Wow - we did it! Together, we’ve bought ‘The People's Boat’. Almost 1,000 people chipped in and together we have bought the boat that’s going to confront the Amazon Warrior - AKA, The Beast.

Now we need you to give it a name. It’s only fitting that a crowdfunded boat gets a crowdsourced name!

We need a name that reflects its people-powered spirit, its New Zealand heritage, and its new role as a guardian of our oceans and coastlines. It's a humble 15 metre ex-pilot boat with 7 berths and gets along at a fair rate of knots. It's not flashy, but it's seaworthy and safe.

Click here to suggest a name. Once everyone has submitted their suggestions, we’ll pick out a shortlist, and then ask you to vote on the final choice.

We’re preparing a crew, and soon we’ll be cleaning the bilges, stockin... Read more >

I’ve always been mortified of breaking the rules.

Looking back at my childhood and teens, I’m almost embarrassed by how righteously rule-abiding I’ve been. Never once got a detention in school. Never ever handed an assignment in late. Never got yellow-carded in soccer.

I come from a family where “don’t stick your neck out” is a guiding philosophy. My whole life, I’ve learned to be a peace-maker; to never upset anyone or make enemies. In my family, putting your name to a petition is risky. Going on a protest march is deeply troubling. Blockading an oil conference? Absolutely out of the question.

And yet, this is where I find myself. Prepared to join hundreds of people who will peacefully put their bodies on the line to stop oil industry executives from making plans to dig more unburnable ... Read more >

For some people the oceans may seem vast - to me they are my garden and my home. For the last three decades I have spent most of my life as a sailor and a captain. So you can imagine I feel a special tie to our blue planet. The many years at sea also mean I have witnessed how things have increasingly gone wrong for our oceans.

Year by year, more and more fishing boats are out there, and they are getting bigger and bigger as well. There is so much over-fishing going on, so much poor management of fisheries and so much illegal fishing.

Having sailed with Greenpeace for a long time now, I have been up-close and dirty with industrial fishing boats. I have witnessed bulging nets so large they could not be brought on board but had to be sucked up through a pipe lowered into the sea. I hear in... Read more >

It seems the critical issue of clean swimmable water for New Zealanders has passed into the realms of magical realism.

Minister for Magic, Nick Smith waved his blue wand and wadeable rivers miraculously turned into ones you can swim in.

All it takes is a little fiddling with the standards.

This week Smith made a brave promise that 90 per cent of rivers would be swimmable by the year 2040.

On the surface an applaudable sentiment, a move in the right direction, but anyone who has been following the freshwater debate will see right through it.

Only a year ago the Environment Minister was saying that aiming for swimmable rivers was "impractical".

So what changed to make it practical?

Over the summer there's been a tipping point in public opinion.

Thanks to efforts by many environmenta... Read more >

Funny how, over time, crazy weird becomes the new normal. There were certainly some nutty ideas floating around when I was a young fella studying Agricultural Economics at Lincoln University last millennium.

Outlandish thoughts like growing fruit or running livestock without pesticides and herbicides. Absolutely barmy. Other hair-brained schemes involved running a cowshed on power from the sun. Nah mate, it'll never catch on.

So when the Feds dairy guy Andrew Hoggard uses the dodgy term "mumbo jumbo" to describe this new idea Ecological Agriculture, it takes me back. Makes me wonder which side of history he'll end up on? Maybe sharing a porch with those those who sneered at organics and solar power.

We live in fast-evolving times, characterised by massively confronting global problems th... Read more >

There's been a major breakthrough in protecting Indonesia's forests: HSBC has committed to breaking its links to palm oil companies destroying forests and peatlands. This is a fantastic result for everyone who has been campaigning over the last few weeks, although the hard work doesn’t stop there. The real test now is how those words will be put into practice. Read more >

HSBC’s new policy - released today - says they will no longer provide funding to companies involved in any kind of deforestation or peatland clearance, both of which were missing from previous versions. Another big step forward is insisting that all HSBC's customers must publish their own forest protection policies by the end of June.

It's time we hold governments accountable for their climate promises; we must protect the pristine Arctic - it's critical for the preservation of our planet for future generations.

That’s why we’re taking Arctic oil to court.

Statoil-Operated Oil Drilling Platform near Tromsø, Norway. 24 Jan 2017 

Our legal case against the Norwegian government, which granted new oil drilling licenses in the Arctic ocean, finally has a court date. On November 13th we are going to court!

My name is Michelle. As one of the attorneys behind this groundbreaking case I'll be updating you as it moves ahead.

When I think of future generations, I think of my niece Blythe. At five months, she has every right to a full and healthy life - free from the catastrophic effects of climate change we are already seeing ... Read more >

The urgency to solve our climate crisis feels something like a ship heading off course: The longer you delay, the more you have to turn the wheel.  

Consider these numbers: 2, 350, 1990. These were the original climate goals. In 1975, at the time of the first Greenpeace whale campaign, environmental economist William Nordhaus proposed that the danger threshold for a temperature increase above Earth’s preindustrial average would be 2°C. This goal was not considered entirely safe, but beyond this target we risked severe climate disruption and likely runaway heating.

Dr James Hansen, 2016

The 350 figure came from several climate scientists, including Dr James Hansen, who co-authored the first NASA global temperature analysis in 1981. Hansen proposed that to remain below the 2°C target, we w... Read more >