Right now the people of Vermont have the unique opportunity to close down Entergy’s aging nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee, and choose safe, clean renewable energy for their community instead. The Vermont legislature has given itself the authority to reject the relicensing of the reactor in 2012.

So last Saturday, the 30th anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, we launched our Nuclear-Free Vermont Tour. The Rolling Sunlight, our solar-equipped, biodiesel-fueled truck, will be visiting farmer’s markets, universities, film screenings, and galleries across the state. The crew will be talking to Vermonters about the energy sources they want to use in their home state, as well as demonstrating the practical uses of solar energy by powering the sound systems at events, making treats like hot chocolate for the crowds, and other fun ways to utilize the energy generated by the Rolling Sunlight's 256 square feet of solar panels.

Read more about the Nuclear-Free Vermont Tour, and view a slideshow of images from the kickoff of the tour here. The tour has been covered in the local press, here and here. You can also read our nuclear expert's blog on Huffington Post, "Remembering the Three Mile Island meltdown."

Hey, remember when we announced that Ben & Jerry's was bringing climate-friendly refrigeration technology to the U.S.? Well, thanks to the tireless efforts of our Greenpeace Solutions crew, Pepsi is now bringing green soda machines stateside.

These refrigerators and vending machines utilize what we call the GreenFreeze technology — refrigeration and cooling technology that eliminates the use of highly potent greenhouse gases like HCFCs and HFCs. Greenpeace developed the technology in 1992 and then open-sourced it. We have made no money off of the sale of the technology, even though, since March 15, 1993, when the first GreenFreeze refrigerator rolled off the assembly line, over 300 million units have been sold in Europe, Asia and South America by leading brands including Whirlpool, Bosch, Panasonic, LG, Miele, Electrolux, and Siemens.

The Greenpeace Solutions team has been working with various businesses and industries to bring this technology to the U.S. because the group of chemicals commonly used as refrigerants — the aforementioned HCFCs and HFCs, which are more commonly called F-gases because they all contain Fluorine — were responsible for some 17% of the greenhouse gases collected in our atmosphere as of 2005.

So we now have green ice cream coolers and green soda vending machines here in the States... You thinking what I'm thinking? Green root beer floats!

Saturday, March 28th, is the 30th anniversary of the reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The nuclear industry is currently trying to portray itself as making a comeback, and working hard to paint nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly solution to global warming. So it's that much more important to remember what really happened that day:

Radiation leaked from the damaged reactor for days as government regulators scrambled to get radiation monitoring equipment into surrounding communities. The Governor of Pennsylvania eventually ordered an evacuation of pregnant women and children. The accident at Three Mile Island sent the nuclear industry into a tailspin. Already staggering under the weight of over $100 billion dollars in cost overruns, the meltdown showed Americans that not only was nuclear power expensive — it was also dangerous. The nuclear industry turned a multi-million dollar asset into a multi-billion dollar liability overnight, and demonstrated that both the government and industry were thoroughly unprepared for the accident and its aftermath.

But now that memories of the meltdown and the ensuing panic have faded, the nuclear industry and those in their employ are claiming that Three Mile Island was really a success story and that the radiation was contained.

Of course, this episode in American history was anything but a success story for the nuclear industry, no matter how hard they try to rewrite history. Read our nuclear expert's takedown of the nuclear industry's PR spin in his HuffPo blog post.

Check out this headline from Scientific American. Sure sounds familiar...

Nice to have an administration that gets it:

Renewable Energy Could Solve Economic, Environmental and Social Problems
New EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, among others, touted renewable fuels as one solution to a variety of problems
By Douglas Fischer

ASPEN – Shifting the United States to clean-burning renewable fuels has the potential to cut through a thicket of thorny social ills and solve long-standing problems across the entire spectrum of American life, from manufacturing to national security to clean water, the country's top environmental cop said on Wednesday.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson spoke before 150 scientists, lawyers, industry executives, activists and others gathered at this alpine town for a three-day conference on the country's energy future.

She said weaning the country from fossil fuels remains a top priority of the Obama administration because it offers such a broad suite of solutions across all aspects of American life: rewarding innovation, discouraging pollution, investing in jobs and encouraging energy independence.

"It's extraordinary to be at a time where one answer answers so many extraordinary big issues," she said.

