Greenpeace

Greenpeace is an international environmental organization that pioneered environmental direct-action tactics and has gone on to become one of the largest and most important global forces in the name of environmental protection. Greenpeace, which takes its name from its dual concerns of antimilitarism and environmentalism, was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1971. It was one of several new environmental organizations to grow out of the New Left activism of the 1960s, and it adopted a decidedly more confrontational approach to environmental protection relative to the conservation organizations that preceded it.

Its first action was characteristic of the tactics and style that would come to define the organization. A [Page 826]number of activists, along with invited journalists, sailed an old fishing vessel toward the Aleutian Island of Amchitka north of Alaska with the intent to draw attention to the underground nuclear testing that was being conducted by the United States in that area. Although the contingent was intercepted by U.S. forces and never reached the testing zone, the incident received a great deal of publicity and the activists successfully brought the issue of nuclear testing to the world's attention. International pressure spawned by Greenpeace actions eventually brought an end to nuclear testing in the Aleutians.

Using the Quaker notion of “bearing witness,” Greenpeace activists would continue to use nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to practices that threatened the environment. Although some were critical of the masculinist organizational culture associated with the focus on daring stunts, the group's actions continued to attract media attention and win public support. For its first decade these actions focused primarily on nuclear issues and the protection of ocean mammals. Greenpeace activists campaigned against seal hunts and the whaling industry, sometimes placing themselves between whaling vessels and their prey.