We will post the latest news on our Twitter channel. We will also display the Twitter updates on our front page as well as updating this blog post.

Will the G8 leaders agree on a strong climate plan and a roadmap to the Copenhagen climate talks? Or will they fail once again? Stay tuned to find out!

UPDATED WITH IMAGES AND VIDEOS FROM DAY 2!

Latest updates displayed first:

Day Two

Watch: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticises G8 climate efforts http://su.pr/6VoTAd

Conclusion: The internet is mainly negative on the subject of g8, according to Google. http://su.pr/1iHfFv

UN S-G : ‘Much more needs to be done if governments are to seal the deal on a new climate agreement’ http://su.pr/9VVJpz

Sign our petition to hold @BarackObama and other #G8 leaders accountable on #climatechange http://bit.ly/g9Ybh

VIDEO: climate campaigner Ben Stewart talks about why he’s living on a coal smokestack during the #G8 http://su.pr/2gSvz5

Greenpeace: Five coal plants occupied by climate activists during G8 Summit http://su.pr/2RYC36

“Progress on #climatechange [at the #G8] was not enough.” UN Sec General Ban Ki-moon

Russia says 80% emissions reduction target by 2050 “unacceptable” http://su.pr/2L2L25

Take 2 painting STUPID on chimney at Brindisi, Italy’s most greenhouse-polluting coal plant. http://twitpic.com/9s4f5

G8 leaders failing to stop climate change http://bit.ly/zjJqL

G8: World leaders fail to agree specific target for climate cuts http://su.pr/2y1Aiz

G8: World leaders fail to agree specific target for climate cuts http://bit.ly/4hTvfy

RT @Greenpeace 35 hours occupying Brindisi. The sly has cleared over the mediterranean sea. We can see Albania from here!

“Only the G8 can agree on absolutely nothing, ignore the most pressing subjects and then claim a major breakthrough” #G8 RT @V_R_

Greenpeace are occupying FIVE coal plants now during the #G8! http://su.pr/2ethbZ

Blogs from activists on coal plants are posted here http://bit.ly/AEoq

Take Action! Ask world leaders to personally attend climate conference: http://su.pr/1O0eWk

This morning 5 climbers scaled Italy’s newest coal power plant near Rome to paint “G8 STOP THIS”

30 hrs @ Brindisi pwr plant. Just chkd out massive greenhse pollution exhausts. http://twitpic.com/9rn0y #G8 #climateaction RT @Greenpeace

Day One

BBC: G8 set new global warming targets http://su.pr/1N41Wq

Mount Rushmore banner: “America honors leaders. Not politicians. Stop Global warming.” http://su.pr/4M5qQk

The #G8 summit negotiations to halve global carbon emissions by 2050 have failed! Instead agree on a max 2C degree limit for climate change.

More TreeHugger: Big Climate Change Fail: Major Nations Fail to Agree to 50% Emission Cuts by 2050 http://su.pr/AGRu33

TreeHugger reports: Greenpeace Drapes Poster Over Mount Rushmore to Call for Climate Action http://su.pr/1BIj59

100 Activists Climb Coal Chimneys To Demand G-8 Leaders Get Tough: http://su.pr/9akeBI

Pictures from the G8 Coal Plant Action in Italy today: http://su.pr/6aFTjt

Watch: G8 Coal Plant Action http://su.pr/1kLokl #G8

You-Turn the Earth, a global campaign to let leaders know that we want to stop runaway climate change http://su.pr/3ktrSx

GP have actions going on in Italy with over 100 activists occupying coal power plants + a banner hanging on Mt. #Rushmore #climateaction #G8

Greenpeace is hanging a banner with a message to Obama on Mt Rushmore right now! http://su.pr/2rzliz

The Guardian: Greenpeace activists hijack Italian power stations http://su.pr/1GYWQ4

“a new coal plant at kingsnorth would emit more than the one we’re occupying near venice” http://su.pr/3OMa5o RT @greenpeaceuk

