Just in via our Climate Rescue weblog, here's a beautiful little filmic essay on the realities of climate change from Greenpeace China campaigner Xin Yu (otherwise known as "Fish"), made aboard the Arctic Sunrise during the current expedition to monitor a 100 km² ice island breaking off Greenland's Petermann glacier.

Greenpeace volunteers in Hong Kong have been protesting about the lack of effort the territory's government has put into tackling climate change. On Monday, a team dropped a huge, seven-storey banner down the front of a government office building marking out chief executive Donald Tsang as a 'climate fugitive'. Read more »

In a new photo essay, rice farming in southern China is put under the spotlight to show how traditional methods are still working well without any tinkering from the GM industry.

Our Communications Director Tamara is next up in the blog relay - a whistle-stop tour of Greenpeace staff here in the UK. Click here to catch up on the other entries.

Having spent the last three years living in China, I and all of my Chinese colleagues became somewhat accustomed to what we referred to as "China bashing" by some of the international media. You know the sort of thing: the over-the-top, almost hysterical cry of "China's eating up all the world's resources!" Since China is now one of the world's largest manufacturing centres, the claim was applied to almost anything - timber, coal, or even the cobalt used to make our cell phone batteries. To a certain degree, therefore, there is a kernel - but not much more - of truth to the claim.

Sze Pang and family Sze Pang Cheung is communications director for Greenpeace in China and this article first appeared on Dimsum.

It is hard not to notice the growing environmental crisis in China even if you are living outside of the country. But the fact that many organisations are fighting this crisis in China may be out of your radar.

When I first started working for Greenpeace in early 2002, it was just about to open its first formal office in Beijing. I joined, because I was a Greenpeace volunteer and I loved it. I was wishing to broaden my perspective beyond Hong Kong. I had moved to the city with my family from Fujian province when I was five.

I have witnessed the Beijing office grow from a handful of staff to an office of almost 50 staff. But China's environmental problems have grown even faster.

I made a small snowman in my garden today. I have to call it a small snowman since it really is small. And the snow is not good enough for making snowballs - which are the basic building block of any snowman's body. But it was still really fun. I couldn't remember how long it was since I had made a snowman or had so much fun. I am thankful for what was the first and probably the last snow this winter, although I have read that the government has plans to make it snow again because we are in the middle of a pretty serious drought in Beijing.

Chinese farmers are discovering that resurrecting the old tradition of keeping ducks in their rice fields allows them to cut down on the amount of pesticides and artificial fertilisers they need to use to grow their crops.

Company scores plummeted in the previous edition of Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, when new criteria on climate change were introduced. However, leading brands like Nokia and Samsung are now making significant progress in greening their electronics products, with improved environmental policies responding not only to these new energy criteria, but also to the more stringent chemical and e-waste criteria.

With expanded and tougher criteria on toxic chemicals, electronic waste and new criteria on climate change only Sony and Sony Ericsson score more than 5/10 in our latest Guide to Greener Electronics. Nintendo and Microsoft remain rooted to the bottom of the Guide.

The Greener Electronics Guide is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets created by society's gizmo-loving ways.

We made it, version two. Ok so it's not exactly fortnightly (it's not at all fortnightly), so we're going for the classic monthly format. In this episode I head down to Google's headquarters in London to hear Sir David Attenborough speaking about the access to information we have about the natural world through programs like Google Earth and the responsibility that comes with that knowledge. Bex talks to Fish (if you speak Mandarin that's peng yo gan tongshi) from Our office in Bejing about their chopsticks campaign, and Jamie speaks with our chief scientist about biofuels and the threat they pose to the climate. The podcast is presented by our very own James Turner (who lies, I have never been nor will be a fan of Jason Donovan).

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Want to find out more about the issues in this podcast?

Greenpeace, Google Earth and global awareness »
Reclaiming paradise chopstick sales »
Greenpeace China »
Problems at the pump as new biofuel law draws closer »
Biofuels: green dream or climate change nightmare? » Read more »