With the Rainbow Warrior on her way to the UK, we thought we'd put together a slideshow to share a few of the highs - and lows - of her remarkable history. Our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior has travelled from South America to the South Pacific, the Antarctic to the Atlantic - an icon for environmentalists around the globe.

The ship coming to the UK is of course the Rainbow Warrior II; the original vessel was sunk in 1985 by French government agents trying to foil protests at their nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. (The ship's name was inspired by a Native American prophecy which foretells a time when human greed would make the world sick, and warriors of the rainbow would come together to save it.)

Our oceans are the last global commons, and as such are about as effectively regulated as Dodge City when the West was at it's wildest. As recently as 40 years ago they were considered to be an inexhaustible resource. No amount of fishing could possibly make a dent, it seemed, in the teeming mass of ocean life which constantly replenished itself. It was a one-sided arms race, with increasingly advanced fishing techniques maximizing catches: GPS; sonar; trawl nets big enough to catch a jumbo jet; bottom trawling; fish aggregating devices and open-water 'ranching' are just some of the methods employed to extract maximum profit from the seas.

Many of these methods are so wasteful that as much as 80 per cent of what is caught in the nets gets thrown away. This 'bycatch' - a deliberately vague industry term designed (like the US military's famous euphemism 'collateral damage') to divert attention away from the fact that it involves carnage on an obscene scale - ranges from commercially-valuable fish that are too small or are the wrong species; to 'unwanted’ species like starfish, urchins and coral dragged up from the seabed; to large animals like sharks and turtles. What they all have in common is that as far as the fishermen are concerned, they have no economic value and as such are expendable.

And expended they have been. A new World Bank/UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report estimates that global fish stocks are now so low that only a drastic reformation of the way the world's fisheries are managed can prevent their collapse. Nearly one-third of the world's fisheries are severely depleted, and there have been several high-profile examples of complete collapse, such as the Grand Banks cod stocks off Canada's eastern coast.

This being a World Bank report, of course, the emphasis is less on criticising the insane greed and willful lack of regulation that have led us to this appalling situation, and more on how the international fishing industry can get back to profitability. According to the World Bank's Keiron Kelleher, "Sustainable fisheries require political will to replace incentives for overfishing with incentives for responsible stewardship". Indeed they do, but that's much easier said than done - it would be fair to say that 'responsible' is the last word you'd be likely to apply to the behaviour of most fishermen and the national governments charged with regulating them. The reality is that thanks to massive government subsidies (reckoned to be worth around $30 billion in 2006) the global fishing fleet is at least double the size it needs to be to catch the amount of fish available. Unless urgent action is taken to reduce over-capacity then the scenario of too many boats chasing too few fish will continue until our once fecund oceans are turned into a wasteland.

Fortunately the report has another potential solution up its sleeve. Apparently it has now come to their attention that establishing "no take zones" has been shown to improve fish stocks and biodiversity. A "no take zone" by any other name is, of course, a marine reserve - something that Greenpeace has been arguing for years is the only viable way to give depleted fish stocks a realistic chance of recovery.

The best scientific estimates at this point suggest that as much as 40 per cent of the oceans' surface area would need to become marine reserves, where no fishing or extractive industry (such as oil, gas and gravel removal) is permitted, while the remaining 60 per cent would have to be fished as sustainably as possible by a greatly reduced global fishing fleet. These not only allow areas and species to be protected, they also build in a resilience to the oceans, to withstand stresses and strains to come… To use a banking analogy, creating marine reserves is the way of investing in the future of our seas.

So there is hope, but it's going to require some pretty fundamental changes in the way we use our oceans. And that change needs to happen soon, so that there are some fish left for the marine reserves to protect!

Cars are responsible for 12 per cent of all CO2 emissions across the EU

Once again our government's green credentials have been put to the test and found wanting. Presented by the EU Parliament with a perfect opportunity to force Europe's motor industries to reign-in their gas guzzling, climate damaging ways, they opted instead to give in to the demands of the car lobby.

