Right now Greenpeace activists are stopping a Shell drill ship from leaving the Port of Taranaki in New Zealand for the Arctic.

Climbers - including actress Lucy Lawless -have scaled the rig's drill derrick and set up camp, equipped with enough gear to last for days.

Using a solar-powered laptop, our brave activists will be posting updates and photos to the a live feed on the Greenpeace NZ home page

They are asking you to join them - by sending a message to Shell demanding it stays out of the Arctic.

Here's why:

This is an industry that sees its own demise on the horizon. To survive it is prepared to go to the ends of the earth and take extreme risks in search of the last drops of oil. From the Great South Basin below New Zealand to the far reaches of the Arctic, nothing is sacred to Big ... Read more >

This morning we received a call from a journalist asking whether it was Greenpeace that had subverted the Solid Energy website:  solidenergy.co.nz

The site had been redirected to an alternate page that carries an anti-lignite mining video message and a small note published on the Indymedia website claims:

“Hacktivists deface Solid Energy NZ website solidenergy.co.nz to raise awareness about lignite coal mining.”

Did Greenpeace do it? No. Do we wish it was us that did it? Yes!

Solid Energy’s plans to rip thousands of tons of lignite out of the ground in Southland is plain stupid. The message on Solid Energy’s revamped website this morning is bang on.

Lignite mining, deep sea oil drilling and mining national parks are all indicators of a Government steering this country in entirely the wr... Read more >

There's been a new development in our campaign to get the rainforest out of Cottonsoft toilet paper.

With the help of ex National Party MP Katherine Rich in her role as head of the Food and Grocery Council, Cottonsoft/Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) have launched a fresh and slightly desperate PR offensive in which they label our campaign as "green terrorism".

Along with fresh accusations that Greenpeace is endangering the jobs of Cottonsoft employees - a claim that is refuted by the union - Cottonsoft/APP and Rich now claim to have their own test results that prove Cottonsoft doesn't use rainforest fibre - except they refuse to release them to Greenpeace.

We stand by our test results (PDF) and conclusions 100% and have today released futher forensic test results to back that up.

The new... Read more >

As the shipwrecked Rena lies in the Bay of Plenty and its spilled oil washes ashore, Elvis Heremia Teddy is to appear in a Tauranga court today because he took a stand to protect his home coastline from oil spills.

Ironically he’ll appear at the same time as the Captain of the Rena.

In April as skipper of the small vessel San Pietro, and as part of the Stop Deep Sea Oil flotilla Elvis, along with his small crew and tribal leader Rikirangi Gage sailed the te Whanau a Apanui fishing vessel in front of the Petrobras deep sea oil survey vessel in the deep waters of the Raukumara. This is an area he and his family have fished for generations and rely on for their livelihood.

The planned deep sea oil drilling, at depths of up to double that of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon well would put t... Read more >

This morning, a team of Greenpeace activists were met by an overwhelming police presence at the Port of Taranaki.

Early this morning the Polarcus Alima - a survey vessel chartered by the US oil giant Anadarko - slipped in to the Port of Taranaki.

They no doubt hoped to keep a low profile before embarking on their scheduled assignment to explore for deep sea oil reserves off the coast of Raglan but we cannot let this go unnoticed. This is the pointy end of the looming deep sea oil rush in New Zealand coastal waters.

Greenpeace had a small team there to meet it with a peaceful protest but the police seem unusually interested in preventing anything coming between Anadarko and New Zealand’s promised deep sea oil reserves. How did they know we were coming? We’re not sure. But what is clear ... Read more >