Greenpeace

December 30, 2019

Greenpeace is an international organization that started in 1971 to protest nuclear testing off the coast of Alaska. Today, Greenpeace claims to have activists in 50 countries, with 2.8 million members worldwide and 250,000 members in the United States.

According to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Greenpeace raised $35.9 million in 2018 and Greenpeace Fund raised $16.5 million in 2018.

Green New Deal

Greenpeace supports the Green New Deal. In October 2019, the group declared that the “Green New Deal is a bargain.” According to Greenpeace’s Tim Donaghy, “a Green New Deal would be a very good investment if we design it right.” Greenpeace went as far as to declare “the whole world needs a Green New Deal.”

What does that bargain look like? According to a study conducted by Power the Future in conjunction with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, it would “impose large and recurring costs on American households.” For example, the Green New Deal would cost a typical household more than $70,000 the first year of implementation in Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. In Alaska, the first year of the Green New Deal would cost more than $100,000.

Hypocrisy

Between 2012 and 2014, Pascal Husting, Greenpeace’s chief program director, chose air travel for short distances on a regular basis. According to Reuters, “Greenpeace said in a statement it had made a mistake by allowing Pascal Husting to fly 360 kilometers (220 miles) several times a month to see his wife and young children since starting the job in 2012.” Greenpeace has advocated for an end to short flights.

Despite this hypocrisy, the head of Greenpeace in the UK defended the short distance air travel. He said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve crossed that line here at Greenpeace.”

Violent Tactics

According to Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA Executive Director, is “peaceful” and “non-violent” and uses “non-violent confrontation to raise the level and quality of public debate.”

In reality, Greenpeace has a history of violent actions. In 2018, Greenpeace crashed a drone, which was meant to look like Superman, into a French nuclear plant to demonstrate how vulnerable the nuclear plant was to an attack. According to Reuters, “the drone stunt follows a series of staged break-ins by Greenpeace activists into French nuclear plants, which Greenpeace says are vulnerable to outside attack, especially the spent-fuel pools. These pools can hold the equivalent of several reactor cores, stored in concrete pools outside the highly reinforced reactor building.”

In 2014, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) linked Greenpeace to the “growing militancy in the ‘anti-petroleum movement.’” According to RCMP, “there is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels.”

In Peru, Greenpeace activists damaged the Nazca Lines, a UNESCO World Heritage site. 20 members of Greenpeace hiked to the site, which is “a notoriously sensitive ancient site, where a single step can cause irreversible damage.”

In 2004, members of Greenpeace destroyed an orchard in Thailand. The vandals “dressed in white, hooded ‘personal protection suits.”