Bailing out the planet in Brussels © Eric de Mildt/Greenpeace

Hundreds of Greenpeace volunteers from 16 countries arrived in Brussels today and set up a barricade around the conference centre where EU finance ministers are meeting to discuss funding options to tackle climate change. Linking arms to block the exits, the volunteers were determined not to let the politicians out until they agreed a proposal to bail out the planet.

(Twitter was a-buzz with regular updates from the scene - look back over the #climateaction tag.)

The hoses are turned on a climber, attached to the anchor chain of the Gran Couva. © Greenpeace/Novis

The Esperanza in Indonesia

The small (wet) figure above is a crew member of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. Darkness has fallen on the port of Dumai (Indonesia) since this photograph was taken several hours ago, but our climber is still there, in the dark, occupying the anchor chain and preventing the tanker from setting off to the Netherlands with its 27,000 tonne cargo of palm oil. As Jamie wrote on the Forests for Climate blog, it takes only one person to stop a giant palm oil tanker.

Protests by lorry drivers in London and Wales today show the strength of feeling surrounding fuel prices and, as oil hit US$135 a barrel last week, they're unlikely to fall anytime soon. Hauliers want the government to abandon proposed 2p tax increase and so ease the pain, but that would only be a short-term fix for a long-term problem - what's really needed is affirmative action on setting minimum fuel efficiency standards for road transport.

Which is why, if you happened to be in Brussels yesterday morning, you would have seen a bizarre site - six cavemen and women travelling the streets in Flintstones-esque car. (Don't believe me? Watch the video.) They were exposing the stone age thinking (geddit?) of the car industry who, lead by German car manufacturers, have been stifling attempts to improve car efficiency and reduce CO2 exhaust emissions for 17 years. First stop was the headquarters of the car manufacturer's lobby group, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), to deliver copies of a new report about the impact their industry is having on climate change.

Over at our international office in Amsterdam, the web team have just published the June edition of their monthly round-up of images from the Greenpeace world. Being signed up to far too many internal email groups, I get to hear about what other offices are up to, but there's nothing quite like a striking image to make events in Bali or Belgium come alive.