Want to be part of a global community ready to take action to demand action? Become a climate activist: http://su.pr/1g2ld1

#Obama staff say #climate change not caused by fossil fuels. GP leaks doc to press http://su.pr/1NGool Obama then changed #G8 RT @Greenpeace

Want 2 know how the #G8 countries score on #climate? see how #WWF scores them http://su.pr/1DBmjt

“Its the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.” http://su.pr/2wZSjP

G8 fails to get emerging powers to agree on climate change goals http://su.pr/2EVPMI

Half of emissions in the atmosphere are from coal. And every g8 country is planning new coal plants RT @greenpeaceuk

G8 emissions pledge is ‘scientifically illiterate’: http://su.pr/30qNfW

Oh my! G8 strip mob from Avaaz: http://su.pr/31wNOM

Watch: G8 Cooking Up the Planet and Spicing it with CO2 http://su.pr/1BLyO4

Greenpeace urges the G8 to ‘heal the world’ http://su.pr/A8rCHa

Greenpeace currently occupying power stations in Italy for L’Aquila summit http://su.pr/2Z1QUf

Greenpeace goes to the G8 http://su.pr/25r6zJ

Take Action! Ask world leaders to personally attend climate conference: http://su.pr/1O0eWk

Major nations have failed to agree to set a goal halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 http://su.pr/1NeVRY

Watch and read about G8 #climateaction as it happens in Italy today http://su.pr/2ethbZ

If the third runway in the UK is the proof of the country’s climate hypocrisy then Sweden’s would be the huge new highway projects in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

In Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden, climate activists from Klimax and the Friends of the Earth “decorated” cranes with banners, planted trees and even had a breakfast on the construction site to highlight and protest against the climate highway madness being built in Sweden.

“It’s bad enough that large amounts of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on projects that won’t work, but these road projects will even lead to an increase of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s ironically that that we activists’ risks getting arrested while the real criminals, who on a consciously and cynically way make decisions that will lock us into a continued increase of carbon dioxide emissions will go free. We just can’t sit quiet while climate criminal politicians threaten future generations living condition; it’s every citizen’s obligation to put pressure on the decision makers so they make climate friendly choices”, said Lovisa Börjeson from Klimax in Gothenburg.

Watch:

Earlier this month Lib Dem MP David Howarth held a press conference in Westminster to present a “highly disturbing and potentially explosive report” about how the police in the UK turning into a police state by “criminalising legitimate protest”.

“The report, produced by the Climate Camp’s legal support team and entitled Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?, is devastating for the police.

It documents a concerted campaign by police to deter, smear, intimidate, harass, and criminalise UK citizens who did nothing more than attempt to exercise their right to peaceful protest in the name of an important cause. The following film accompanies the report and fully conveys the extent of the scandal.”

The report came to the conclusion that the police had use “unlawful, repressive and disproportionate” force against the protestors and residents in Kingsnorth. For example was protestors and local resident’s property seized on a large scale:

“Property was seized on a scale previously unheard of and in a manner designed to obstruct and undermine the very existence of the Camp and intimidate attendees.”

In the video above a little kid is being interview. He said that the police confiscated his crayons because he could “commit a crime with crayons”:

“They took my crayons because apparently they said you can draw on banners and that you can, um, commit a crime with crayons.”

The report also notes that the police used “sleep deprivation and psychological operations” against the protestors:

“Sleep deprivation and psychological operations were used, involving frequent dawn raids, low flying helicopters at night, false alarm massing of police officers and vans, and early morning wake up calls with loud music playing ‘Flight of the Valkyries’, ‘Hi de Hi’, duck and dog noises, and ‘I fought the law and the law won’.”

Since the Climate Camp campaign started in 2006 not a single protestor has ever been convicted of any violent offence. Yet, the report notes, the legal and peaceful camp “continues to experience disproportionate and repressive policing”.

