How Green Are You? from Channel4.com

Greenpeace

1971 – present

The iconic green organisation, Greenpeace, has a reputation for rebellious, roughty-toughty tactics. In recent years though, the sheer number and breadth of Greenpeace activities and achievements, from education to lobbying to science, place it firmly in mainstream culture.

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(image left) The Greenpeace ship MY Arctic Sunrise is making her way through ice in the fjord of Scoresbysund as part of her tour of Greenland to document and support scientific work on the impacts and effects of climate change.
©Greenpeace

Greenpeace has a simple mission – to defend the natural world and to promote peace. The first campaigning began in the late 1960s, when a loosely affiliated group of anti-nuclear protestors rallied against US nuclear bomb testing. They specifically wanted to stop nuclear tests underneath the island of Amchitka in Alaska.

(image right) 13 July 1999. Bering Strait. A young walrus rests on a small, thin and melting iceberg as the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise passes by. Global warming is blamed for affecting the Polar regions.
©Greenpeace

In 1971, the group chartered a fishing vessel to sail them to Amchitka to protest. They called the vessel Greenpeace. They weren't successful in stopping the test, but the voyage laid the groundwork for much of their later work towards nuclear test bans. Since 1971, Greenpeace has mushroomed into an international organisation that runs a huge array of campaigns.

Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza and her inflatables, try to hinder the shooting and eventual transfer of a minke whale by the Yushin Maru No.2 catcher ship.

(image left) Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza and her inflatables, try to hinder the shooting and eventual transfer of a minke whale by the Yushin Maru No.2 catcher ship. After two and a half hours of running the gauntlet between the harpoon and the whale the activists witnessed the eventual kill of the whale.
©Greenpeace

Among other things Greenpeace has played a pivotal role in: a ban on exporting toxic waste to developing countries; a moratorium on commercial whaling; a UN convention on better management of world fisheries; a 50 year moratorium on mineral mining in Antarctica; bans on dumping radioactive waste, oil and industrial waste at sea; a ban on nuclear weapons testing; a southern whale sanctuary and an end to large-scale driftnet fishing.

Greenpeace volunteers shut down the site of the new Home Office HQ at 2 Marsham St, Westminster, and declared it an ancient forest crime scene.

(image right) London, UK. Greenpeace volunteers shut down the site of the new Home Office HQ at 2 Marsham Street, Westminster, and declared it an ancient forest crime scene. UK Government contractors are using plywood made from illegally logged Indonesian timber for hoardings and moulding concrete.
©Greenpeace

In the 1990s global warming gave Greenpeace a new focus for much of its work. Their activities have broadened as a result. You no longer have to be a hardy activist to be a Greenpeace affiliate, you can support them simply by switching to energy saving light bulbs, or signing a few e-mail protests from the comfort of your office chair!

Greenpeace releases a balloon with the banner saying 'BUSH & Co. = CLIMATE DISASTER' above Argentina's glacier Perito Moreno.

(image left) July 15 2001. Calafate, Argentina. Greenpeace releases a balloon with the banner saying 'BUSH & Co. = CLIMATE DISASTER' above Argentina's glacier Perito Moreno, the most important glacier in the Patagonian Andes. Greenpeace is urging USA, Japan, Canada and Australia to support the Kyoto Protocol.
©Greenpeace

If you want to help, visit their website.

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