We all like a break, but the orang-utans of Indonesia don’t seem to be able to get one. We have new evidence which shows that Nestlé – the makers of Kit Kat – are using palm oil produced in areas where the orang-utans’ rainforests once grew. Even worse, the company doesn’t seem to care.

So the Greenpeace orang-utans have been despatched to Nestlé head offices in the UK to let employees know the environmental crimes their company is implicated in, and begin an international campaign to have Nestlé give us all a break. Read more »

For some reason there is a persistent group of people who either want to deny, or are not aware, that there is a solid scientific foundation to the overwhelming consensus on climate change.

Of course the fact is that climate science is built on thousands of publications and many decades of observation. Spending too much time arguing with climate deniers is an annoying distraction from actually doing something about the causes of climate change.

This video provides a useful summary of the fundamental discoveries, the basic facts that we know beyond a doubt, about global warming.

The media has been buzzing about the IPCC’s Himalayan glacier controversy.

The international climate panel headed by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for a ground-breaking report on climate change. Several small errors have now surfaced in the 3,000-page report.

If you’re wondering what the news reports mean for climate change, here are some answers. Please spread the word to your family, friends, and co-workers. Read more »

Bill Gates calls for zero carbon emissions by 2050. Photo: Nancy Duarte.

Bill Gates, when asked to give “the talk of his life – in 18 minutes” at the TED Talks conference last week, set a startling precedent for business leaders, choosing energy and climate as his subject – by calling for nothing less than zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Gates’ commitment to stopping climate change couldn’t come at a more urgent juncture and it’s a major development for 3 reasons. Read more »

Late last night, after the results of negotiations by the world’s leaders became known, Kumi Naidoo – Greenpeace International executive director – took part in a press conference organised by the Climate Action Network. There he spelled out what the announcement meant and how we must keep on pushing for a Fair And Binding (FAB) deal beyond the climate summit.

It’s over. The fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties has this afternoon officially drawn to a close (or rather all but collapsed), but what are we left with? Very little is the honest answer and, no matter how the politicians spin it or how the media interprets it, it sucks.

Obama called it a “historic first step” and it’s neither historic nor a first step. The Kyoto Protocol was both, yet in the 12 years since it was laid down, we’ve barely progressed – the increasing severity of climate change impacts and the urgent warnings from scientists should have had leaders scrabbling for solutions. Instead, yesterday a small group of these leaders flew in, claimed the deal was done and flew out again, leaving chaos in their wake – and other leaders outraged.

Just how feeble is this so-called ‘Copenhagen Accord’ (which, incidentally, has not even been formally adopted by the climate summit)? Let’s see.

Read more »

Spontaneous demonstration by NGOs outside the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, after world leaders failed to agree on a fair, ambitious and binding treaty. © Greenpeace/Myllyvirta

The following piece is written by one of our UK climate campaigners, Joss Garman, and published in the Independent

The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can’t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion. Read more »

(Thanks to Nick Anderson for the use of his cartoon.)

Like a bad smell, the theft of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) hangs around the Copenhagen conference and threatens to distract people from what really needs to be discussed. Suddenly, everyone seems to be a scientific expert ready to denounce a global conspiracy but you don’t have to dig down far to see just how misinformed some people are willing to be. Read more »

Greenpeace International ED, Kumi Naidoo, delivered a passionate speech at the launch of the Global Day of Action March in Copenhagen 12 Dec. 2009. “Yes we can, yes we must and yes we will deliver a fair efficient and legally binding treaty to protect the future of our children!”