The report also cast light on a deliberate attempt to “deflect criticism through misinformation” from the UK Government and the police:

“Government justified the heavy-handed approach by revealing that 70 police officers had been injured policing the protest; but a freedom of information request revealed that these ‘injuries to police’ included such things as heatstroke, toothache and insect bites. Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister who had made the claim about police injuries, was later forced to apolgise to the House and admit that “there were no recorded injuries to police officers sustained as a result of direct contact with the protestors.”

The police operation at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp ended at a cost of £5.9 million and involved 1,500 officers from 26 forces.

Is the climate crisis turning democratic governments into police states who foolishly try to protect corporate and political interests, instead of trying to solve the real problems? What do you think? Unfortunately I think we will see more brutal police force, against protestors and climate change refugees, in a near future when the effects of climate change become more and more prominent in our societies.

Read more:
- Meet the new Britain: just like the old one where green protesters are spied on
- Why protesters are now stalkers

Shortly after the huge 2007 Walk Against Warming held around Australia, the newly-elected, extreme right-wing Rudd Labor Government actually signed the Kyoto Protocol but then proceeded to help the US sabotage the December 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference by refusing to agreed to defined targets (see “Bali Farce: Climate Criminal, Climate Racist US, Australia & Canada Threaten Bengal, India & the PLANET”).

Demonstrators at the 2008 Walk Against Warming hoped that they might – somehow – spur the lethargic, pro-Coal, climate criminal Australian Government into SOME action over the Climate Emergency.

Tens of thousands attended the rally at Martin Place in Sydney’s central business district. For some photos of the Sydney Walk Against Warming click here.

Cate Faehrmann of the Nature Conservation Council was one of the speakers at the Sydney Walk Against Warming Rally stating that greenhouse gas pollution must be reduced “to the levels that science is telling us is necessary for a safe climate, not just to the level the fossil fuels industry can live with. How hard is it to stop logging our native forests and protect them in perpetuity to the vital role they play in stabilising our climate? How hard is it to build a fast and efficient rail service at the same time as you are planning new suburbs?”

8,000 people attended the Walk Against Warming rally in Melbourne, Australia. There was a similar huge Walk Against Warming rally in Melbourne. We were there at the Melbourne Walk Against Warming with our local Climate Action Group, the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group together with other Climate Action Groups associated with the Climate Emergency Network and the Climate Movement.

For photos of the Melbourne Walk Against Warming Rally click here – the big red on white banner stating CLIMATE EMERGENCY was held aloft by OUR local Yarra Valley Climate Action Group. See the OTHER side of our banner.

A succession of eminent speakers at the Melbourne Rally urged the public to get the Australian government to take urgent action to tackle the Climate Emergency facing Australia and the Planet.

Thus eminent Australia climate scientist and member of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC, Professor David Karoly, stated that through existing pollution the world is ALREADY committed to temperature rises of 2 degrees Centigrade, massive polar region ice loss, massive sea level rises, massive ecosystem damage, coral reef damage and mass species extinction – he urged action to minimize the damage that is already in the pipeline.

The Melbourne Rally was addressed by video from “chilly” New York by US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (top US climate scientist; Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; member of the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences; 2007 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science; for 1880-present NASA GISS Global Temperature graphed data click here: and http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ ). Dr Hansen summarized the existing Climate Emergency, the dire threat to the Planet from combustion the huge remaining coal reserves and the urgent need for the public to become involved and insist on action.

One speaker told of the submergence of Pacific Islands that is happening NOW, and specifically of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea. The speaker told how a system of maternal inheritance had operated there but the present mothers would not be able to pass their inheritance on to their daughters because it would be drowned due to rising sea levels due to global warming.

However the example given could just as easily have been of Bengali islands in West Bengal, India and in Bangladesh. Thus Lohachara Island, once home to 10,000 Indians, finally disappeared under the waves in 2006, see: “Disappearing world: global warming claims tropical island. For the first time an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas”.

