Also by christian

With Kingsnorth on hold, what's the future for coal in the UK?

National policy statements sound cool. They sound like they might actually sort stuff out. Instead of scrabbling around doing little bits of policy here and there, like some sort of policy tapas, a national policy statement means you're going for the policy hog roast - go on, have a big national slab of policy sir, there you go.

But no matter what you might have heard in the news, today's key announcement was about coal. If we're talking about climate change, we're talking about coal. Coal is responsible for over half the human-made carbon emissions in the atmosphere. If we, as a planet, carry on building new coal powered plants, we're all in a lot of trouble. That's why we spend so much time campaigning against new dirty coal plants - or ‘unabated' coal plants as they're known.

The climate defender camp on Sumatra's Kampar peninsula swung into action last week.

First up, activists got on with damming drainage canals which cut through the fragile peatland. As I said in the last post, drainage canals are the first part of the process for clearing the peatland to create, for example, palm oil plantations.

There's lots happening at our Climate Defenders Camp on the Kampar peninsula at the heart of the Indonesian rainforest.

Today, activists at the camp have been starting the process of damming drainage canals.

After loggers have taken out the most valuable trees from the rainforest, they build canals to drain the peatland that it grows on. The canals serve a dual purpose - they allow easy transportation of wood out of the area, and they also dry the ground out enough to be cleared to allow monoculture tree plantations to be established.

Emma (right) sits on the roof of Parliament during out 'Change the Politics, save the Climate' action.

There's a great piece in the Times about Emma, our senior transport campaigner, activist mum and all-round nice person.She talks about balancing different parts of her life - like bringing up twins, and jumping into the sea in front of coal freighters. It's well worth a read...