The papers have been filled with reviews of the year and we're barrelling into awards season, so it's only fitting that we have some awards of our own. My colleagues over on the very entertaining Nuclear Reactions have been staging their own award ceremony, "to recognise those who have help make the nuclear industry the over-subsidised and under-scrutinised joke it is today".

Remember the palm oil tanker which the Esperanza prevented from docking in Indonesia last month? That same tanker - the Isola Corallo - arrived in European waters on Christmas Eve en route to Rotterdam, and was met by a group of Greenpeace activists who painted 'Forest Crime' along its hull.

I was on board the Esperanza during that first Indonesian action against the Corallo and it's brilliant to see this tanker - which is carrying 29,000 tonnes of palm oil belonging to Sinar Mas, Indonesia's largest producer - becoming the centre of attention once more here in Europe. It draws a thick line across the globe between the causes of deforestation in Indonesia and demand for products like palm oil on this side of the world.

Read the full story on the Greenpeace South East Asia website and find out more about the Indonesian end of the story in our latest podcast.

Fire burns through forest in Sumatra, clearing the area for plantations © Greenpeace/Novis

It's been a few weeks since the Esperanza's tour of Indonesia wrapped up with an exhausting but thrilling week of direct action focused on various palm oil tankers, and I've since left those humid equatorial climes to return to a chilly British winter. But even though the ship has moved on to other countries and campaigns, the palm oil campaign continues and in the past few weeks there have been some developments.

The most obvious has been annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Bali - this could have been the moment the industry got its act together and did something other than spin the usual load of greenwash over its involvement in the destruction of south east Asia's rainforests. Sadly, it was not to be. Although our ship painting/blockading actions drew a lot of attention, as did our earlier revelations about United Plantations and their 'sustainable' palm oil, no real progress was made.

Our podcast has skipped a month, but then with the Rainbow Warrior gracing our shores things have been a tad busy around here of late. As you may know, she was here in October as part of the international Quit Coal tour, and we went to meet some of the Greenpeace supporters who came to have a look round during the open boat days.

Also on our radar was the recent Indonesia tour undertaken by that other Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza. I was lucky enough to be there and while the crew were busy painting and blockading palm oil tankers in Sumatra, I was able to talk to them about what it's like being in the middle of a major piece of direct action.

And you'll have to excuse my froggy throat in the introduction, there's a cold going around the office.

Download this podcast

You can also listen to it right now - just click the play button below.

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes | Google Reader | My Yahoo!

You can also subscribe by email to receive an alert when a new episode is published.

The New York Times magazine isn't on my normal reading list but my attention has been pointed towards their annual Year In Ideas issue. This festive celebration of high-concept thinking (and the odd stocking filler, like never-ending bubble wrap) is their take on the year in review and there was great excitement in the office this morning when we heard that the Kingsnorth Six had made it into the August list.

Despite the gloom coming out of the EU climate talks at the end of last week (and the non-event that UN discussions on the same topic in Poznan appear to have been), there is one ray of hope shining from Brussels in the form of the Renewable Energy Target which will set binding goals for EU governments on sourcing energy from renewable sources.

It's been a tough road, not least because of ex-business secretary John Hutton's attempts to weaken the deal. Then it looked like some countries - Italy and Poland were the ringleaders - were going to knobble the agreement by demanding it be reviewed in 2014 but a compromise was put forward and a deal has been reached.

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance of the Amazon rainforest, but logging companies intent on plundering it for timber have been using hackers to break into the Brazilian government's sophisticated tracking system and fiddle the records.

To monitor the amount of timber leaving the Amazon state of Pará, the Brazilian environment ministry did away with paper dockets and two years ago introduced an online system. Companies logging the rainforest for timber or charcoal production are only allowed to fell a certain amount of timber every year and this is controlled by the use of transport permits issued by the state government's computer system.

If you need some cheering up on this dark, dark afternoon (and who doesn't given the news spilling out of the various climate talks in Brussels and Poznan - I don't think we'll be able to update until next week, but it's not good), try this. An exuberant Hank Green from Ecogeek has done some ad-hoc light bulb testing to show how incandescents, CFLs and LEDs compare. Shame this wasn't done in time for the recent EU vote on light bulbs.

Link

(Thanks, Treehugger)

If you've been wondering what's been happening on the light bulb front since our Woolworths campaign last year (and much as they were in our bad books, it's sorry to see them go), there's been some developments on the European stage where politicians have been voting on plans to improve their efficiency and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the EU.

The good news is that, on Tuesday, the EU has at long last agreed on a ban of inefficient incandescent light bulbs; the somewhat worse news is that we'll have to wait several years for it to come into full effect. In the meantime, inefficient bulbs will still be on sale and given the desperate need to reduce emissions, it's not enough and it's not soon enough.

I've just received an email about this action being spearheaded by the UK Youth Delegation at Poznan. Pick up the phone and make the call!

Right now, Gordon Brown is preparing to meet with other European heads of state to sign a crucial climate change deal. This deal is the first of its kind - and the rest of the world will use this as their example. If it’s not ambitious enough (and all signs point that way) this deal will jeopardise our future.

We have a small window of opportunity to change this. In the next 24 hours let’s get as many of us as possible to call Gordon Brown and ask him for the strong climate deal that we deserve!

1. Call this number - 0207 930 4433 (No.10 switchboard)
2. Say who you are, where you’re from and ask to leave a message for Gordon Brown
3. The operator will tell you that you can’t leave a message and should send a letter instead. Tell him/her that this is urgent, and you want to see Gordon push for a strong climate deal on Thursday
4. Call three friends and get them to call Gordon too
5. Forward this video on to everyone you know
6. Feel warm and fuzzy that you’ve exercised your democratic right!