Only two weeks ago the European Parliament unexpectedly backed legislation which would have dramatically cut the amount of CO2 passenger vehicles are allowed to emit, sending a long overdue signal that the days of gas-guzzling cars are coming to an end. Resisting strong pressure from car manufacturers, MEPs on the environment committee approved measures to limit vehicle emissions to 120 CO2/km by 2012. They also agreed on a longer term target to reduce emissions still further - to 95g CO2/km by 2020. This compares with a current EU average of 158g CO2/km.

But Europe's car makers, who had lobbyed heavily for both a delay to the 2012 target date and weaker penalties for non-compliance, were not about to respect the Parliament's decision. Their lobbying continued at ministerial level, as both EU environment ministers and the European Commission needed to agree on the final wording of the proposals in order to make them a reality. And in the the end it appears to have been the UK government which has been most influential in ensuring that the proposals will not see the light of day, and that concessions to the German car industry proposed earlier in the year by French PM Nicholas Sarkosy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are adopted across Europe in their place.

So instead of effective legislation to limit emissions from cars and protect the climate, we get protectionist policies designed to defend outdated and inefficient car industries in the UK, France and Germany. Will they ever learn?

There've been two new blows to the UK's prospects of tackling climate change in the last couple of days.

First, City Airport got permission to increase flights to and from the airport by up to 50 per cent - despite the presence of dozens of flashmobbers registering their opposition outside Newham Town Hall (where the decision meeting was taking place), and local planners, teachers and campaigners from a number of organisations inside the hall. And despite the fact that the airport representatives couldn't and didn't even try to answer the accusations that they'd lied and their noise figures were inaccurate.

And then, ignoring powerful opposition from Stop Stansted Expansion and thousands of others, the government's minister for BAA transport secretary gave Stansted Airport the go ahead for an extra 10 million passengers - or 23,000 flights - a year.

Overall then, a bad day for the UK's emissions. But the subtext of the decision is even more worrying; despite the reshuffle, despite the government's recent signals that it will agree to a target that necessitates the stopping of growth from aviation, the government is carrying on with business as usual. 'Business' being the operative word; as the Lib Dem's Norman Baker observed, it's "further evidence that the government is in the pocket of the aviation industry".

The government's somewhat dense letter to BAA (pdf) confirming its decision on Stansted is quite revealing. In it, the government admits it is pretty much ignoring the climate change bill ("The Secretaries of State note that neither the Planning Bill nor Climate Change Bill have been enacted, and afford them little weight, as they might be subject to change").

The letter also reveals that the government still hasn't grasped a fundamental reality about airport expansion: that aviation growth is irreconcilable with tackling climate change (as we've explained before, if aviation keeps expanding at predicted levels, its emissions would wipe out our entire 2050 carbon budget).

And yet the Secretaries of State, says the letter, "share the Inspector's view that Government policy seeks to reconcile growth in aviation to meet the needs identified in the [Air Transport White Paper] with action to address climate change..."

On the bright side, there has been some small consolation for anti-aviation expansion campaigners this week: Coventry airport lost its High Court appeal to build a terminal this week.

But for now, campaigners' eyes are on the Heathrow decision - and whether the government, for once, can make reality match its rhetoric.

Jayapura (image by sandranahdar, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

As I write this, I'm sat in a hotel lobby looking out on to a market place where women are sat on the hard tarmac, blankets with tomatoes, lemongrass, onions and chillies spread out before them. Towering behind them is the incongruous bulk of the local KFC and, although there was torrential rain an hour ago, the streets are bone dry. That's because it's very very hot which is not surprising when you're a few degrees south of the equator.

I should be on board the Esperanza but a slight problem with the ship's internet connection has forced me ashore to Jayapura. The small but busy town, wedged up against the Indonesian side of the border with Papua New Guinea, has been my home for the past few days. As part of a team of Greenpeace staff and supporters, I've been preparing for the second leg of the Forests For Climate tour and in a couple of hours we'll sail off on a voyage to visit other areas of this vast and exotic archipelago.

