Greenpeace History
Readers’ response, additions
Since the book has not reached bookstores yet, these responses are from those who read an earlier draft or advance copy.
David Abram
Brian Fitzgerald
Bob Hunter
Dorothy Stowe
Terry Simmons
Jennifer Kushnier
David Abram is the author of one of the best and most important books ever written on the environmental ethic, The Spell of the Sensuous (Pantheon, 1996). He is also the founder of AWE, the Alliance for Wild Ethics.
In the beginning of the book, I make reference to the “eternal battle between spirit and matter.”
“But Rex,” Abram said in conversation, “spirit is matter.”
He’s correct, of course, and this is a theme throughout the book. Abram points out that the assumed separation of spirit and matter is one of the most destructive philosophical mistakes of our modern era, of industrialism and materialism void of spirit. The characters in this story experience this first hand. Decide for yourself if you think the characters understand this point by the end. The mystics and mechanics, at least some of them, do find common cause. There is a real battle here, in the demands of the physical world, but still it is only illusion that spirit is something distinct from matter, as Abram says. In future editions, I may change that early line to the “apparent battle between spirit and matter.” In any case, thanks to Abram for making this vital point.
For any ecologist or environmentalist who has not read The Spell of the Sensuous, I highly recommend you do so. David is currently working on a new book. He thinks carefully and writes slowly, so be patient and thank Gaia someone does. rw.
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Brian Fitzgerald has worked with Greenpeace for two decades. He writes:
Thanks for writing one of the best, if not the best, history of Greenpeace ever. Anyone with an interest in the 1960s and the environmental and social movements, whether they know Greenpeace or not, will find this book inspiring, educational, and entertaining.
You catch the era in a way, which so many of these things don’t. Your lens is so much wider than the organization and your personal role in its history. I think what you’ve written will draw a whole new generation of mystics and mechanics into Greenpeace.
I’m amazed at how you manage to write coolly about internal conflicts that must have been highly emotional for all of you who went through them, with so little evident rancor. I found your treatments of Pat Moore, David McTaggart, and Paul Watson even-handed and respectful, probably far more so than their treatment of each other ever was.
The mystical Greenpeace lives
The Greenpeace you were part of didn’t entirely disappear. I remember Lloyd Cutler, one of the toughest lawyers in the world, pointing to a rainbow over Lake Geneva as a portent of success during our arbitration with the French government over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.
I recall the day that four of us in a car in Las Vegas made the decision that we were not going to be able to hike the entire distance into the Nevada Test Site. At that very moment, the four-wheel drive vehicle we would use pulled up alongside at a stoplight with a "For Sale" sign in the window.
Ask anyone who sails aboard the ships these days, or works in the smaller developing offices, or volunteers in the campaigns and you’ll still hear stories of the right people turning up at the impossibly right time, arguments about the same things you argued about aboard the Phyllis Cormack, and the same passionate sense of ownership of the organization, warts and all, that drives ordinary people to do extraordinary things then and now.
After 1979, Greenpeace carried on with the incredible strengths borne of the struggles you document. The internationalism that was forced upon the organization became a unique asset to the environmental movement in the 1980s and 90s. In a world in which globalization is a buzz word, it’s easy to take that early internationalism for granted, but Greenpeace pioneered a way of working across borders and breaking them down.
How it all started with a rag-tag bunch of idealists deciding they were going to change something about the world is the big story, the big inspiration. It’s a lesson from the Shire: "Even the smallest of people can change the course of the future."
Taoism and the I Ching
Now this is truly splitting hairs, but I’d argue (and suspect Paul Spong would agree) that you can’t call the I Ching "Taoist" any more than you can call the Bible "Catholic." The Willhelm-Baynes translation (the version used on early Greenpeace ships) was a Confucian rendering, and while there are massive Taoist influences on the text and Taoist interpretations, the earliest recorded version is close to its modern form actually predates Lao Tzu’s birth by about 1000 years, and elements of it go back another thousand.
Author’s note: Fitzgerald is correct. After Fitzgerald’s comment, I made some adjustments in the text. My original use of “Taoist” to describe the I-Ching, is shorthand and not strictly correct. The Wilhelm/Baynes edition was the only one I witnessed being used among Greenpeacers in the 1970s. It is interesting to note that the Taoist elements of the Book had the greatest impact on early Greenpeace thinking (more-so than the Confucian familial relations, for example). Nevertheless, it is true that the I Ching predates Lao Tzu. However, it is likely that Lao Tzu’s influences and traditions were in effect since some fundamental I-Ching concepts are “Taoist” ideas: polarity, complementary forces, mystery of fundamental reality, and so forth, going back to the 8 Trigrams credited to Fu Hsi.
Later, it seems likely that Taoist ideas were alive at least by the time of King Wen and the arrangement into 64 Hexagrams, and if so, Wen and his son likely incorporated these, can we say, “Pre-Lao-Tzu Taoist” concepts, which were later credited to Lao Tzu, followed by the Confucian Commentaries on the Decision and the Images, and then Buddhist ideas later. So, the modern I Ching is Pre-Taoist, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist, at least.
Thanks to Brian Fitzgerald for his splitting of hairs.
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Bob Hunter was the first president of Greenpeace, the originator of the “mindbomb” idea, and one of the most extraordinary Canadian journalists ever. See more about Hunter in Characters. He writes:
Wow! What a colossal piece of work! I’m biased, but I think you’ve woven the threads together brilliantly and faithfully. Great job on the formation of Greenpeace International, which is all but lost in my memory bank. The moment in Amsterdam with us and the rain and fog and the Rainbow Warrior was the absolute peak experience of it all, and you nailed it magnificently. I had to weep and laugh with exultation at the same time. If there is a threshold worthy of the history books it was that moment.
