Also by jamie

Defending our Pacific at the UN biodiversity summit

Posted by jamie - 21 October 2010 at 5:35pm - Comments

Seni Nabou is a political advisor at our Australia-Pacific office, based in Fiji. She is currently part of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan.

Submarines for a healthy Gulf

Posted by jamie - 19 October 2010 at 1:39pm - Comments

Several weeks after BP announced that the leaking well was firmly capped, the Arctic Sunrise is still in the Gulf assessing the damage caused to marine life and habitats. Oceans campaigner John Hocevar is part of the investigation team and his latest blog is below. More blogs, photos and videos from the Arctic Sunrise's expedition can be found on our US website.

A couple days ago, we advanced the cause of science and conservation by throwing someone else's hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment over the side of the ship.  It sank to the bottom.

Fortunately, this was all part of the plan. The scientists we are working with, Steve Ross and Mike Rhode from University of North Carolina Wilmington and Sandra Brooke from the Marine Conservation Biology Institute and the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, plan to come back next year to retrieve the equipment, called a benthic lander, and use it to learn how deep sea corals are surviving in a rapidly changing and heavily impacted environment.

Chevron brings out the legal guns to bring down the pod

Posted by jamie - 24 September 2010 at 6:22pm - Comments

As Leila explains, Chevron has obtained a court order to end our action on its drilling ship the Stena Carron and bring the pod down. Apologies for the audio, but the wind was picking up some.

Stick your message on our pod

Posted by jamie - 22 September 2010 at 1:31pm - Comments

Not all of us can scamper up an oil rig's anchor chain - but we can all come up with ideas, and we need yours asap.

As our occupation of Chevron's massive drill ship goes on, we want a banner slogan from you to explain what our politicians need to do about deep water drilling.

Pod people latch on in phase two of drilling ship action

Posted by jamie - 22 September 2010 at 10:14am - Comments
Attaching our pod to the Stena Carron

We've stepped up our action in the waters off Shetland where - in addition to climbers Victor and Anais on the anchor chain of the Stena Carron – a custom-built survival pod has been brought into play. Two metres in diameter and weighing half a tonne, it's also been attached to the anchor chain of the Chevron-operated drilling ship which was due to leave for the Lagavulin oil field - but now isn't going anywhere.

Chevron: another company that needs to go beyond oil

Posted by jamie - 22 September 2010 at 9:45am - Comments

As you probably know by now, the ship our climbers are currently sitting on is the Stena Carron, a 228m drill ship operated by US oil giant Chevron. Texaco, its petrol station subsidiary, is perhaps the name you may be more familiar with, but here are a few facts about the company that you might not know.

Chevron's boss, John S Watson, is a director and member of the executive committee of the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API is a major lobby group funding research which seeks to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

What's it like hanging from an anchor chain?

Posted by jamie - 21 September 2010 at 3:53pm - Comments

Listen!

I just spoke to Victor, one of the climbers currently hanging on the anchor chain of the Stena Carron drilling ship. Operated by Chevron, it was due to head out to a deep water site off the Shetlands, but not any more.

Despite the wind and having to manoeuvre their portaledge tent into position, Victor sounds extremely chirpy and pleased to be there!

Breaking: Our campaigners scale a giant oil rig off the Shetland Islands

Posted by jamie - 21 September 2010 at 11:31am - Comments

Greenpeace activist Victor, hanging off Chevron's Stena Carron rig

A few moments ago, our activists started taking action against a massive oil platform, stopping it from drilling a deep water well off the Shetland Islands.

Using speedboats to reach the huge 228m long drill ship, they climbed up the giant rungs of the anchor chain, and are now preventing the ship from moving to its drill site.

It all started two days ago, when a handful of activists slipped off the Esperanza - which we knew would be monitored - and boarded a ferry in Aberdeen bound for Lerwick in the Shetland Islands.

Then this morning, at a sign that the drill ship was about to move, they started the action.

Listen!

Victor, one of the climbers, describes what it's like on the Stena Carron's anchor chain

The ship is operated by oil giant Chevron, and was due to sail for a site 200km north of the Shetland Islands and drill a well in 500 metres of water.

More than 10,000 of us have sent an email to Chris Huhne - the Energy Secretary - calling for a moratorium on deepwater drilling in UK waters.  On top of that, last month we sent a letter to the government threatening legal action in an effort to stop the granting of new permits for deep water drilling.

But it's not enough. Deepwater drilling is continuing unabated.

We saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico only a few months ago. The world's biggest oil spill - a direct consequence of reckless deepwater drilling. It's time we go beyond oil and stop gambling with our environment and the climate.

Follow the latest at GoBeyondOil.org and find out how you too can take action.

Got oil in your pension?

Posted by jamie - 16 September 2010 at 5:23pm - Comments

Watch this animation to find out how your pension money could be bankrolling destructive oil companies like BP - and what you can do about it.

Many of the world's most popular pension funds are deep in dirty oil. If you've got oil in yours, you're not alone, but it also means that collectively, we've got the power to influence our pension funds to shift the big oil companies to clean energy.

Tarnished Earth: the devastating power of tar sands

Posted by jamie - 15 September 2010 at 4:42pm - Comments

If you're on London's South Bank over the next few weeks, watch out for a new open air exhibition featuring the work of regular Greenpeace photographer Jiri Rezac. He's been to the tar sands works in Canada and the images he's brought back clearly show the extent of the devastation caused by this insane venture to both the environment and local populations.

The slideshow above is just a taste of Jiri's work featured in the exhibition which you can see near City Hall by Tower Bridge until 14 October. It will then be touring around the UK - details are still to be confirmed but check the Tarnished Earth website for updates. 

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