The first leg was on the eastern side of the border in Papua New Guinea where the team spent six weeks documenting the threats facing these magnificent forests, particularly from illegal logging. With pretty much a complete change in crew, the baton is now being passed to us and we'll be doing the same in Indonesia where the forests face the usual list of horrors - industrial and destructive logging, mining and (the one we're going to concentrate on) the ballooning palm oil industry which threatens to gobble up what's left of the country's forests.

Having worked on the Dove campaign that ran in the UK earlier this year (which was of course all about palm oil), it's a fantastic opportunity for me to see how our campaign ties in with the work being done in south east Asia. And like most of our campaigns, it's very much a global effort - in places like Europe and the US we concentrate on the big brand names at the consumer end of the market, while here on the other side of the world, it's the government and palm oil producers we want to change.

The massive gulf between the women I saw in the market and the shiny hallmarks of Western capitalism which are evident all around Jayapura is typical of political rhetoric in Indonesia. The government says that this economic development - in the shape of logging and palm oil plantation concessions, as well as major projects like a trans-Papuan highway - is for the benefit of the Papuans themselves. But it's clear that the real benefactors are the large timber and agricultural companies clearing the forests and (in a country where corruption is endemic) government officials as well.

As the name of the tour suggests, it's all about how the few remaining areas of forest have to be protected if we're going to get this climate change thing sorted. Indonesia is already the largest palm oil producer on the planet, and has plans to expand even further which means getting rid of the forests. The country also ranks third in the top greenhouse gas emitters, and that's largely down to deforestation, so you can see the problem.

I'll be posting a few highlights from the trip here, but you can follow the full story on the Forests For Climate blog. I've already had the chance to meet a few Papuans from other environmental and indigenous rights groups, and you can hear interviews with them on the blog. Internet problems permitting, I should be posting most days.

TANC - making headlines in the Shropshire Star

Telford Against New coal (TANC) yesterday launched their campaign to stop an opencast coal mine at the foot of the Wrekin Hills from getting planning permission. Besides the obvious climate change implications, the proposed 230 acre site would encroach into the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and ruin some of the largest and most valuable areas of ancient woodland in the county.

If it gets the go-ahead UK Coal expects to extract 900,000 tonnes of coal from the mine and burn it in climate wrecking power stations.

TANC members grilled Telford and Wrekin Council's head of planning for nearly an hour to impress on him the damage that the new mine could cause, both to the climate and the local environment. Their protest outside the council offices in Telford was reported on the front page of the Shropshire Star (which you may be surprised to learn is the second largest circulation regional paper in the country!) and on local BBC radio.

Find out more about TANC at www.tanc.org.uk. And if you need reminding about just what's so bad about the black stuff - read our Case against Coal.

She's our world famous flagship, she's helped to win Greenpeace campaigns across the globe and now she's coming to the UK to persuade Gordon Brown to Give Coal the Boot.

As I write, the Rainbow Warrior II is winging her way from Greece towards UK waters. She's due to arrive for a two week tour in around 10 days' time - and you're invited to come on board and meet the crew: book your boarding pass here.

As well as open days, there'll be political visits, campaign seminars and a journey along the Kent coastline to highlight how Kent is threatened by climate change. I'll be blogging from the ship throughout the tour so, if you can't make it in person, follow the ship tour blog or sign up for daily email updates:

For the past few months, the Warrior has been telling governments around the world to quit coal and join the clean energy revolution. The ship is on her way to Poland for crucial climate talks in December - and is coming to the UK to tell Brown to Give Coal the Boot and embrace an energy revolution based on efficiency, renewables and combined heat and power instead.

I'll keep you updated. In the meantime, if you're as excited as I am, feel free to keep compulsively checking the Rainbow Warrior webcam instead of doing any proper work:

We're going to be a bit short staffed on the blog over the next couple of months - Jamie has joined our ship the Esperanza in Indonesia to help document forest and peatland destruction and collect evidence about the palm oil companies that are driving the devastation.

