A year in the life of the Rainbow Warrior - on a mission to stop coal

Posted by bex — 17 October 2008 at 3:32pm - Comments

Rainbow Warrior

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With only one sleep to go until the Rainbow Warrior gets here, I was planning to tell you about her adventures over the past year, when she's been on a mission to get the planet to quit coal - trailing the odd campaign victory in her wake But then I noticed Captain Mike Finken has done it for me, on the Making Waves blog. Here's a snippet:

The Rainbow warrior started this year in New Zealand, campaigning for the planet to Quit Coal. She took that single message to Philippines and then on to Thailand, blockading coal-fired power stations, branding the sides of ships carrying coal, rallying people to take the path of warriors against coal. The Esperanza picked up the same call in Australia as did the Arctic Sunrise in Spain and Italy. The history of the environmental activism has been a dress rehearsal for Climate Change. Coal is the greatest threat to the climate and must be stopped.

From South East Asia Rainbow Warrior sailed to the Mediterranean Sea with the same message ‘QUIT COAL’. She protested in Israel, Turkey and Greece. I took her command in Greece, and sailed her out of the Mediterranean in a terrible storm...

Finally [after the UK and other Europen countries], Rainbow Warrior will reach Poland where the next climate conference takes place in December. She will bring the worlds attention to pressure European leaders to act power smart and to have a good continuation of the Kyoto protocol - that will be agreed on at the following climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009. All the while they talk, coal will continue to be mined in Poland and exported to Denmark.

(Captain Mike's personal blog by the way, is well worth a read - and I'm not just saying that because he's going to be the boss of me when I get on the ship.)

Anyway, that's it from me for now - more on Monday, when I join the ship as she begins her tour to Give Coal the Boot. I'll be updating the blog, posting to Twitter and Flickr, and updating this rather nifty map as we go:


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