It’s not every day that the US Chamber of Commerce shows up on my doorstep here in the city by the Bay. Since the Chamber is the multi-million dollar lobbyist muscle for some of the biggest climate criminal corporations in the world, I decided to rearrange my morning to pay them a visit. Let’s see, to do list for Thursday:

8:00 am Punk Chamber with balloon banner in lobby of their conference. Check.


8:30 Meet up for coffee, tell stories, high five! Check.
8:35 Back to the office to take on more corporate polluters. Check. I love my life.

Here's a little backstory and an idea for what you can do:

We’ve seen some high profile businesses leave the Chamber recently because their extreme position on climate change has put it out of step with the growing number of US businesses that support the clean energy and climate legislation that would strengthen our economy and protect our planet. With President Tom Donohue at the helm of the Chamber, the climate lies and deception have been free-flowing. Hence, our banner reads: “ Donohue’s Climate Lies: Bad for Business, Bad for America.”

My personal message to Donohue: if you’re going to parade around in San Francisco with your sassy double talk on the climate, you’d better believe we’ll be there to speak truth directly to your power, even if it’s over your morning breakfast pastry at a swanky hotel.

The important take home here is that this isn’t about Tom Donohue or banners — it’s about saving the climate, and the millions of people and countless species that will be effected if we don’t. The American business community and the planet will continue to be harmed as long as Don0hue’s Chamber stands in the way of meaningful climate action.

What’s next for Tom Donohue? Well, that’s up to you. People like him could be leading the world toward climate solutions. He should be held accountable for doing the opposite. So call for Donohue to get fired. You can start on the Chamber facebook fan page here (a good read for some zany propaganda). Don't be shy about fanning the page, leaving a comment about what you think of Donohue and the Chamber's anti-climate propaganda, and then un-fanning the page.

Have fun and thanks for raising your voice to save the climate!

Here's a great video from the Greenpeace banner hang at Barcelona's Sagrada Família last week:

One of the weird consequences of overfishing is the very real possibility that jellyfish will replace the niche left by fish species. It makes for nice scary pieces of news, like this bit out of Japan. A ten-ton fishing boat was capsized after dozens of giant jellyfish were caught in their net. As the crew tried to haul the net onboard, the boat started to capsize and they were thrown into the sea.

The three men are safe. Thankfully, another trawler in the area was able to rescue them.

If we are about to be taken over by jellyfish, let's try to look on the bright side. Maybe they taste good? Maybe they're healthy for us to eat. I really can’t say, but perhaps we should be open-minded.

British cartoonist Steven Appleby tried to find a way we could cook jellyfish. And, at the rate our oceans are being overfished, you'll want to watch this video, just to be sure you're well-prepared.

 

We’re now just over a month away from the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which commence on Dec. 7th. World leaders are currently meeting this week in Barcelona, Spain for the last time before Copenhagen. These meetings are crucial to establishing a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty in December, yet early signs are not good. Greenpeace activists are there reminding world leaders of their moral obligation to solve the climate crisis. And we’re not the only ones protesting: Several African nations walked out of the meetings to point out that the developed world was simply pursuing business as usual.

Barcelona’s famous church, Sagrada Família, which was designed by renowned architect Antoni Gaudí, was the scene of a series of stunning banner hangs by Greenpeace activists on the first day of the talks. Check out these amazing pics:


More than twenty Greenpeace activists climbed the Sagrada Família, Gaudí's monument, in Barcelona, Spain. They deployed two banners at the cranes with the message "Save the climate" — in Spanish, "Salvad el clima." Greenpeace is asking world leaders to make the climate call and to take the responsibility for tackling climate change. © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre


Greenpeace activists hold a banner that reads "Activist for the climate" in Spanish. © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre


Greenpeace activists deploy a banner at Barcelona's Sagrada Familia that reads "World leaders, Make the climate call." © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre

There’s also video of the activists deploying the clear banner at twilight:


But like I said before, Greenpeace is not alone in protesting the dithering of developed countries on climate change. The so-called African Group walked out of the meetings when it became clear that developed countries were not willing to set aggressive emissions reductions targets. Greenpeace New Zealand campaigner Geoff Keey is on the ground, and posted this report:

The first signs of trouble occurred in the morning when the African Group (the group of African countries at the negotiations who work together) warned that if there wasn’t sufficient progress in the negotiations on developed country emission reduction targets, they’d walk about and not allow further meetings to be scheduled.