What a difference an election makes, eh?

All of our work to stop global warming comes down to what happens in the next week.

President Obama has sent his budget to Congress, and it proposes a cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions, while also allocating money to move America away from the dirty fossil fuels of the past and toward the clean, renewable energy sources of the future (what we like to call an Energy [R]evolution 'round these parts).

Time is of the essence here. Further delay could be disastrous, leading to catastrophic droughts, wildfires, floods, and sea-level rise. Obama’s budget is the best shot we have of passing strong global warming legislation in 2009. We must take action to make sure it passes.

Because of course the powerful fossil fuel industries will be fighting this tooth and nail. They know what the coming energy revolution will mean for their core businesses, and they aren’t going down without a fight. They want to see cap and trade and funds for building a clean energy economy stripped out of the budget. To ensure a green and peaceful future, we can not let them win this fight.

Congress is likely to vote on this in the next week. That’s why it’s so important that we take action right now and tell Congress to keep limits to global warming pollution and funding for a clean energy economy in the budget.

Greenpeace China launched a 10-month global warming campaign with a couple of really cool projections today (pics below, or view the slideshow). The campaign is meant to highlight the urgency of the global climate crisis and the impacts global warming will have on the world. In the next ten months GP China will hold a series of events to call attention to the massive impacts from global warming in China. You can expect many more Greenpeace events in other countries, as well, including right here in the U.S.A., as we lead up to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December.


Beijing, China, March 23, 2009. Greenpeace China projected a message onto Yong Ding Gate that read in English:“Time is Running Out to Stop Global Warming” and also projected Chinese versions. Greenpeace China is calling on the Chinese government for strong climate rescue actions. Greenpeace China also asked China President Hu Jintao to personally attend the Copenhagen Climate Summit and work with world’s leaders to come up with a binding treaty to stop global warming. © Su Li/ Greenpeace

Hong Kong, China, March 23, 2009. Greenpeace activists project a message on to the side of Government House in Hong Kong's financial district, urging the Hong Kong Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, to attend a key United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December, instead of just sending along a few junior officials, as has done in the past for previous international climate change conferences. Greenpeace is also calling for the Hong Kong Government to bring into legislation a comprehensive climate change policy with specific carbon dioxide emissions reduction targets for the city, in line with the requirements set under the Kyoto Protocol agreement. © Alex Hofford/ Greenpeace

The US and China are both critical to an agreement in Copenhagen, and criticial to addressing global warming on a global basis. China has, for the past several years, been the latest in a series of excuses used to delay action on global warming by many American politicians, but the reality is that China is already investing in renewable energy. It's also important to remember that while China recently surpassed the US in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, China has 1.3 billion people to our 300 million. Per capita, Americans emit four times as much greenhouse gas emissions. Unless we're able to reach a deal in Copenhagen in December, those 1.3 billion people will soon be burning fossil fuels at the rate we do, and that would be catastrophic.

There's also an important economic reason to work with China to address global warming. China is building wind energy at a stunning rate and making massive investments in other renewable energy sources. If the US doesn't stay competitive with China in innovation and implementation of solutions to global warming, then, in addition to facing the specter of unchecked climate change, we run the risk of letting China get ahead economically and technologically.

As we get close to December and the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, expect us to be sending the message loud and clear: Both China and the US have to do more and have to work together to stop global warming. Greenpeace is calling on President Obama and China's President Hu Jintao to not only lead their own countries but to work together to lead the world.

As the Obama Administration continues to make great strides in reversing the trajectory of the Bush years with regard to global warming policy, we have released the new U.S. scenario of the Energy [R]evolution report. The Energy [R]evolution U.S. Scenario is a blueprint for how America can stop global warming and build a sustainable clean energy economy at the same time, while leaving behind dirty and dangerous energy sources like fossil fuels and nuclear.



Despite the ongoing financial crisis, Obama is making the global climate crisis a priority for his administration. That’s probably because, as the Energy [R]evolution states, “According to the University of Massachusetts’s Political Economy Research Institute, investments in wind and solar power create 2.8 times as many jobs as the same investment in coal; mass transit and conservation would create 3.8 times as many jobs as coal.” The Energy [R]evolution U.S. Scenario would create 14.5 million more new jobs by 2050 than would be created if we continued to rely on fossil fuels. So kickstarting an energy revolution would also help rebuild our economy.

