Six activists from the environmental group Greenpeace boarded a coal carrier bound for South Korea on the outskirts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Wednesday calling for an end to exports of the fuel:

The Guardian reports:

The activists boarded the ship from inflatable boats at sunrise and had previously been on board the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's own purpose-built ship. They presented a letter to the captain explaining the action and have set up camp at the bow of the ship.

A spokesman for Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior said: "We are calling on the rest of Australia to take whatever action is possible to ensure that we do not double our coal exports. We cannot deal with the climate change that will result from that."

According to research commissioned by Greenpeace, Australia's coal export expansion is the second-largest of 14 proposed fossil fuel enterprises. "We cannot pretend Australia is playing its part to avoid dangerous climate change if these shipments continue," said Greenpeace senior climate campaigner Dr. Georgina Woods.

"Australia's coal exports are the nation's greatest contribution to climate change and plans are under way to roughly double the volume of coal we export," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Yet every tonne of coal that is exported will return to us as climate change: bushfires, heatwaves and drought."

Ports on the Barrier Reef coast currently export 156 million tons of coal each year, and there are plans to expand that to 953 tons within the next decade. By 2020 an estimated 7,000 ships will traverse the reef every year, up from 5,000 in 2010.

"We have no idea how it's going to play out at this stage," said protester Emma Giles from on board the Panama-flagged ship.

"Either the coastguard will come and get us, or we end up in Korea."

There's a new front line in the battle to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Arrested Development star Alia Shawkat (aka Maeby) explains the truth about the coal industry's plans to export American coal.

Multi-billion dollar coal companies like Arch, Ambre, and Peabody want to ship the coal buried under the United States to Asia, releasing disastrous amounts of carbon pollution, just to line their own pockets. This expansion in US coal exports could release more carbon pollution than any other new fossil fuel project in the United States.

Coal exports out of the Pacific Northwest could pose a bigger climate threat than the Keystone XL pipeline. Coal companies are scheming to export over 150 million tons of coal through the region. If we're serious about halting the worst impacts of climate change, we must do something to stop Arch, Ambre, and Peabody's plans, and keep this coal in the ground.

The good news is that there is a growing movement to stop coal exports. In the past few months alone, over 10,000 people have turned out to public hearings in the Pacific Northwest to say no to new coal export terminals.

Globally, renewable energy can power our homes, cars, and businesses, and make these massive extraction projects irrelevant. That's why Greenpeace is calling on elected officials to put people over profits and put the brakes on coal export expansion. The Obama Administration can declare a moratorium on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

Visit Quit Coal for more information. Because we deserve safe, clean energy.

In the last 30 years, we’ve lost as much as three-quarters of the floating sea ice cover at the top of the world. The volume of that sea ice measured by satellites in the summer, when it reaches its smallest, has shrunk so fast that scientists say it’s now in a ‘death spiral’.

For over 800,000 years, ice has been a permanent feature of the Arctic ocean. It’s melting because of our use of dirty fossil fuel energy, and in the near future it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. This would be not only devastating for the people, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and other species that live there - but for the rest of us too.

The ice at the top of the world reflects much of the sun’s heat back into space and keeps our whole planet cool, stabilizing the weather systems that we depend on to grow our food. Protecting the ice means protecting us all.

To save the Arctic, we have to act today. Time is running out, the ice that keeps our planet cool is melting fast. The polar bears who need that ice to live could disappear within the next 50 years. If you sign up now to protect the Arctic, your name will be microscopically etched onto tiny crystal discs and placed inside an indestructible glass sphere. When Greenpeace travels to the North Pole in April they will lower the pod through the ice to plant on the seabed, and mark the spot with a flag for the future designed by the youth of the world. Your name will remain at the pole for your lifetime, as a statement of your commitment to protect the Arctic.

Preparations for the expedition soon, so you must add your name by February 11.

Sign now to declare a global sanctuary in the Arctic so when future generations read your name, they’ll know you were among the first to join the defining environmental battle of our time.

[Via Greenpeace/SavetheArctic]

Six activists with the environmentalist group Greenpeace International have occupied a Russian oil rig to protest drilling in the Arctic. The rig belongs to the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, which is set to become the first company to produce Arctic oil through drilling operations in the Pechora Sea. Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow! speaks live with Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, just as he and other activists are being hosed by the rig’s crew in an effort to thwart their protest. Naidoo says the group is being sprayed by ice cold water by Gazprom employees as they remain on the rig. "We want to draw global attention to what is the defining environmental struggle of our time, and time is running out for us to avert catastrophic climate change," Naidoo says. "That’s why we are here." Greenpeace is promoting a resolution at the U.N. General Assembly that would protect the Arctic region from any drilling or unsustainable fishing.