Climate Criminal Australia is not only disproportionately destroying the Planet – it is also in the process of destroying Australia’s (and the World’s) Great Barrier Reef (15% gone already and projected to die off completely above the MINIMUM atmospheric CO2 target of the Australian Government of 450 ppm), Australia’s Northern Territory Kakadu wetlands and the Murray-Darling River system (that covers one third of Australia, and which is involved in most of Australia’s agriculture).

The pro-Coal, pro-War Australian Labor Government and the pro-Coal, pro-War Liberal-Country Party Opposition (collectively known as the Lib-Labs) refuse to act to reduce Australia’s world-leading CO2 pollution – a position of greed, cowardice, climate racism and criminal irresponsibility that is simply explained by the reality that Australia’s coal industry , including its world-leading coal exports, is worth $100 billion and 25,000 jobs each year whereas the priceless Great Barrier Reef is only worth (in purely economic terms from tourism and fisheries ) $7 billion and 63,000 jobs each year (source).

To decent Australian who love their country the survival of the Great Barrier Reef is NOT NEGOTIABLE.

We all contribute to this mounting disaster, to the Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency but some countries do so disproportionately, most notably the oil-exporting Gulf States, the rain-forest destroying South East Asian states and racist, climate criminal (and war criminal) Western countries with the highest annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution – the US, Canada and Australia (for details see the Climate Emergency Fact Sheets of the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group).

Thus a Germanwatch is a German Climate Change Performance Index that compares the 56 worst greenhouse gas emitting nations on the basis of pollution contributions and policy directions. Of these countries in 2008, Sweden, Germany, Iceland, Mexico and INDIA are the BEST, ranking 1,2 3, 4 and 5 , respectively. However the very WORST polluters are Canada (#53), Australia (#54), the USA (#55) and Saudi Arabia (#56) (see source). however a key point made by these observers is that “even the winners are no winners”.

Another comparison reveals that in terms of “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” Australia is the world’s #1 Developed Nation CO2 polluter. Consulting the US Energy Information Administration database we obtain the following information on “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” in “tonnes (t) per person per year” for Australia and other major polluters (2004 data): 19.2 (for Australia; 40 if you include Australia’s world-leading coal exports), 19.7 (the US), 18.4 (Canada), 9.9 (Japan), 4.2 (the World), 3.6 (China), 1.0 ( India) and 0.25 (for Bangladesh).

An appalling level of media, politician and academic censorship – an entrenched Culture of Ignoring , Denial and of lying by omission and commission – means that most Australians are unaware of Australia’s shocking “annual per capita exported and domestic fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” that currently (2008) stands at about 50 tonnes (t) per person per year and is set to increase enormously under the pro-Coal Rudd Labor Federal Government. Thus the Federal Governments election promise of “60% reduction of Domestic CO2 pollution by 2050” in actuality means a 50% INCREASE in Domestic plus Exported CO2 pollution by 2050.

Decent Australians can protest (as in the Walk Against Warming) and otherwise INFORM others about the Climate Emergency and appalling climate criminal Government inaction.What can decent people around the World do about this disaster due to climate criminal inaction?

Decent people around the World must defend their OWN country and their OWN people – as well as defending the Planet, including Australia’s own Great Barrier Reef that the climate criminal White Australians are in the process of KILLING – by (a) INFORMING others, (b) applying SANCTIONS and BOYCOTTS (e.g. as successfully applied against the UK-, US-, Apartheid Israel- and Australia-supported Apartheid régime in South Africa for denying equal rights to Indians and Africans) and (c) URGING their Governments to bring climate criminal Australia and like climate criminal countries to the International Criminal Court over ongoing Australian involvement in Climate Genocide – I have done MY duty as an Australian citizen and citizen of the World by doing exactly that (see “Formal complaint to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court re Australian Government involvement in Aboriginal Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide and Climate Genocide“).