Author Avatar

2018: in pictures

Posted by Angela Glienicke - 18th December 2018


2018 has been a huge year of victories, challenges and tireless work by people around the world for a cleaner, fairer planet. Here are some of the highlights of over the last 12 months.

JANUARY

Groups of penguins pop up in locations around the UK, as part of  a Greenpeace campaign for the establishment of an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary. The sanctuary would be a safe haven for penguins, whales and seals, putting the waters off-limits to the industrial fishing vessels sucking up the tiny shrimp-like krill which Antarctic life relies on.

FEBRUARY

Inflatables are photographed near Discovery Bay (see GPS), on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica.
Greenpeace conducted scientific research and documenting the Antarctic’s unique wildlife, to strengthen the proposal to create the largest protected area on the planet, an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary.

MARCH

Oscar-winning actor and writer Emma Thompson joins dozens of Lancashire women on a peaceful walk and silent protest at the controversial Cuadrilla site in Preston New Road. Preston. The Nanny McPhee star is in Preston to show solidarity with local women who have been opposing Cuadrilla’s plan to frack in the area for years.Lancashire county council voted against the controversial drilling technique in 2015 but was subsequently overruled by the government.

APRIL

The entrance to the Canadian High Commission in Trafalgar Square is blocked by climate campaigners who built a huge oil pipeline around the building. The protest comes as Canadian PM Justin Trudeau touches down in London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.
The blockade is a protest against the Trudeau government’s plans to build a huge oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands across indigenous lands to ports in British Columbia.

MAY

Four women dismantle a VW Golf TDI diesel car at an unofficial fringe exhibition at the V&A to protest against Volkswagen’s continued support of polluting diesel engines.

JUNE

At the Download Festival Greenpeace volunteers set up a stall for the Deposit Return Scheme as part of the campaign against plastics.

JULY

40 Greenpeace activists take over the main entrance to Barclays Bank’s corporate headquarters near Canary Wharf in London’s docklands. The protest was against the bank’s refusal to stop funding pipelines to take oil from Canada’s tar sands to market in the USA and Asia.

AUGUST

Greenpeace air pollution campaigners and medical professionals block more than 800 Volkswagen staff from entering the company’s head office in Milton Keynes. Greenpeace is demanding Volkswagen commit to stop producing diesel cars and go 100% electric.

SEPTEMBER

Greenpeace volunteers paste up Birds of Paradise stickers as part of the Greenpeace campaign ‘Wings of Paradise’ highlighting deforestation in the Indonesian province of West Papua.

OCTOBER

Actress Gillian Anderson and Greenpeace deliver a petition with over 350,000 names to the UK government asking them to Protect the Antarctic by creating an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary.

NOVEMBER

Greenpeace volunteers create a burnt, smouldering rainforest with a lifelike animatronic orangutan at the headquarters of Oreo cookies near Uxbridge, UK. Greenpeace is calling on the makers of Oreo to stop buying palm oil from Wilmar, the biggest palm oil producer, who have destroyed 70,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforest in the last 2 years.

DECEMBER

Greenpeace delivers a message to Barclays’ Bank in the form of an oil spill stuck across their flagship branch in Piccadilly Circus. Of the 30,000 Barclays customers Greenpeace contacted about the issue, over 6,000, pledged to switch their accounts to another bank unless Barclays changed their policy on funding pipelines for the Canadian tar sands. Barclays are the last UK bank still offering funding to these pipelines.