Full transcript available here.

Via:

More than 1,000 email credentials from five multinational oil industry companies, including Shell and Exxon and BP, has been dumped online by hackers associated with the Anonymous movement.

The hackers targeted the three giants alongside Russian oil firms Gazprom and Rosneft, each of which is accused of melting the Arctic ice caps. The data dump includes 317 emails and their MD5 hashed passwords from a hack in June, and a further 724 emails and hashed passwords and 26 emails with clear text passwords which were added yesterday, as NovaSecInfo.com explains.

Although most of the information is encrypted, it has been posted online in the hope that volunteers and hobbyists will help crack the details and provide passwords for the email addresses.

There has been no known malicious use of the data thus far, but some very ironic signatures have turned up on Greenpeace's "Save the Arctic" petition...

H/T @timcast

Via the sparrow project:

At 4pm on July 8th, 2012 a diverse coalition of activists and occupiers from across New York will descend upon a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Southhampton home of billionaire David Koch. Citing the ever-growing and pervasive influence of Koch Industries’ money on our electoral system, organizers from Occupy Wall Street, The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Move to Amend [Brookhaven], ALIGN NY, Art Not War, Strong For All, MoveOn.org, United New York, Occupy Storefront and Occupy Huntington, Long Island, have announced that they will take action to non-violently disrupt the fundraiser at David Koch’s shorefront estate located at 880 Meadow Lane in Southhampton.

While Romney plans on attending 3 fundraisers that day in the Hamptons the demonstrators have made it clear that the Koch Estate will remain their only target. The coalition of activists initially assembled by the End Corporatism Affinity Group of Occupy Wall Street will be taking a non-partisan stance, uniting around a unified message that corporate money is exponentially diluting and subverting our democratic process (a phenomenon not limited to one single party.) To the demonstrators, David and Charles Koch embody everything that is wrong with money in politics.

“The Long Island Progressive Coalition is busy coordinating a network of Long Island groups who won’t stand by while their backyard is used for Koch and Romney to fund a regressive political agenda,” says Lisa Tyson, director to the Long Island Progressive Coalition.

In 2011 Charles and David Koch announced their intentions to raise and spend $200,000,000 on whomever would run against President Obama. Also, in 2011 while on a retreat for supporters of Koch Industries and their political arm, American’s for Prosperity, Charles Koch was secretly recorded while addressing the group. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got over the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country …if you want to kick in a billion, believe me,” says Koch “we’ll have especial seminar just for you.”

Continue reading »

The Arctic ice we all depend on is disappearing. Fast. Soon it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. This would be not only devastating for the people, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and other species that live there - but for the rest of us too.

Oil companies are using melting sea ice to drill for more of the oil that is causing global warming in the first place. In fact, Shell’s Arctic fleet will be arriving any day now to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska this summer. That's just madness. It's time for us to take back sanity from those who have lost the plot.

Our leaders won't listen to her, but they'll listen to you. What do you have to say to those who want to destroy the Arctic?

Greenpeace, Jude Law, Radiohead and hundreds of thousands of people around the world are coming together to demand we save the Arctic from oil drilling, industrial fishing and militarization. Join us at http://www.savethearctic.org

Did you catch the video of the private party hosted by Shell Oil in Seattle at the Seattle Space Needle last week? The party was to be a celebration of the impending offshore drilling operations into the Arctic, complete with a replica of the Kulluk oil rig that will be doing the drilling, and inviting the widow of the man who designed the rig to symbolically tap the arctic and fill her glass with some alcoholic drink pouring from the top of the miniature rig. But lo and behold the rig's pump malfunctions and spews all over the elderly widow! Epic PR Fail!

What ensued therein was a marvel to behold, people frantically trying to stop the spewing "oil rig," only to find that nothing was working as it should. Pure comedy gold that was way to good to be true, which can only mean...The Yes Men!

But who was the charming elderly widow? Also, I didn't think the Yes Men had delved into ecological issues before, so was there another accomplice? Watch the video up at the top and find out how this delicious hoax that fooled several mainstream media news outlets and went viral was pulled off and who the cast of characters were.

Watch the video below to see the original spoof Shell Oil party video in full: