Last night our two activists were removed from the survival pod that had been suspended from the Leiv Eiriksson oil rig for four days. They were arrested just before midnight last night, local time, and taken to the Greenland capital of Nuuk. The Greenpeace ship Esperanza remains just outside the 500m exclusion zone, imposed by a Danish navy warship, around the drill site. Captain of the Esperanza Madeleine Habib blogs for us directly fom the ship.
The eyes of even the most hardened court observers glazed over as the seemingly endless mess of legal procedures dragged on. It wasn’t just unremarkable, it was outright dull – obscuring the profound struggle set to unfold.
We couldn’t have picked a better summers evening to launch our Changing Climates photo exhibition. The backdrop was Sydney’s beautiful Botanical Gardens and by sunset the food and wine were flowing. The speakers were Julian Burnside AO QC and our very own climate campaigner John Hepburn.
Last week Greenpeace launched a vital new campaign for Australia. We’re taking on the massive coal mining and coal export expansion plans particularly in Queensland. These mega coal mines, coal port infrastructure and increases in coal shipping traffic not only spell disaster for our climate but for Australia’s national treasure – the Great Barrier Reef.
Everyone from the fossil fuel industry to Greenpeace’s own Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, has conceded Rio + 20 was a total waste of space. Naidoo’s take on it was pretty simple: ''Rio has turned into an epic failure. It has failed on equity, failed on ecology and failed on economy.'' Apart from that it was a raging success.