TL: GREENPEACE MAGAZINE January/February/March 1991 SO: Greenpeace USA (GP) DT: January 1991 Keywords: greenpeace periodicals us digests gp / TWENTY YEARS OF RAISING HELL Anti-environmentalists Corporate Money in Disguise Peregrine Falcons Close to the Edge EDITORIAL DURING MY TURBULENT ADOLESCENCE, MY LATE father kept a crisis lecture on 24-hour standby. "You have a big decision to make," he would say. "Continue to raise hell, or do something constructive with your life." It's taken me nearly 20 years to formulate the reply: "How about both at the same time, Dad?" It seems to me and to many other environmental activists that in this day of global crisis, the two must go hand in hand. Raising hell - the "in your face," nonviolent yet action oriented approach to social change--may be the only option left to get the attention of the public in this age of information overload. Greenpeace has always done this well: The one consistent strain in our 20-year history has been our ability to simultaneously raise hell and protect the environment. That theme has remained the same as Greenpeace has grown from a lone, barely seaworthy halibut boat to an international force. Our agenda, however, has constantly evolved. In the beginning, it was simple: We had to stop nuclear testing; then save the whales, dolphins and seals. Slowly, as the successes grew, so did our battles, and the complexity of intertwining issues we needed to confront. We had to expand to stop ocean dumpers and plutonium producers; fight acid rain and driftnetters; and put a halt to clear cutters and landfill owners. The list, alas, goes on. Although we have a lot to show for our battles 20 years later, the planet is a long way from salvation. But we have already done what many people thought was laughably impossible-- we have saved the entire continent of Antarctica. When the campaign to save Antarctica began in the early '80s, a handful of activists faced a consensus from the world's industrialized nations that there was little hope the Antarctic could be protected from mining and oil drilling. To be taken seriously, we set up a base there. It took nearly a decade of quiet, methodical, and often bone-chilling work behind the scenes from Greenpeace and others, but now every nation has agreed to full protection for Antarctica from mining and drilling for at least the next 50 years. There have been other victories just as significant. In recent months, for example, we saw the Johnston-Wallop energy bill, an environmentalist's nightmare if there ever was one, go down in flames; we saw the Department of Energy delay, for at least two years, production of a prototype for the resurgence of nuclear power, the new production reactor; we helped stop a major hazardous waste incinerator from being built in Mobile, Arizona. But we've made some formidable enemies along the way. Ending the slaughter of harp seal pups won us lasting enmity in much of the Arctic. And in Japan, many of the same people who applaud Green peace's anti-nuclear work are scornful of our efforts to end whaling and overfishing. GREENPEACE, COMPARED TO ITS BEGINNINGS, IS A huge organization. Yet compared to the Fortune 500 polluters and bomb-makers we confront, we're tiny. Our annual budget is equivalent to four hours of General Motors'. As we grow more global in the scope of issues we address and increasingly come to grips with social justice issues, we can no longer afford to be just an environmental organization for the predominantly white, relatively affluent, industrialized world. As Greenpeace increases its work in communities of color and in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Eastern Bloc, we are simultaneously pledging that this work be led and carried out by Latinos, Asians, Africans and Eastern Europeans. But as we grow more sophisticated in our approach, so do our adversaries. While some once-incorrigible polluters have taken legitimate steps to begin cleaning up, more frequently the changes have been cosmetic. "Green washing" is now institutionalized, from the offices of environmental crisis PR firms all the way to President Bush posing for a photo at the edge of the Grand Canyon in an effort to recapture his image as the "environmental president." Twenty years ago, dirty industries and dirty politicians ignored the environment. Today, those same industries and politicians now feel compelled to respond to environmental concerns--even if by lying about them. Curiously, on balance, this is a sign of some small progress. It is tragic that so much of our society's newfound greenness was acquired in the wake of disasters. Oil spills rushed into public consciousness through the 1969 Santa Barbara disaster, then faded from view for two decades until the Exxon Valdez spill provided the wakeup call. Three Mile Island, then Chernobyl, brought waves of concern on nuclear power; now the industry is engaged in a massive promotional restart. Two-hour- long gasoline lines prompted America's only concerted effort at breaking the oil habit. Now, public apathy and malevolent policy have combined to reverse that effort as well. Does this mean we can only respond at the brink