It's his first time on a Greenpeace ship so we're still waiting to hear how he handles the sea sickness, but looks like he had an amazing introduction to the tour:

Earlier this morning, under a blistering tropical sun the Esperanza slid slowly in to dock in Jayapura harbour. About 100 people were waiting on the dockside to welcome the crew, including the mayor and a troupe of colourful dancers. I was also waiting, not just to see the ship arrive but to join the crew as we set out on the next stage of our Forests For Climate tour.

Over the next six weeks, we'll be touring the archipelago to do a number of things. We'll be showing you the incredible wonders of the majestic forests and peatlands in Papua and Sumatra, which will also serve as a reminder of what we stand to lose if the current rates of deforestation continue. We'll be collecting evidence about companies who are causing the devastation as they expand their operations - the focus will be on the growth of the palm oil industry, but there are plenty of other factors, including industrial logging and mining. And we'll also be providing solutions to the crisis both long and short term so these forests can be permanently protected.

So why Papua? As one half of the remote and mountainous New Guinea island, it contains the largest area of remaining forest in Indonesia - with those of Sumatra and Kalimintan on the island of Borneo largely gone or degraded, this really is the last frontier. New Guinea as a whole is home to hundreds of distinct tribes and clans with a corresponding range of cultural diversity. And of course the biodiversity is second to none, with animals and plants new to science being recorded on a regular basis.

That alone makes the forests worth protecting, but as we now realise they're also vitally important when it comes to climate change. Not only do the trees and soil act as huge carbon stores, cutting them down also releases that carbon in the form of greenhouse gases. Indonesia is the third largest emitter on the planet, largely due to deforestation, so if we're going to beat climate change we have to save the forests, including those in Papua.

The way to do this is to place a moratorium on all deforestation across Indonesia, which will provide the breathing space necessary to work on plans to safeguard the future of these forests. The Indonesian government is the one to lay down a moratorium, but it also needs the palm oil industry to provide ministers the space to do so.

Over the course of the coming weeks, we'll be filling in the details on this blog - the problems we face, the companies and people involved on both sides of the argument, and what we can do to fix it.

So come and join us. It's going to be an exhilarating expedition for all of us, but also a very urgent one. The effects of climate change are already being felt around the world and we don't have long to prevent the worst predictions becoming inevitable. We still have time if we act now.

You can follow all of Jamie's updates on the Greenpeace Forests for Climate blog, and we'll reprint some of the highlights here.

• Airport loses High Court appeal
  Coventry Airport has lost its High Court appeal to build a terminal capable of handling more than two million passengers a year.

Entries at the Milan Sushi Awards earlier in the year (image by Thomas Lu, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

Working at Greenpeace often means that I find myself in some unusual places - inside a nuclear power station, atop an aeroplane or in a palm oil factory. But I certainly never expected to find myself at an international sushi awards ceremony.

Last year at the annual London Sushi Awards, 7 sushi samurai battled it out to earn the prestigious accolade of creating the 'sushi of the year'. One of these top sushi chefs was later exposed as having used endangered bluefin tuna in their sushi creation. Whilst they didn't actually win the competition (a vegetarian sushi piece was awarded top marks), it didn't reflect well on event organisers Eat Japan.

This year we wrote to Eat Japan in advance of the Awards and were pleasantly surprised when they confirmed that no bluefin tuna would be used this time around. So, when I and two other Greenpeace staffers found ourselves attending the Awards, we came armed not with banners as we expected, but only with our best clothes and some business cards.

Despite the image that you might have of long-bearded hippies in hairshirts discussing the latest innovations in tofu, Greenpeace isn't a vegetarian organisation. Yes cutting down on meat consumption is a good way to reduce your carbon footprint and eating less fish will help conserve dwindling fish stocks but for those of us that don't want to give up fish altogether there are more sustainable alternatives.

One of the sushi chefs - Silla Pernille Bjerrum (head chef and director of the popular sushi restaurant Feng Sushi) - created a sushi dish that I didn't feel guilty about eating. She used line caught mackerel from Cornwall, showing that being green doesn't need to mean compromising on taste. She didn't win but the 'sushi of the year' award went to a creation that didn't even use fish - yes the veggies won again.

