73 Facts About Greenpeace

Greenpeace was founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States.

Greenpeace has a general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and is a founding member of the INGO Accountability Charter, an international non-governmental organization that intends to foster accountability and transparency of non-governmental organizations.

Greenpeace is known for its direct actions and has been described as one of the most visible environmental organisations in the world.

Amchitka, the 1970 concert that launched Greenpeace was published by Greenpeace in November 2009 on CD and is available as an mp3 download via the Amchitka concert website.

Greenpeace itself calls the protest voyage of 1971 as "the beginning".

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Greenpeace itself says on its web page that "there's a joke that in any bar in Vancouver, British Columbia, you can sit down next to someone who claims to have founded Greenpeace.

Patrick Moore has said that "the truth is that Greenpeace was always a work in progress, not something definitively founded like a country or a company.

Greenpeace has stated that Watson was an influential early member, but not one of the founders of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace claims that although Moore was a significant early member, he was not among the founders of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace activists disrupted the whaling by placing themselves between the harpoons and the whales, and footage of the protests spread across the world.

Greenpeace evolved from a group of Canadian and American protesters into a less conservative group of environmentalists who were more reflective of the counterculture and hippie youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

The social and cultural background from which Greenpeace emerged heralded a period of de-conditioning away from Old World antecedents and sought to develop new codes of social, environmental and political behavior.

In 2015, Greenpeace UK launched an investigative journalism publication called Unearthed.

The current interim director of Greenpeace International is Norma Torres and the current Chair of the Board is Ayesha Imam.

Greenpeace has a staff of 2, 400 and 15, 000 volunteers globally.

Since in the mid-1990s the number of supporters started to decrease, Greenpeace pioneered the use of face-to-face fundraising where fundraisers actively seek new supporters at public places, subscribing them for a monthly direct debit donation.

Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organisation, which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and develop solutions for a green and peaceful future.

Greenpeace was one of the first parties to formulate a sustainable development scenario for climate change mitigation, which it did in 1993.

Greenpeace has focused on CFCs, because of both their global warming potential and their effect on the ozone layer.

Currently Greenpeace considers global warming to be the greatest environmental problem facing the Earth.

Greenpeace is critical of extracting petroleum from oil sands and has used direct action to block operations at the Athabasca oil sands in Canada.

In 1999 Greenpeace Germany founded Greenpeace Energy, a renewable electricity cooperative that supplied customers with fossil gas starting from 2011.

In October 2007, six Greenpeace protesters were arrested for breaking into the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, England; climbing the 200-metre smokestack, painting the name Gordon on the chimney, and causing an estimated £30, 000 damage.

Greenpeace is opposed to nuclear power because it views it as "dangerous, polluting, expensive and non-renewable".

In 1994, Greenpeace published an anti-nuclear newspaper advert which included a claim that nuclear facilities Sellafield would kill 2, 000 people in the next 10 years, and an image of a hydrocephalus-affected child said to be a victim of nuclear weapons testing in Kazakhstan.

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Greenpeace did not admit fault, stating that a Kazakhstan doctor had said that the child's condition was due to nuclear testing even though no nuclear weapons testing is performed in Sellafield.

Greenpeace aims to protect intact primary forests from deforestation and degradation with the target of zero deforestation by 2020.

Greenpeace signed an agreement which prevents them from developing plantations in areas where large amounts of carbon are locked up.

In 2018, Greenpeace released an animated short starring a fictional orangutan named Rang-tan ahead of the World Orangutan Day.

In June 1995, Greenpeace took a trunk of a tree from the forests of the proposed national park of Koitajoki in Ilomantsi, Finland and put it on display at exhibitions held in Austria and Germany.

Greenpeace said in a press conference that the tree was originally from a logged area in the ancient forest which was supposed to be protected.

Greenpeace replied that the tree had fallen down because the protective forest around it had been clearcut, and that they wanted to highlight the fate of old forests in general, not the fate of one particular tree.

Greenpeace highlighted that Metsahallitus admitted the value of the forest afterwards as Metsahallitus currently refers to Koitajoki as a distinctive area because of its old growth forests.

Greenpeace called Wilmar out for breaking their 2013 commitment to end deforestation, in which they promised to incorporate organic and sustainable ways to collect palm oil.

Greenpeace has supported the rejection of GM food from the US in famine-stricken Zambia as long as supplies of non-genetically engineered grain exist, stating that the US "should follow in the European Union's footsteps and allow aid recipients to choose their food aid, buying it locally if they wish.

In 2007 Greenpeace funded research by Gilles-Eric Seralini into MON 863 genetically engineered maize which concluded it caused health issues to the rats used in the study.

Greenpeace opposes the planned use of golden rice, a variety of Oryza sativa rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of pro-vitamin A in the edible parts of rice.

The alternative proposed by Greenpeace is to discourage monocropping and to increase production of crops which are naturally nutrient-rich.

Greenpeace argues that resources should be spent on programs that are already working and helping to relieve malnutrition.

