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Defending our Mediterranean tour launches

Coal is the worst climate offender Enlarge Image

Stop climate change

The world's leaders meet at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen to determine the fate of the climate. They could set us on the path to a deep emissions cuts or they could lock the planet into catastrophic, irreversible climate change.

Greenpeace activists paint two gigantic cracks on the 32 year old nuclear reactor dome at Borssele, Netherlands. The Dutch government wants to keep the plant, one of the world's oldest, open beyond 2013, despite inherent safety and security risks. Enlarge Image

Project work

Climate change is a priority issue for us here at Greenpeace. We realised years ago that it has the potential to wipe out most of the gains the environmental movement has made in other areas. Disruptions to ecosystems will likely harm everything from minke whales to coral reefs to polar bears. Whole forests will be lost, and hundreds of thousands of species will become extinct. Climate change will also bring devastation to people and communities, especially some of the world's poorest.

A Greenpeace activist dressed in a polar bear suit holds up a sign advocating the Kyoto Protocol near an entrance to the Forbidden City. Enlarge Image

Protests and direct actions

Carbon dioxide, the most significant global warming gas, is odourless, invisible, and an easy thing to ignore as our world heats up to dangerous levels. At Greenpeace, it's part of our job to make the invisible impossible to ignore. Often this means going to the source of the problem - hanging a banner on a coal plant's giant smokestack, for example. Other times, it means reminding decision makers they have a higher responsibility than the corporate bottom line.

Greenpeace observer checking heavy ice floes beside Arctic Sunrise. Enlarge Image

Expeditions and special projects

Here you can find the special weblogs and tour sites we put up for particular projects. Past project sites are archived, and no longer updated.

One of the largest wind farms in South America. Enlarge Image

Solutions

Greenpeace is pushing for some big, visionary measures to turn around the global trend towards runaway climate change. The plan needs political will to make it happen and the opportunity is at the Copenhagen summit in December. You can get behind our plan in a whole lot of different ways. Here's how.

Sun setting over the sea while the tide is coming in. Enlarge Image

Defending our Oceans

Seen from space the Earth is covered in a blue mantle. It is a planet on which the continents are dwarfed by the oceans surrounding them and the immensity of the marine realm.

Illegal "pirate" fishing vessels in Port Louis. Enlarge Image

Pirate fishing

Armed and masked, scouring the oceans, stealing food from hungry families – modern day pirates are a far cry from the glamour of Hollywood movies. But they are a multi billion-dollar reality for many communities that can least afford to be robbed.

A large yellow fin tuna being cut up. Yellow fin and big eye tuna may be commercially extinct in 3-5 years if fishing is not controlled, experts warn. Enlarge Image

Overfishing

Many marine ecologists think that the biggest single threat to marine ecosystems today is overfishing. Our appetite for fish is exceeding the oceans' ecological limits with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems. Scientists are warning that overfishing results in profound changes in our oceans, perhaps changing them forever. Not to mention our dinner plates, which in future may only feature fish and chips as a rare and expensive delicacy.

School of Tuna Enlarge Image

Tuna

Tuna is one of the world’s favourite fish. It provides a critical part of the diet of millions of people across the globe. It is also the core of the luxury sashimi markets. The five main commercially harvested tuna are: skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye, albacore and bluefin.

Dolphin killed by pair-trawling. Thousands of porpoises and dolphins die every year as accidental bycatch. Enlarge Image

Bycatch

Many fisheries catch fish other than the ones that they target and in many cases these are simply thrown dead or dying back into the sea. In some trawl fisheries for shrimp, the discard may be 90 percent of the catch. Other fisheries kill seabirds, turtles and dolphins, sometimes in huge numbers.

Humpback whale breaching (Megaptera novaeangliae), Au Au Channel, Lanai, Hawaii (Pacific). Enlarge Image

Marine reserves

A growing body of scientific evidence that demonstrates what we at Greenpeace have been saying for a long time: that the establishment of large-scale networks of marine reserves, urgently needed to protect marine species and their habitats, could be key to reversing global fisheries decline.

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