It seems that the 30 Greenpeace activists locked up for illegally boarding an oil platform will shortly be released. Putin was threatening to jail them for an outrageous 15 years, but yesterday announced he had backtracked on that. The rig they were targeting will be the first to start commercial offshore oil drilling in the Arctic, one of the world’s last unprotected wilderness. One thing is certain: climate change is causing Arctic sea ice to melt at a terrifying rate – 500,000km² a decade since 1979, in fact. Think how much that will accelerate if prospectors – who reckon the Arctic contains as much as 20% of the world’s oil and gas – launch a “new gold rush” in the area. Calamity. In 2007, the “worst case scenario” was that Arctic late-summer sea ice might disappear by the end of the century. Now, it could happen in a decade. That’s why we should care about the Arctic 30. Unlike the rest of us, Greenpeace have been doing something about it. (adapted from an article by Camilla Cavendish, The Sunday Times)

The number of issues we face is daunting, and somehow or other I find myself airing them and desperately trying to find good news, instead of the drip-drip of depressing news. Give some money to Greenpeace, if you have any left after addressing the the long list of other causes. What else can we do? The bad people have the initiative and despise the rest of us.