A bright orange peace sign appeared on a hillside on the Greek island of Lesbos on New Year's Day, transforming a growing pile of life jackets discarded by refugees arriving on the island into a message to the world. 

Eco-warriors on the front lines of climate diplomacy often frame the environmental conflict between the developed and the developing world as a version of the notorious skirmish between Lawrence H. Summers and José Lutzenberger, which happened on the sidelines of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, widely seen as the official start of the world’s interest in climate change.

Last December, as the world celebrated Russia’s widely publicized release of dissident tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, two members of the punk band Pussy Riot and 29 Greenpeace activists, a court in the southern region of Krasnodar — where the Sochi Winter Olympics open next month — sentenced environmentalist Evgeny Vitishko to three years in a penal colony.

Anita L. DeFrantz has her bags packed for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — but heck, she's had her bags packed for athletic events around the world for the last 40 years, as a competitor and as a member of the International Olympic Committee (currently on the executive board) and the U.S. Olympic Committee (board member).

Greenpeace activists released following an amnesty over their eye-catching protest in the Russian Arctic say they aren't giving up the fight. As members of the 30-strong Greenpeace crew arrested for protesting outside an oil rig arrived home from Russia, messages of defiance poured forth in interviews and statements released by local branches of the environmental group.

In a dramatic easing of its hardline stance, Russian courts granted bail this week to nineteen of the thirty Greenpeace crew members detained since September for a protest outside a Russian oil rig in the Arctic. Seven activists received the good news today, joining others who appeared in court on Monday and Tuesday, while another twelve are still awaiting custody hearings. So far, only one detainee has been set free.

Campaigners supporting the environmental group Greenpeace have briefly disrupted a Champions League match in Switzerland in a protest against the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a sponsor of the game. Four activists on October 1 abseiled from the roof of the stadium to the field in Basel and unfurled a banner that read: “Gazprom. Don’t Foul The Arctic.”