In the firestorm of mass-scale terrorism, bitter politics and controversial war engulfing the world in the age of George W. Bush and Al Qaeda, it’s easy to lose sight of what is ultimately the most important conflict of all: the battle to save the environment. The newspapers report rising temperatures and water levels, but one suspects it will take more than a few cancer clusters or yet another disastrous flood in Bangladesh to wake up the governments of the world’s most populous nations to the ecological disasters in progress.
It’s heartening, therefore, and instructive to read Rex Weyler’s insider’s history of the first decade of the ubiquitous environmental group Greenpeace, starting with the subtitle itself: “How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World.” Citing journalists is telling. The author himself joined Greenpeace as a fledgling photojournalist, and his stress on the importance of documentary reporting, especially pictures, is entirely appropriate and correct. Weyler’s narrative makes it abundantly clear that without ample and vivid documentation, Greenpeace’s early, revolutionary campaigns would have meant little.
The organization took form during the Vietnam War era in Vancouver, Canada, where local environmentalists and peaceniks joined forces with American pacifists and draft resisters. Nuclear fallout from weapons tests had begun to nudge the ecology (“green”) and antiwar (“peace”) movements towards a merger. But what makes the story interesting is the way Greenpeace’s several founding influences were focussed through the magnifying glass of specific personalities.
The Jewish-American expatriates Irving and Dorothy Stowe, committed Quakers and pacifists inspired by Gandhi and Dorothy Day, embodied the Quaker philosophy of “bearing witness.” As “[c]itizens became pacifists, and pacifists became activists,” Irving Stowe became the group’s eminence grise.
Reporter and TV producer Ben Metcalfe, a Canadian WWII vet and environmentalist, contributed public relations savvy and access to the airwaves, crucial in raising public awareness of the booming region’s most blatant environmental evils and lifting the profile of the ever more outspoken local activists. Also important to Greenpeace’s acceptance in the wider culture was Metcalfe’s image: older, “squarer,” he didn’t dress or act like a hippie. But in 1969 he spent $4,000 to post billboards (‘Ecology? Look it up! You’re involved.’) around the city. “‘If you can promote companies and products,’ he told his friends, ‘you can promote ideas.’”
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