings between Canadian ministers, oil executives and British government officials focused on the UK’s position on a new EU policy that would significantly restrict tar sands oil coming into Europe.

According to a new paper in Nature, sea ice in the Arctic is now declining at a pace and scale not seen for over a thousand years. It estimates that after decades of decline, the amount of ice locked away in the High North is now 2 million km² smaller than it was at the end of the 20^th Century and that ice-free summers at the Pole are likely sooner rather than later.