of disaster or beyond when it comes to global warming? Deforestation? Nuclear war? Do the worst effects of these problems need to hit home before we deal with life-or-death issues? This is where mobilizing the population via nonviolent direct action--"raising hell"-- comes in. Plugging a single toxic waste pipe for a few hours among the tens of thousands that pollute waterways every day, by itself, doesn't accomplish much. But the image of the action hopefully serves to inspire, educate and anger the world. Some say this is Greenpeace's greatest strength. It's probably more accurate to say that it's Greenpeace's most obvious strength. If the flashiness of pipe-pluggings, or marching directly into a nuclear test site were all Greenpeace had to offer, we never would have made it to our twentieth birthday. But behind the quasi-mythological power of the headline-grabbing tactics is a small army of researchers, lobbyists, door-to-door canvassers, and organizers--each of whom raises their own particular brand of hell. It would be nice to look back on our second 20 years and see that we'd raised as much hell and come as far as we did in the first 20. It would be even nicer, in the year 2012, to know the world had come far enough that it no longer needed a Greenpeace at all. --Peter Dykstra has been raising (very constructive) hell with Greenpeace since 1978. (2 pages missing here) PATENT PROOF "The stream pollution problems associated with effluents from chlorine and/or chlorine-containing bleaching processes are well recognized." --Application from Scott Paper Company to the U S. Patent Office, filed October 21, 1974, for a safer ozone and peroxide pulp bleaching process. Our mill is a model of environmental responsibility in the pulp and paper industry. The use of chlorine is not an issue at this mill." --Scott Liebense, public affairs manager for a Scott- owned mill that still uses chlorine for bleaching, in Muskegon, Michigan, September 26, 1991. is too costly to continue on a broad scale. So the administration proposed a ruling that simply redefined wetlands, removing as much as one half of the country's remaining wetlands from protected status. But on closer inspection, it is clear that Bush's turnaround was made not for Joe Citizen, but for a combination of business and conservative interests. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) wetlands manual, written in 1989, defines a wetland as an area saturated 18 inches below the surface for at least seven days per year. The Bush administration offered a new definition in August: land with standing water for 15 days, or surface saturation for 21 days. Potentially excluded under the new criteria are a broad range of wetlands ecosystems, including so-called prairie potholes essential to migratory birds, the moist forests surrounding and protecting the Chesapeake Bay and half a million acres of Florida's Everglades. The definitional acrobatics enable the administration to explain away half of the nation's wetlands without technically breaking Bush's 1988 promise of "no net loss of wetlands." Bush promised a lot more than his business friends could swallow. Oil companies didn't like the permitting process; real estate developers lost access to cheap waterfront land. Companies such as Arco Alaska, BP America, Conoco, Exxon, Shell and Texaco-- calling themselves the National Wetlands Coalition-- criticized wetlands protection as anti-growth. The Coalition eagerly circulated tales of small landholders terrorized by wetlands bureaucrats, and their cries of "victim" quickly won over the Bush administration. So the Bush administration convened an interagency panel of wetlands scientists to rewrite the rules. But the scientists rebelled. The EPA's chief wetlands ecologist, William Sipple, quit the panel in disgust, charging the review process was misused and that he felt "pushed toward unethical technical behavior." Ecologist Charles Rhodes also walked out, complaining of external pressures. The Fish and Wildlife Service refused to sign off on the new rules, calling them "technically indefensible." Finally, the debate was referred to the White House. At this point, industry's best friend in government, Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, decided to hijack the debate. (See "The Ultimate Front Group," page 12.) Far out of the council's official jurisdiction, the wetlands debate lost any remaining semblance of a scientific review and became a purely political intervention in national environmental policy. Incompetent to arbitrate the dispute, council members had to be given glossaries of wetlands terminology before decisive meetings. But Quayle's council waded blithely into the debate, first accepting, then rejecting, three different compromises offered by EPA Director William Reilly. When Reilly reminded the council of Bush's campaign pledge of "no net loss of wetlands," council member Richard Darman retorted: "He didn't say that. He read what was given to him in a speech." Finally, outnumbered, Reilly agreed to the Bush administration's revised 21-day proposal. The new definition is up for comment and may be adopted in coming months. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is congratulating itself on its sense of timing. Most environmentalists "were out backpacking when we broke the news" in August, joked one White House aide. Whatever the final outcome of the wetlands debacle, one thing is clear: When Bush's public image as the "environmental president" collides with the interests of business, business wins.--LH A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF THE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY July 26, 1991 Both power sources for the alarm system tail at the Millstone 2 nuclear power plant in Waterford, Connecticut, amounting to a "Charlie 1 event," the state's most serious nuclear accident in 12 years. August 12, 1991 Five of eight "uninterruptable" power sources cut off power to crucial safety systems at the Niagara Mohawk nuclear power plant in Oswego, New York. The plant is shut down after control room warning lights lose power. August 13, 1991 A massive clump of seaweed, stretching 80 miles into the Gulf of Mexico, clogs water intake pipes at the Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida, causing an emergency shutdown and power losses. August 14, 1991 More than 1,000 gallons of radioactive water leak from a pipe at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo, California. August 26, 1991 Two emergency generators fail routine operating tests at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Forked River, New Jersey. August 27, 1991 A 40-ton motor from a nuclear power plant falls off the back of a flatbed truck, spilling radioactive water onto Interstate 64 in Newport News, Virginia. E C O N E W S JUST DON'T DRINK IT "Let me put together an analysis for you comparing Freon to water.... Is it as safe as water? If used properly, yes. Is water hazardous? If used improperly, yes. Look at the number of drownings each year." --Du Pont Vice Chairman Elwood P. Blanchard, Jr., in a piece by News Journal/Wilmington, Delaware) reporter Merrit Wallick that suggests Du Pont hid evidence that its Freon 113 gas causes cancer and birth defects. NPR IS DEAD In a tremendous victory for disarmament and anti-nuclear power activists, the Department of Energy (DOE) on November 1 announced it is postponing for two years a decision to build the New Production Reactor (NPR). The NPR, flagship of DOE's modernization efforts, would have generated radioactive tritium, a gas used to increase the power of U.S. nuclear weapons. President Bush's unilateral arms reductions, announced in late September, will increase the DOE's tritium inventory by about 50 percent, eliminating the need for further tritium production. THAT SINKING FEELING "The containers contents allowed them to remain buoyant. What was to be done in such cases? The problem was solved in the simplest way: In the hermetically sealed container, two holes were cut, it was filled with water, and thus sinking was guaranteed."--People's Deputy to the Supreme Soviet Andrei Zolotkov, revealing the illegal dumping of containers filled with highly radioactive wastes off the northern coast of the USSR. GRACIOUS HOSTS Eight members of Congress went on a fact finding tour to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in August to take a supposedly objective look at the wilderness that oil companies want to drill for crude. But they travelled in helicopters thoughtfully provided by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, were led around by unbiased tour guides from British Petroleum, and stayed in the no strings-attached corporate lodgings of the Oil and Gas Association. --From Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta's syndicated column, 8/23/91. SERVICE TO WHOM? IT'S A NEW ERA AT THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE. "Getting the cut out" now means clear cutting with armed guards to keep protesters away from loggers. And "employee relations" seems to mean transferring tenured officials if they comply with federal environmental and wildlife protection laws. In August, Forest Service special agents, carrying guns and wearing bullet-proof vests, "protected" employees of the East Perry Lumber Company as they destroyed the 611-acre Fairview area of the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. A committed group of state activists, along with forest activists from other regions, blocked the logging road. The head buyer for East Perry drove his truck over one of the protesters, Chris van Daalen of Save America's Forests. Van Daalen, who suffered minor injuries, explained the incident as "another blatant example of the Forest Service being unaccountable to the public, to Congress and to what's right." Indeed, the entire Illinois congressional delegation is opposed to the cutting. The Shawnee is the state's only national forest, and just 1,200 acres of its hardwood canopy remain. Representative Sidney Yates (D-IL), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said to Forest Service Associate Chief George Leonard, "It's the only one we've got. We've got to preserve it. Let the 100-year-old trees get to 200 years old." The Forest Service, which apparently has a mandate to