The African Group’s threat reflects increasing frustration over the refusal of developed countries like New Zealand to adopt strong climate change targets.

Then in the afternoon, the chair of the meeting to discuss developed country targets told countries to not restate their targets (e.g. New Zealand’s nothing - 20% target) but to talk about how they could increase those targets. In other words, current proposed targets are well below what’s needed.

The request from the chair of the negotiations was met with complete silence from developed countries for around five minutes before South Africa finally said they were disappointed no developed country was willing to speak. From then on a walk-out was inevitable.

According to Jess Miller, another Greenpeacer on the ground in Barcelona, the walk-out has ended and talks will resume tomorrow. No word yet on what resolution was reached between the African Group and developed nations, but Jess adds that “the walk out by the African Group proved to be an effective way to get developed countries to realize that business as usual will no longer be tolerated!”

A bit of background on why the Barcelona talks are important: In December of 2007, the world's leaders agreed to spend two years crafting a global treaty to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. The talks happening right now in Barcelona are the last milestone on the road to the UN negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen at the end of the year. The aim of the Copenhagen talks is to establish a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Meetings like those going on in Barcelona have happened consistently throughout the past two years, and were intended to be used for laying the groundwork for a successor climate treaty. Alas, little to no progress has been made in the previous rounds of talks.

Hence why the African Group was absolutely right to walk out when developed nations refused to discuss ambitious emissions targets, and why Greenpeace is there on the ground to remind world leaders that it is their moral obligation to lead the world’s response to global warming. Copenhagen is our last, best chance to avert the worst impacts of global warming, and the developing nations of the world will be hit the hardest if we don’t get it right, even though they had an inordinately small role in creating the problem in the first place.

GPUSA climate campaign head Damon Moglen is in Barcelona, and said this of the walk-out by the African Group: “It is clear that for many countries, enough is enough. President Obama can no longer hide behind failed congressional legislation. He must provide ambitious, science-based emissions reductions targets.”

President Obama has the power to use this meeting as a springboard to the treaty that the world needs. If the US fails to show leadership during these crucial moments, our children and grandchildren will pay the price. Take action now and tell Obama that it's time to sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty.

I’m back in San Francisco after the Defending Our Pacific tour wrapped up in the Cook Islands on October 21st. We ended the tour by hosting an “open boat,” where a couple hundred locals and tourists got the chance to tour the Esperanza, and by holding a press conference to inform local journalists about what we accomplished out on the high seas.

We also met with some folks from the Ministery of Marine Resources in the Cook Islands. It was a pretty exciting meeting for all of us, because just the week before we had busted the Koyu Maru 3, a Japanese ship we caught fishing in Cook Islands' waters illegally, as you might recall. The Cook Islands has started a formal investigation of the vessel with their counterparts at the Fisheries Agency of Japan. I’ll be posting updates on that as well as on how all of the actions and documentation work we did plays out at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting this December, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, being that the tour was a really amazing experience for me and seeing as I’m still trying to process all of it, I thought I’d share just a few more videos about life onboard a Greenpeace ship.

We saw an abundance of amazing marine life, including dolphins, whales, flying fish, seabirds, and more. Here’s a video of a baby whale shark we encountered one day:


Our helicopter, Tweety, is an invaluable tool that we use to scout out the open water, document pirate/unlicensed fishing, etc. I went on one early morning heli flight to search for another two Japanese longliners, which we suspected might be fishing in the Cook Islands' waters with their sister ship the Koyu Maru 3. We didn't find them, but I put this video together anyway because I think it's interesting how a heli flight gives you a whole new perspective on just how small the Espy really is in relation to the deep blue sea:

 Lastly, I shot this video tour of the ship, which is pretty self-explanatory:

Like I said, there are definitely more updates coming on the political developments resulting from the actions we took and the documentation we compiled of the vessels plundering the Pacific. When the WCPFC meets this December, we’ll be pushing to have all four of the high seas pockets in the Pacific designated as marine reserves at this meeting.

