An hour or so ago, 11 inflatable boats carrying 24 Greenpeace volunteers, sped towards the G8 summit. Chased by police, two boats entered the exclusion zone around the Heilingendamm summit, where world leaders are due to discuss climate change later today. The police stopped some of the inflatables, knocking two of them over (three Greenpeace folk were injured and are on their way to hospital now).
The boats were delivering a petition to the G8 - the world's worst polluters and the ones who can do most to avert catastrophic climate change. Our petition urged the G8 leaders to take decisive action on climate change; we're asking the seven members that have ratified Kyoto to ignore Bush's latest round of non-committal posturing and commit themselves to action. They must agree to binding commitments that will lead to cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions of 50 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. There's a full list of our G8 checklist here (pdf).
Update: From our Making Waves blog: "A Swiss TV station has footage from a helicopter. About half way through the footage here, you can clearly see a larger police boat running over a Greenpeace inflatable."
Update (3.30pm): The boats and 19 people are still in police custody.
