Greenpeace

DATE: Established 1971

Mission

An independent international activist and research organization, Greenpeace is funded almost entirely by contributions from individuals and private foundations. It works to produce and distribute educational and advocacy materials, support grassroots activism, encourage pressure on legislatures and other national and international bodies, and conduct original research on global warming, clean energy, and other issues.

Greenpeace’s first action in 1971 was to protest US nuclear testing off the Alaskan coast at the island of Amchitka, attempting to stop a test by steering a fishing boat named Greenpeace I into the path of military vessels. In 1974, the organization launched its first environmental effort with the Save the Whales campaign, capturing the attention and imagination of people worldwide. These first activities illustrated what would become Greenpeace trademarks: well-publicized actions of nonviolent resistance based on solid science, attracting widespread public attention to pacifist and environmental causes.

By early 2020, Greenpeace had expanded to become an international organization with a presence in many countries and a wide-ranging, multipart mission. At that point, its website identified four overarching missions: to protect biodiversity; to prevent ocean, land, air, and fresh water pollution; to end nuclear threats; and to promote peace and nonviolence. More specific goals highlighted by the organization included advocating for forest restoration; ending dependence on oil; saving the Amazon, the Arctic, and bees; and encouraging a more plant-based diet.

To combat global warming, Greenpeace has taken a multipronged approach. It began its Project Hot Seat campaign in the first decade of the twenty-first century to target individual members of the US Congress, encouraging supporters to pressure legislators to support global warming bills. Greenpeace has also conducted and published research projects, engaged in legal action against large emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and campaigned actively to sway the opinions of participants in United Nations climate conferences. Its website and publications attempt to reach a broad audience with information about issues such as global warming, refutation of arguments made by skeptics, and opportunities for activism.

Significance for Climate Change

As of early 2024, Greenpeace had an international headquarters in Amsterdam, as well as twenty-five regional and offices in more than fifty-five countries. It had more than 250,000 contributing members in the United States and 3.5 million worldwide. With a small paid staff and thousands of volunteers, Greenpeace works to increase awareness of global warming and specific environmental issues among the general population, and it targets particular experts and officials at opportune moments, as it did when it lobbied participants in the United Nations Climate Conference in Bali in 2007.

Greenpeace publishes research reports with titles such as False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won’t Save the Planet (2008) and Impacts of Climate Change on Glaciers around the World (2004), legislative and press briefings including Kyoto and the Bali Mandate: What the World Needs to Do to Combat Climate Change (2007), and a 2004 activists’ guide for students interested in organizing to help their college campuses switch to clean energy, as well as brochures, videos, and blogs. Two of its most significant climate change campaigns have been the research project ExxonSecrets, which targeted scientists and lobbyists employed by the Exxon Corporation to downplay the importance of global warming, and Energy [R]evolution, whose name is a combination of the words “revolution” and “evolution,” suggesting the need for a massive overhaul of the way the world produces and consumes energy.

In August 2002, Greenpeace filed suit, along with the environmental organization Friends of the Earth and the city of Boulder, Colorado, against the US Export Import Bank and the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, accusing them of helping to fund dangerous fossil fuel projects with taxpayer money. The suit, which was settled in 2009, claimed that these government agencies should have studied the potential climate change effects of these projects before granting funding.

Through the project Greenpeace Solutions, the organization has collaborated with business, technology, financial, and government organizations to help individual consumers make good purchasing decisions. The group developed and marketed the GreenFreeze refrigerator, which does not use dangerous hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a GHG. More than 150 million units were sold in Europe and Asia. However, this alternative technology could not be used in the United States until a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in late 2011 legalized the use of certain hydrocarbon refrigerants in household and some commercial refrigerators and freezers. Greenpeace has also worked in the United States to develop and promote wind power.

In the beginning decades of the twenty-first century, Greenpeace had become a proponent of campaigning for governments to institute a "Green New Deal" to fight climate change at the necessary systemic levels to effect real change. While a US representative and a senator did introduce a resolution that was considered a blueprint for a Green New Deal for the United States in early 2019—an effort that Greenpeace largely praised while cautioning that the plan would need to more directly confront the use of fossil fuels—but it failed to advance in either house of Congress. Greenpeace also continued global protests and action campaigns in the twenty-first century's third decade. In 2022, Greenpeace activists led protests in the Baltic Sea, campaigning against European Union imports of oil and coal from Russia. Also, in 2022, Greenpeace protestors appeared at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, to advocate for the global protection of shark species. In 2024, Greenpeace activists protested the arrival of a US LNG tanker in Germany. The tanker, which traveled from the United States, was filled with liquidified natural gas (LNG). This type of gas comes mainly from fracking. The results of a study published in 2024 in Energy Science & Engineering indicated that LNG may be more harmful to the environment than coal.

Bibliography

Bohlen, Jim. Making Waves: The Origins and Future of Greenpeace. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2001.

Ferguson, Christy, Elizabeth A. Nelson, and Geoff G. Sherman. Turning up the Heat: Global Warming and the Degradation of Canada’s Boreal Forest. Washington, D.C.: Greenpeace, 2008.

Gonzaga, Diego. "Why the Whole World Needs a Green New Deal." Greenpeace International, 22 May 2019, www.greenpeace.org/international/story/22089/why-the-whole-world-needs-a-green-new-deal/. Accessed 12 May 2020.

Howarth, Robert W. "The Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Exported from the United States." Energy Science & Engineering, 3 Oct. 2024, doi.org/10.1002/ese3.1934. Accessed 9 Dec. 2024.

Weyler, Rex. Greenpeace: How a Group of Journalists, Ecologists, and Visionaries Changed the World. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2004.