There might be a few more videos coming from the tour, as well. Keep checking back!

Our tour is wrapping up. We steamed into port here in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, on the 19th. We spent the last few days of the tour in high seas pocket number 3 (see a map of the high seas pockets here), looking for fishing vessels that are threatening the future of the Pacific. And let me tell you, we had absolutely no problems finding them.

On Thursday, the 15th, we found a Taiwanese long-liner, Kai Jie No. 1, that had no license to fish in the waters of any Pacific island countries. This does not make it illegal for them to be fishing on the high seas, since these waters belong to no particular nation, but this is one of the main ways fishing fleets get around the regulations that Pacific island countries are introducing to better manage their tuna stocks.

We spoke with the captain of the vessel and explained that what he was doing was decimating the tuna stocks that Pacific island nations rely on and asked him to pull in his line. When he refused, we took action. We went out and, using a special contraption designed by our fitter from the first leg of the tour, Jono, to hold the line up out of the water, we went down the long-line and removed the bait from their hooks.

I shot this video of the action, in which our resident marine life expert, Gabe, explains more about the process:


This ship may not have been a pirate fisher in a legal sense — though it was operating in an area known to host a lot of the region’s illegal fishing — but it was certainly plundering the Pacific. That’s why we’re trying to shut down the four high seas pockets to all fishing.

The next day we spotted yet another unlicensed Taiwanese long-liner fishing on the high seas. It might seem unlikely for us to come across one vessel after another in an ocean as vast as the Pacific, but when you consider that these ships are part of a massive fleet of more than 1,300 long-liners — and that’s just the Taiwanese fleet — you begin to realize how big the problem is and why we keep encountering them.

Again, we went and spoke with the captain, passed him information about our campaign and the science showing that Pacific tuna stocks are in bad shape, and asked him to stop plundering the Pacific. He also refused to haul in his line, as you’ll hear our translator Tan-chi tell us in this video:



As you could see, the captain of this ship was quite an agreeable guy who seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. He sat and read our campaign materials for several minutes. He was even very hospitable towards us: when we refused the grape sodas he offered after reading our literature, he insisted we take them so vehemently that he actually threw them onboard our boats. We are not trying to set ourselves up in opposition to this hard-working captain and his crew.

As Tan-chi translated for us, the economics of the situation make it impossible for him to stop fishing and head back to port. And that’s what we are trying to change. You can read more about this situation — the vicious cycle of fishing in the Pacific and the diminishing returns these vessels are producing as Pacific fish stocks grow more and more depleted — in this blog by Karli, our onboard campaigner.

Being that I’m in the middle of the Pacific on an Oceans campaign, I thought it would be appropriate if I celebrated Blog Action Day ’09 with a post about the effects global warming is having on the world’s oceans.

I wrote yesterday about the obligation of the developed world to help developing nations deal with the impacts of climate change on the oceans, but I didn’t really specify what those impacts might be. Here are a few of the major impacts we can expect if global warming is not put in check:

• Coral bleaching
The world’s coral reefs are some of the most amazing and diverse ecosystems on the planet, but they’re in grave danger from global warming. Corals contain microscopic algae that provide the coral with food and give them their vibrant colors. Rising ocean temperatures cause corals to expel these algae, thus turning them white or "bleaching" them. Worse, the corals die if the algae don’t return.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, experienced its worst ever case of coral bleaching in 2002, when over 60 percent of the reef was affected. Unless projected levels of climate change are slowed, much of the reef will be dead in decades. Worse, hundreds of species relying on the reef will also die out along with their living home.

Corals the world over are facing the threat of bleaching, from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to the Galapagos Islands and the Philipines.

•Global melting
As global temperatures rise, the world’s ice melts. It’s as simple as that. And we’re already witnessing this happening. Our recent Arctic Impacts expedition was all about documenting the meltdown of Greenland’s glaciers and trying to understand the mechanisms behind it.



The melting of the world’s sea ice and glaciers will have a number of implications, perhaps the most discussed being that as Arctic sea ice melts there will be less habitat for polar bears, further imperiling this already endangered species. But global melting will also contribute to sea level rise and change the salinity of the oceans, hurting fish stocks and disrupting ocean circulation patterns.

