Email Print

Landmark pact to protect Canada's Boreal forest

Trees in the Boreal forest, Alberta, Canada

The good news just keeps on coming. Our Canadian colleagues (including several working here in London) are thrilled about a new, far-reaching agreement between campaign groups and logging companies which should see vast areas of the country's Boreal forest protected. As detailed on our international site:

"Today the biggest, most ambitious forest conservation deal ever has been announced: the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. After more than seven years of hard-fought campaigning to end the on-going destruction of Canada's Boreal Forest, Greenpeace and eight other non-governmental organisations have agreed to a truce with the logging industry: we will suspend the battle for the Boreal. Read more »

Tags:
Email Print

Tar Sands in Your Tank

Publication Date: 
10 May 2010
Body: 

Extracting tar sands bitumen from the forest wilderness in Alberta, Canada has major environmental impacts - not least the significant increase in greenhouse gases (GHG) produced by extracting and processing the bitumen into a usable product. The extraction process is thought to produce on average three times the GHGs of conventional oil production.

Oil produced from tar sands is generally consumed only in Canada and the USA, but public concern in Europe has been growing, particularly around the financial links between European financial institutions and the tar sands industry.

Greenpeace can now reveal that petroleum products containing tar sands crude oil have been regularly entering the EU’s petroleum supply chain for some time, primarily through imports of diesel from the US Gulf Coast (USGC).

Email Print

A run on salmon?

It's worth stopping to think about the true price of the salmon you eat. And there's quite a lot to think about.

Salmon is one of the biggest international seafood commodities, and in the UK it's easily one of the most consumed and most conspicuous species in our supermarkets and restaurants. But the vast majority of the salmon you'll find on shelves or plates these days has been farmed rather than fished. Partly that’s because there's hardly any wild Atlantic salmon left, but it's also because salmon's popularity has grown and it has gone from being a delicacy to become more of an everyday food in the past few decades.

Read more »
Tags:
Email Print

Canada's terrible environmental record causes a stir

John Sauven on CBS Tar Sands

Don’t get us wrong – we like Canada.

Historically Canada and the UK have been allies and friends. But while the Canadian government probably isn’t top of your list of environmental villains, maybe it should be.

Read more »
Tags:
Email Print

Awesome new Tar Sands video - tell the Canadians to ditch the dirtiest oil in the world

Contrary to the laws of physics, Tar Sands both suck and blow.

Express your displeasure (and tell the Canadian government to stop messing up the future of the planet) at
http://greenpeace-uk.thetarsandsblow.org/ Read more »

Tags:
Email Print

Update: Canadian tar sands action wraps up

Yesterday's fantastic direct action at Suncor's tar sands complex in Alberta is over. Two giant conveyor belts were blockaded for 10 hours and a giant banner was floated on the nearby Athabasca river. You can still catch some of the footage from the live video feeds and there are some great images in the slideshow above.

Read more »
Tags:
Email Print

Live: Greenpeace shuts down tar sands facility in Canada. Again

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream

Check this out. The video above is a live feed from a tar sands facility in Canada, where Greenpeace teams are shutting down a conveyor belt and blocking a bridge. It just started in the last half hour so details on this side of the Atlantic are scant, but keep an eye on the live feeds from the two locations (location one here, location two here) and keep up with the #stoptarsands tag on Twitter, helpfully Scribbled below.

Read more »
Tags:
Email Print

Video: Greenpeace blocks tar sands mining operation

On the eve of the Harper-Obama meeting in Washington D.C., climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema explains why Greenpeace is locking down and blockading a giant dump truck and shovel at Shell’s massive Albian Sands open-pit mine in northern Alberta to send the message that the tar sands are a global climate crime that must be stopped.

More from our Canadian site »

Read more »

Tags:
Email Print

Live feed from Canadian Tar Sands Action

It's a bit on and off, but our Canadian colleagues are streaming video live from a protest at a big dirty pit in the ground, as part of their Tar Sands work.

Watch here, and go to the Canadian Greenpeace site for some background info...

Read more »

Tags:
Email Print

Shifting Sands: How a changing economy could bury the tar sands industry

Publication Date: 
27 Jul 2009
Body: 

This report, co-authored by PLATFORM, Greenpeace and Oil Change International, points to a series of trends emerging from the growth forecasts of OPEC, the IEA and the EIA as evidence that the oil market could be undergoing a permanent structural shift.

The authors assert that previous oil demand growth forecasts have seriously underestimated the potential impacts of government policies aimed at securing energy supplies, reducing price volatility and tackling climate change. This ‘triple crunch’ of political imperatives has led to a widespread dampening of expectation among the world’s leading energy analysts.

Shifting Sands is the second update to the Rising Risks report.