give public lands over to private logging companies, isn't listening to Congress. It's not even listening to its own employees. John Mumma, a regional forester in Missoula, Montana, told a congressional subcommittee in September that he was given the choice of either retiring from the Forest Service or relocating to Washington, D.C., because he didn't meet timber-cutting targets. "I have failed to reach the quotas only because to do so would have required me to violate federal [environmental] law," Mumma told Congress. A Park Service official, who worked with Mumma on a management plan for areas surrounding Yellowstone National Park, was also removed from her job. According to Associated Press reports, Lorraine Mintzmyer was demoted and transferred after members of Congress, business interests and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu severely criticized Mumma and Mintzmyer's 60-page plan, which emphasized conservation. The revised 10-page plan encourages logging, mining, oil drilling and grazing.--JC DIOXINS SLAPP BACK THE DEBATE OVER THE DANGERS OF DIOXINS has taken a new turn. Until recently, scientific consensus on dioxins held that the compounds were among the most potent toxins ever studied. Last summer, however, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the media decided to give the compounds a second look. (See "The Dioxin Deception," Greenpeace, May/June 1991.) Now a number of dioxin-producing industries--from paper companies to petrochemical manufacturers-- eagerly await a possible downgrading of dioxin's dangers. That is, if dissenting voices don't interfere. One such dissenter is Dr. Peter Montague of the Environmental Research Foundation and Greenpeace. The Washington-based journalist has been sued by Dr. William Gaffey, a chemist formerly employed by the chemical manufacturer Monsanto, over an article Montague wrote in the March 7, 1990, edition of Rachel's Hazardous Waste, Neal Montague quoted from a memo written by EPA scientist Cate Jenkins which was used as evidence in an EPA Office of Criminal Investigations inquiry. The inquiry focused on possible fraud in a key study by Gaffey and another Monsanto scientist, Judith Zack, of dioxin exposed workers. The memo states that Zack and Gaffey knowingly changed the data in the study to decrease the death rate in the exposed group and increase the death rate in the unexposed group. Neil Stout, Gaffey's attorney, calls the quoted memo "libelous." The Zack and Gaffey study is one of three, all funded by chemical companies and roundly criticized in the scientific community, which are the basis of much of EPA's policy on dioxin and serve as industry ammunition in the effort to relax dioxin standards. The studies are also commonly used in the defense of corporations sued over dioxin exposure, including suits filed by Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. If any of the studies are proven fraudulent, chemical companies like Monsanto could lose millions of dollars. Montague terms the suit against him a SLAPP--or strategic lawsuit against public participation. "It's straight out intimidation," he charges. "They're trying to prevent people from talking about controversial studies. The authors of the studies, and Monsanto, which paid for the studies, simply want to suppress discussion on dioxin."--LH DRAINING TIBET WHILE THE CHINESE OCCUPATION OF TIBET has devastated the Tibetan people and their culture, it has also damaged the Tibetan environment. Farmland has been depleted, forests and wildlife have disappeared and Tibet's natural resources are dwindling under China's exploitive rule. Currently, a hydroelectric project that the Chinese government is constructing in central Tibet promises to continue this sad history. Yamdrok Tso, Tibet's third largest lake, will be drained in a hydropower project that diverts lake water over a 2,500-foot drop into the Yarlung Tsampo River. Soldiers of the Chinese Armed Police provide labor, and the major construction contract has gone to a Chinese company, effectively denying any local oversight of the project. Known for its beauty and clear waters, Yamdrok Tso is also a sacred site to Tibetan Buddhists; in culture and myth, it figures as a bla-mts'o, or life-power lake. Because the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-highest religious leader, vehemently opposed the hydropower project at the sacred site, construction was stalled. Following his death in 1989, however, work has been resumed. Lake levels are expected to drop about three inches annually, rendering the project useless in as few as 50 years. The Chinese government states that electricity from the project is intended for irrigation and other rural uses, but power lines already in place to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, suggest another agenda. The project may facilitate Chinese influx into Lhasa, claims John Ackerly of the International Campaign for Tibet, by helping to modernize the city. But the price of such modernization may be the death of Yamdrok Tso, and another step in the slow, steady destruction of Tibet's land and culture.