The truth is, you went softly and gently over some of the roughest patches of the story, the ones that involved money and alcohol and drugs and sex. At the same time, you make no attempt to flatter and you reveal the dark corners.
You have adopted a kind of New Age Ishmael formula, apart from the obvious role reversals relating to whales and in this story only one person dies instead of just one surviving.
Your readers should know, I was an awful, rebellious, early ADD kid who was loved by my art and English teachers, but hated by the rest. I cheated by scribbling novels when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork.
Remember, when we were raising money to finance the first whale trip, our combined assets – things like my old Volks van, somebody’s typewriter – weren’t enough for the bank to give us the loan. I was forced to turn to Bobbi’s Dad, who hadn’t known me all that long. I’m a longhaired weirdo who’s sleeping with his daughter, who used to be married to a doctor, and now look at her, hanging out with a bunch of wacky ecofreaks! Bill Innes, a survivor of the Depression, had Scottish blood. He was a tight man with his dollar. Yet he put his house on Eagle Mountain up as collateral, for his daughter’s sake, and that made the first whale campaign possible. He hasn’t been given credit anywhere for that.
And get this: the circle came around again when Paul Watson was seeking a loan to purchase his first ship, the Sea Shepherd, to pursue the Sierra. After all the political bloodletting that had gone on between us, Paul nevertheless phoned up and asked Bobbi and me to put OUR house up as collateral. We had quit Greenpeace by then, and had bought Bobbi’s Dad’s old place. Once again, the same beautiful mountainside farm property was risked to finance an eco-crusade, two of the most famous, in fact.
Really, there are more outrageous stories than would fit in a hundred books. I’m amazed at how much and how well you’ve fit all this between two covers. It’s a masterpiece, really.
Author’s note: Well, this is generous of Hunter, but understand that Bob and Bobbi Hunter had already corrected many pages of text before he wrote this. Both of them are heroes for what they have given to the ecological battle and there would have been no Greenpeace without them. rw.
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Dorothy Stowe is one of the original founders of Greenpeace and she still lives in the house on Courtenay Street in Vancouver where many of the first Greenpeace meetings were held. See Characters.
In conversation, after reading the manuscript, Dorothy gave me my most treasured bit of encouraging feedback. It was simply this:
“Thanks for finally telling the real story.”
And thanks to Dorothy for giving so much of her life to the creation of Greenpeace and to the causes of peace and social reconciliation, even to this day. rw.
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Terry Simmons founded the Sierra Club of British Columbia and sailed on the first Greenpeace ship. He is now an environmental lawyer in Reno, Nevada. He has a slightly different take on the radicalism of the 1960s and 70s, on the founding of Greenpeace. Here are some of his comments.
Greenpeace began as a single-issue group in opposition to American nuclear testing on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands. “Green” was environmental opposition in Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Northwest to nuclear tests within an US Fish and Wildlife Refuge by the then US Atomic Energy Commission, and concerns about possible adverse environmental impacts at the Amchitka test site. Strictly speaking, Greenpeace as an organization was “spun-off” from the Sierra Club.
“Peace” was a principled pacifist response, opposition to nuclear testing per se, an extension of the ban the bomb movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. Non-violent civil disobedience, sailing a protest vessel to Amchitka Island, was borrowed directly from Quaker protest voyages to the Enewetok Atoll test site a decade before.
The origins of Greenpeace were not particularly ideological nor were they related to anti-war or anti-militarist sentiments associated with opposition to the war in Indochina. Quakers provided the original idea and much of the early financial support for Greenpeace.
Greenpeace was an original synthesis of traditional environmental values and the pacifist, ban the bomb values. In addition, Greenpeace was innovative when it combined civil disobedience or direct action with a well-managed political and media campaign.
Yes, as you write, I attended a few SPEC meetings at SFU, but was never involved directly. I sensed that SPEC leaders were not “ready for prime time.” They had energy and a large number of members. But the organization lacked sophistication. Nothing personal. I had good personal relations with Derek and Gwen Mallard and others.
I accept the good, traditional label, “conservationist.” It is descriptive and appropriate. I still do not like the term, “environmentalist.” It is vague and almost meaningless. Anyone can call oneself an environmentalist. It requires no particular knowledge or insight. Individuals who advocate unity with the environmental movement will almost always fail because there is no effective means to control or to even define the whole.
I am not a radical. I am a conservative conservationist. I am open to ideas and to change; but I appreciate scholarship, intellectual honesty and discipline.
While the hippies were growing in importance, at least in the media, I lived in serious, academic environs at UC Santa Cruz. My idea of a good time was to read a book a day and to have intellectual conversations with little or no mention of politics and campus athletics.
I read the Georgia Straight from time to time, but gave it little importance. As you might guess, I have little interest in most of its content; notwithstanding contributions by Bob Cummings and Irving Stowe. I did not take the Yippies very seriously nor Rod Marining for the most part. He did surprise me from time to time to his credit.
On the other hand, I must protest the recklessness and pointlessness of much of the “radical politics” of the time.
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Jennifer Kushnier is an editor at Rodale Press in Emmaus PA
I’m nearing the end of Greenpeace Chapter 7, and I’m nearly breathless. A few pages back, my arms were covered in goose bumps from the excitement of it all, and now I’m crying! The ride is just as thrilling and emotional as it must’ve been for the author. I’m completely blown away by this story.
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