Not only has Silla never used bluefin tuna in her own restaurant but she's doing all she can to ensure that she only uses sustainable seafood in all the sushi on her menu. Feng Sushi also looks set to be the latest sign up to our Seafood See Life campaign.

All in all it was a good night's work but it doesn't end here. We'll be campaigning to make sure that the London Sushi Awards keep bluefin tuna off the menu at least until stocks recover and effective management has been introduced. We are also working internationally to get permanent protection for the endangered bluefin - by turning their spawning grounds into marine reserves which will be off-limits to fishing. It's certainly in the interest of sushi-lovers everywhere, and after last night's event I suppose I can count myself as a sushi-lover now as well as an environmentalist.

We knew the government's plans on biofuels were a bit of a mess, but figures released today by the Renewable Fuel Agency show just how bad the situation is.

First off, the agency reports that 80 per cent of biofuels used in the UK don't meet government sustainability targets. In fact several companies, including BP and Esso, admitted that they didn't produce a single litre of biofuel that met the government's qualifying environmental standard.

Secondly it reveals that 12 per cent of all biodiesel sold in the UK is made from palm oil. Demand for palm oil has grown in recent times (partly in response to skyrocketing oil prices), driving rainforest destruction across South East Asia as forests and peatland is cleared for new plantations. This destruction is releasing massive quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, helping to make Indonesia the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. In February Science magazine reported that using palm oil grown in Indonesia to fuel vehicles is up to 420 times as damaging to the climate as the fossil fuels they replace.

So by putting cheaper crops like palm oil into our fuel tanks companies are actually contributing to climate change. Without safeguards in place, setting a compulsory minimum target for the percentage of biofuel in every litre of diesel (currently 2.5 per cent) is quite clearly a disaster for the world's forests and a major obstacle in the fight against climate change.

And all the petrol stations tested were well over the 2.5 per cent government target with biodiesel already accounting for almost five per cent of diesel used.

Results from a BP station in Northampton, for example, showed that it was selling diesel "consistent with a biofuel mix" of 4.8 per cent, of which 30 per cent was palm oil.

What can be done? Well, it's about time the Prime Minister stepped in and scrapped the biofuel targets, because without sustainability safeguards in place they are having exactly the opposite effect to that which was originally intended. And big players like BP need to urgently recognise the damage that is being done, and rather than exploiting confused biofuels laws to boost their profits, they should instead support a complete halt to the destruction of Indonesia's forests for palm oil.

• Half of Europe's frogs face extinction
  More than half of all amphibian species in Europe could become extinct by 2050 because of a combination of habitat loss, infectious diseases and the effects of climate change, scientists have found
• Nuclear accidents and fatalities: the numbers
  In an article for EnergyBiz magazine, Benjamin K. Sovacool has some figures on the number of accidents and casualties caused by the nuclear industry.

• Brazilian government faces criminal charges over Amazon deforestation
  Illegal logging increases sharply as rising food prices push soy farmers and cattle ranchers to clear more land
• India’s nuclear industry: life imitates The Simpsons once more
  There’s a scene in The Simpsons Movie where Homer, on his way to empty the silo full of his pet pig’s poo, gets a call from his friend Lennie telling him that the local doughnut store is giving away free doughnuts. Weak, weak Homer, unable to wait in the queue for the town dump, drops the silo in the lake instead and heads off for free doughnuts.

• new software for mobile phones that can measure transport carbon footprint
  An interesting mobile app that uses GPS to determine what kind of transport you're using and calculates your emissions.
• Cracks appear in the French nuclear consensus
  The Financial Times: Hopes of new markets have been threatened by a series of low-level incidents at the nearby nuclear installation - Europe's largest.

• UK opposes green aviation target
  The UK government is trying to sabotage the EU renewables target. Again.
• Inspecting Britain's nuclear ‘renaissance’
  Britain is launching its nuclear ‘renaissance’ with a shortage of safety inspectors.

• White House Edits Another Memo to Minimize Global Warming
  Again.
• Green idealists most likely to take long-haul flights, says study
  People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers.
• Quiz the climate change minister

• Where's My Orangutan?