In particular, Greenpeace has expressed concern over the lack of safety testing being done on GMO crops such as golden rice and of "playing with the lives of people.

In July 2011, Greenpeace released its Dirty Laundry report accusing some of the world's top fashion and sportswear brands of releasing toxic waste into China's rivers.

In 2013, Greenpeace launched the "Detox Fashion" campaign, which signed up some fashion brands to stop the discharge of toxic chemicals into rivers as a result of the production of their clothes.

For proving companies' policies and practices, Greenpeace uses chemical testing of products, reports from industry observers, media reports and testing of consumer programs to check if they match with their actions.

Greenpeace members were originally charged with piracy, then later downgraded to hooliganism, before being dropped altogether following the passage of an amnesty law by the Russian government.

In July 2014, Greenpeace launched a global boycott campaign to persuade Lego to cease producing toys carrying the oil company Shell's logo in response to Shell's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic.

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Greenpeace had argued that Statoil's drilling plans posed a threat to Bear Island, an uninhabited wildlife sanctuary that is home to rare species including polar bears, because an oil spill would be nearly impossible to clean up in the Arctic because of the harsh conditions.

Norwegian police stated that Statoil asked Greenpeace to stop preventing its activities, but Greenpeace ignored the warning.

Greenpeace has continued to criticize the big oil company for their "green wash, " arguing that Statoil hid the truth that it is doing the risky oil drilling by holding "Lego League" with Lego and distracting people's attention to the company's project, and it argues that Statoil has to alter its attitude toward environments.

Greenpeace has joined with other environmental organizations to call for a moratorium on exploratory deep sea mining authorized by the International Seabed Authority under the auspices of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Greenpeace says exploratory and commercial mining of polymetallic nodules could wreak havoc on the world's oceans, which act as a carbon sink absorbing a quarter of the world's carbon emissions each year.

Greenpeace has urged the International Seabed Authority to further develop UNCLOS' foundational Article 136 principle "of common heritage to all mankind" to revise regulations and set conservation targets.

Greenpeace maintains the "pro-exploitation" ISA is not the appropriate authority to regulate deep sea mining.

In 2019 Greenpeace activists protested outside the annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, calling for a global ocean treaty to ban deep sea mining in ocean sanctuaries.

Since Greenpeace was founded, seagoing ships have played a vital role in its campaigns.

In 1978, Greenpeace launched the original Rainbow Warrior, a 40-metre, former fishing trawler named after the book Warriors of the Rainbow, which inspired early activist Robert Hunter on the first voyage to Amchitka.

Greenpeace purchased the Rainbow Warrior at a cost of £40, 000.

In 1989 Greenpeace commissioned a replacement Rainbow Warrior vessel, sometimes referred to as Rainbow Warrior II.

Greenpeace was fined US$7, 000 for damaging the reef and agreed to pay the fine saying they felt responsible for the damage, although Greenpeace stated that the Philippines government had given it outdated charts.

Lawsuits have been filed against Greenpeace for lost profits, reputation damage and "sailormongering".

In 2004 it was revealed that the Australian government was willing to offer a subsidy to Southern Pacific Petroleum on the condition that the oil company would take legal action against Greenpeace, which had campaigned against the Stuart Oil Shale Project.

Greenpeace activists have been targets of phone tapping, death threats, violence and even state terrorism in the case of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.

Patrick Moore, an early Greenpeace member, left the organization in 1986 when it, according to Moore, decided to support a universal ban on chlorine in drinking water.

Moore has argued that Greenpeace today is motivated by politics rather than science and that none of his "fellow directors had any formal science education".

Greenpeace argues that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels or greenhouse gas emissions need increased use of nuclear energy.

Greenpeace had claimed that the tanker contained 5, 500 tonnes of crude oil, while Shell estimated it only contained 50 tonnes.

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However, the measurements had been made under duress during a protest occupation of the platform, since Shell had refused permission, and Greenpeace activists had been under attack by water cannons and the like.

Greenpeace'sll had transported the rig to the dumping site, but in the last hours canceled the operation and announced that it had failed in communicating its plans sufficiently to the public, admitting they had underestimated the strength of public opinion.

Greenpeace has said "the growth in aviation is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change".

Greenpeace said the activists were "absolutely careful to protect the Nazca lines, " but this is contradicted by video and photographs showing the activists wearing conventional shoes while walking on the site.

Greenpeace has apologized to the Peruvian people, but Loise Jamie Castillo, Peru's Vice Minister of Cultural Heritage called the apology "a joke", because Greenpeace refused to identify the vandals or accept responsibility.

Critics have said that Greenpeace only campaigned against whaling to gain economic donations from the US economy, and it had little to do with saving the environment or the lives of the whales.

Greenpeace holds that whaling was only resumed by Norway after the IWC ban because of political election motives, and faces many explicit hurdles, including decreased demand in Japan and toxic chemical contamination.

In March 2021, nine Greenpeace activists got inside Charles de Gaulle Airport by scaling a fence at the edge of the airport ramp and vandalized on one side of an Air France Boeing 777 with an extendable paint roller.