Most worrisome is the fact that as the ice melts, more land and ocean water is exposed. The white ice reflects the sun’s light, but the darker water and land absorbs it, thereby potentially creating a negative feedback loop in which the melting of the world’s ice and the heating of our planet is accelerated. Already the Arctic is melting much faster than anyone predicted.

•Sea level rise
Melting sea ice does not contribute to sea level rise because that ice is already floating, but melting glaciers most certainly will cause the world’s seas to rise. A very sobering report was released earlier this month by the United Nations Environmental Program that forecasted a 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. This would mean as much as a six-foot rise in sea levels.

Even a sea level rise of just around three feet, meanwhile, is projected to displace millions of people who live in low-lying parts of the world. In fact, the president of the Maldives, a Pacific island nation that is only 4.9 feet above sea level on average, recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat that the looming climate crisis and sea level rise pose to his country.

You can check out this Google Map to see what various degrees of sea level rise might look like.

•Threats to marine life
Coral and Polar bears aren’t the only species threatened by global warming. Rises in ocean temperatures will impact the entire web of marine life. For example, phytoplankton, which is the main food source of small crustaceans like krill, grow under sea ice. A reduction in sea ice implies a reduction in krill — and krill feeds many whale species, including the great whales.

Whole species of marine animals and fish are directly at risk. A recent study found that warmer waters, for instance, can lead to some species becoming more aggressive and more vulnerable to prey.

Ocean acidification is another problem threatening marine life. As more CO2 is pumped into our atmosphere, more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, which decreases the pH level of the oceans. Unfortunately, ocean acidification is happening much faster than anyone predicted, making life harder and harder on organisms like molluscs that depend on calcium carbonate shells, which can be weakened or even dissolved by acid.

These are just some of the main impacts I wanted to talk about, but by no means all of them. I barely touched on what a change in ocean currents due to decreased salinity might mean to weather patterns, for instance. And speaking of weather patterns, you’re probably already aware that warmer ocean temperatures are widely considered to make tropical storms bigger and more frequent. There’s even some compelling evidence that climate change is causing the El Niño phenomenon to be more frequent and more persistent.

All of this, I think, makes it abundantly clear that we need to put pressure on President Obama and other world leaders to sign an ambitious climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

It's finally here, a day when over 7,400 blogs with over 11,000,000 million readers will all be blogging about one thing on one day: climate. It couldn't come at a better moment, it is only 9 day before Greenpeace, 350.org and a host of coaltion partners and grassroots activists are calling for a Global Day of Action for the Climate!

What is today? It's Blog Action Day 2009, "an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web." This year, the organizers of blog action day chose climate as their issue and I couldn't explain why this is such an important move better myself:

Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

 Blog Action Day is perfectly timed to mobilize folks all over the world to participate in the October 24th International Day of Climate Action, when thousands of people just like you will Gather in more than 150 countries worldwide with the same message to world leaders: stop playing politics and save the planet.

And while we write about climate almost everyday, if you're a blogger, here are two things you can do to pitch in on Blog Action Day:

1. Write about the one of more than 2,400 events around the world happening closest to you.

2. Call your readers to action by posting this video:

Then, from the internet and in the streets, we can take this planet back!

Global warming is the challenge of our generation. And, while the issue may be daunting, it is inspiring to know that people everywhere are taking action to save the climate.

Our future depends on an ambitious global climate deal. Are you up for the challenge?

As I sat on the bridge one day doing my regular watch duty, I pulled out my trusty digital camcorder and shot this quick pan across the bridge windows. This is pretty much what I spend two hours a day doing — staring out at the open sea, looking for other vessels, FADs, long-line beacons, whales, dolphins, or anything else there might be to see.
Sadly, I have never seen anything of much interest on any of my watches (aside from the occasional flying fish or seabird, that is). But one morning I did see some sperm whales spouting way in the distance — our wake-up call went something like this: "Good morning! It's 7:30, and there are whales off the bow!"

I didn't get to go out there and swim with the whales, but our photographer did:




Images © Paul Hilton/Greenpeace