Obama gets it. A couple of recent news items demonstrated yet again that the Obama team is serious about tackling global warming. The first was the leaked news that:

The Obama administration is fast-tracking its response to the Supreme Court's 2007 climate decision with plans to issue a mid-April finding that global warming threatens both public health and welfare, according to an internal U.S. EPA document (pdf) obtained by Greenwire.

This is important because an “endangerment finding,” as this is called, requires the EPA to establish regulations for limiting the danger of whatever it is they’ve determined poses a threat. In this case, that would mean the EPA would regulate greenhouse gas emissions. While EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says she will not establish regulations right away, but instead “hold back on new emission rules to sync with a final endangerment finding and other fast-moving environmental policies,” this is still a very welcome development.

The other bit of good news was that:

The Obama administration is aggressively reworking U.S. trade policy to more strongly emphasize domestic and social issues, from the displacement of American workers to climate change. …

During the campaign, Obama said he generally supports free-trade policies but also signaled a tougher approach that is only now beginning to be outlined. Both in [President Obama's nominee as U.S. trade representative, Ron Kirk's] testimony yesterday and in a policy statement issued by new Obama appointees at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the administration vowed to make tougher labor and environmental standards prerequisites for trade deals. …

The trade representative's office also stated that trade policy must now contain a new element of "social accountability," including on issues such as climate change. "We should aim to make trade a part of the tool kit of solutions for addressing international environmental challenges," the statement said.

This is also really significant because it shows that Obama is not only going to tackle global warming here at home, but that he also recognizes the need for his administration to lead the way globally. (And the fact that his administration will strive for broader “social accountability” in global trade agreements – not just in regard to environmental issues but also the labor practices of those countries America does business with – is a pretty nice goal, too. We certainly haven’t heard anything like that for the better part of the last decade.)

As much as we welcome and applaud these moves by the Obama Administration, now is no time to get complacent. Obama is calling for us to return to 1990 emissions levels by 2020, whereas climate scientists have clearly indicated that that is too slow a pace to mitigate the worst types of havoc global warming will wreak on our planet. We need stronger mid-term targets of 25 to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

But without overwhelming support from Americans like you and me, it will be extremely difficult – even for Obama – to strengthen these targets. You can take action now to tell Congress we need an energy revolution in America. And don’t forget to check out the Energy [R]evolution report to find out how we can build a sustainable clean energy economy here at home.

We’re at a make or break point here, folks. Let’s stay active.

Our colleagues in Europoe carried out a terrific action today. To protest the European Union's failure to commit funds for climate mitigation in developing countries, 340 Greenpeace activists from across Europe converged on a meeting of EU Finance Ministers in Brussels this morning. They blockaded entrances, padlocked themselves to gates, and refused to leave until the ministers put real money on the table. This is a really great follow-on to the Capitol Climate Action last week, and really helps add to the sense of global urgency around the climate crisis.

Not surprisingly, the action produced some very powerful images:


Greenpeace blocks ‘easy way out’ for EU finance ministers. Hundreds of Greenpeace activists from across Europe blocked the exits of the Brussels building where EU finance ministers are discussing funding for developing nations to tackle climate change. Activists displayed banners in several languages asking EU politicians to “Sav€ the Climate” and “Bail out the Planet”. The Greenpeace activists ‘sealed’ the building and called on ministers not to come out without money on the table to tackle climate change, rather than to continue dishing out billions of taxpayers’ money for failed banks and carmakers. © Greenpeace / Philippe Reynaers


Police move in to make arrests. © Greenpeace / Philippe Reynaers

This is what democracy looks like:

Over 2,500 clean energy activists came out today for the Capitol Climate Action and participated in the largest act of civil disobedience on global warming in American history. The crowd heard from James Hansen, Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry, Gus Speth, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and many more committed environmental leaders. All five entrances to the Capitol Power Plant were shut down for over 4 hours. You can read all about it here, as well as view the unedited footage from our live streaming video coverage.

If you couldn't make it to DC today, you can still make sure Congress hears from you: Call your Rep. now! And you can check out some pics:

2500+ folks have turned out to protest the stranglehold dirty fossil fuels have on our Congress. You can watch it on live streaming video, as well as follow our live blog and real-time Twitter updates, here!