Chippenham & Beyond

President Bush has announced that he will create three national monuments in the Pacific - protecting the largest amount of ocean in the world to date. This is a truly rare opportunity for us to applaud his administration!

It's time once again to look back at the year that's just passed.

Quit coal – save the climate. It's a simple message, but it's also an urgent one. Coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels is the single greatest contributor to the climate crisis. In 2008, we've been taking the "quit coal" message across the world, the campaign has been spearheaded by our flagship the Rainbow Warrior.

The outcome of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission this week is too weak to stop overfishing of Pacific bigeye and yellowfin tuna. Pacific islanders are still at great risk from the collapse of this fishery. But the decision to close two of the high seas pockets, between Pacific Island countries, to purse seine fishing from 2010 has left them with a shred of hope.

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance of the Amazon rainforest, but logging companies intent on plundering it for timber have been using hackers to break into the Brazilian government's sophisticated tracking system and fiddle the records.

As EU politicians reach a good agreement on renewable energy targets, Greenpeace declares the deal to be a ray of light amid the gloomy stone-age positions of EU member states on other elements of the package.

Nuclear renaissance meets reality at the UN climate talks The nuclear industry has had fifty years of massive subsidies and state help – but has delivered only unsafe, expensive power, contamination and waste that will last for thousands of generations.

Representatives of millions of Greenpeace supporters from around the world arrived at the doorstep of the Japanese Prime Minister in Tokyo today to demand an end to the political persecution of two Greenpeace anti-whaling activists, and an end to Japan's whaling in the Southern Ocean. Embassy actions are scheduled around the world today and tomorrow. And a full-page ad in the English edition of one of Japan's leading newspapers declared, in inverted text, "In a world turned upside down, you can get arrested for exposing a crime."

People across the world took to the streets for a Global Day of Action on Saturday, to tell the governments meeting in Poznan, Poland for crucial climate negotiations, that the world is watching them.

Our activists together with Korean environmental group KFEM created a huge human "SOS Tuna" banner on the shores of a beach in Busan, Korea, as a key regional meeting in Korea began this week. This extremely critical meeting will decide the fate of valuable tuna stocks in the region, which are now seriously threatened due to overfishing.

As politicians gather to discuss the future of our climate Greenpeace took dramatic action on land and at sea to kick start an energy revolution. In Poland activists carrying a banner reading “Quit Coal, Save the Climate” have scaled the 150 metre-high chimney of the Pątnów power plant.

It has been a year since governments in Bali pledged to nail down an agreement to save the climate by December 2009. That means they have one year left to agree on how to stop the climate crisis. This year’s UN meeting on Climate Change has just started in Poznan, Poland and we think it is about time for government leaders to stop the talking, get serious and start real negotiations.

Our activists have delivered a huge pile of coal to the doorstep of a hotel in Warsaw where coal companies and heavy industry together with at least 20 industry ministers are meeting just days ahead of the UN climate negotiations in Poland. The Polish government appears to be gathering forces to protect coal users and suppliers, in opposition to the EU climate package being discussed next week.

Shameless. Disastrous. The international body responsible for "managing" what's left of the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks has ignored scientific advice, the demands of Greenpeace supporters around the world, and the pleas of the governments of Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Norway, South Africa and the United States to save the fishery from collapse.

European Environment Ministers were asked to agree on strict controls ensuring food safety today, by our activists in Brussels. A giant banner displaying a ‘scary’ genetically modified corn plant and bearing the slogan Stop GMOs’ was dropped from a building on Schuman square (at the quarter of European Commission and European Council buildings) as dozens GM maize caricatures were laid around the street - highlighting the risks posed by genetically modified organisms such as maize.

Peaceful protesters from the Greenpeace Climate Rescue Station were attacked by mine workers when they entered the vast Jóźwin IIB open pit mine. As the activists prepared to paint a huge "Stop" sign next to a giant excavator they were assaulted and prevented from carrying out their peaceful protest. A journalist accompanying the activists was beaten. Local people are also against the expansion of this mine, because it threatens their homes and livelihoods.

The latest edition of our Guide to Greener Electronics has revealed that very few firms are showing true climate leadership. Despite many green claims, major companies like Dell, Microsoft, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and Apple are failing to support the necessary levels of global cuts in emissions and make the absolute cuts in their own emissions that are required to tackle climate change.

Sixty activists are at the Garoña nuclear power plant in Spain to demand that the Spanish government make good on their commitment to start phasing out nuclear power plants, starting now with the immediate closure of the Garoña power plant.