--LH What you can do: Please write to Mao Rubai, Vice-Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Fu Shuji, Hong Gong Xizang, Zizhiqu Weiyuanhui, lhasa, Xizang Zizhiqu, PRC, and state your opposition to the destruction of Yamdrok Tso. CORPORATE FRONTS: Inside the Anti-Environment Movement RESPONSIBLE INDUSTRY FOR A SAFE ENVIRONMENT (RISE), sounds like a solid group of corporate eco-reformers. With a Washington, D.C., office, a budget of more than half a million dollars and two full-time employees, RISE fits a common niche in the Washington scene. It's also not what it seems. RISE, a public relations front for the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, is dedicated to improving the image, and sales, of the "specialty pesticides" sprayed on millions of lawns and homes each year. "It's a PR effort to convince the public that pesticide makers are environmentally responsible," says Jay Feldman of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides. RlSE's current focus is a relatively innocuous bill sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman (DCT) and Representative Wayne Owens (D-UT) that would require lawn care companies to post warnings on lawns sprayed with common neurotoxic and carcinogenic pesticides. "We're aiming to kill that bill," said Elizabeth Lawder of RISE. They may succeed. RISE is just one of scores of lobbying groups that have emerged fully funded from the coffers of industry. Unable to speak directly to the public, the industries that pollute or lay waste to natural areas are creating front groups to transmit their messages for them. These same corporations are also funding "grassroots" groups and conducting elaborate public relations campaigns to make themselves appear environmentally conscious. Allied with well-heeled conservative think tanks, these corporations and their P.R. firms form a growing and threatening movement--what might be called the anti-environmental movement. The movement has scored a number of successes. Front groups have been able to flood Congress with letters on energy policy and pollution regulation, as well as organize high pressure lobbying tours and rallies on western land use issues. "They are among the most effective lobbyists on environmental issues at the moment," said one congressional aide. "The whole complexion of environmental issues has changed in the last two years, largely thanks to them." A coalition of fishing, timber and mining interests is currently conspiring to dismember the Endangered Species Act. If it succeeds, this will be its most ecologically devastating victory to date. LAST MAY, A PACKAGE ARRIVED AT THE Washington, D.C., offices of the Energy Daily, a special interest newspaper, and the Sierra Club. In it were background papers for a new organization called the Information Council for the Environment, or ICE. ICE is primarily funded by four of the nation's 15 largest coal companies, along with a number of utility companies and business organizations. As its first campaign, ICE planned a public relations effort, complete with newspaper and magazine ads, to counter rising public concern over global warming. The reason for the campaign: curtailing greenhouse gases would mean less coal consumption, and therefore lower profits for the campaign's funders. One of the ICE ads asks, "If the Earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?" The ad conjures up an effective image, but the reality is that Minneapolis is not getting colder. It is experiencing the same long-term warming trend as the rest of the planet. ICE hoped its targeted audience--"older, less-educated males" and "younger, lower- income women," recommended by its advertising consulting firm, Cambridge Research--wouldn't delve too deeply into the truth. Two of the three scientists who had served as "experts" for ICE's global warming disinformation campaign, signing letters in its name, have since disassociated themselves from the group. ICE IS NOT ALONE IN THIS FORM OF Machiavellian manipulation of fact. Last year, with new legislation looming that would force auto manufacturers to improve the fuel efficiency of American cars, the Big Three car companies-- GM, Ford and Chrysler--and their allies in industry poured more than $10 million into a front group called The Coalition for Vehicle Choice. This fake "citizen's group," created by Washington PR firm E. Bruce Harrison and Co., produced a video and a highly visible advertising campaign arguing that greater fuel efficiency means smaller, less safe cars and, consequently, more highway fatalities. In fact, over the last 15 years, cars have been getting steadily safer, and highway fatalities have gone down, despite significant increases in fuel efficiency. But such self- serving tactics are not new to the car companies: They have fought tooth and nail against safety improvements, such as mandatory seat belts, air bags and side impact protection, since the late '60s. SOME FRONT GROUPS MIX PUBLIC RELATIONS with more traditional lobbying efforts. They often form around specific issues, only to disband after their job is done. The grandfather of such lobbying groups is the Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain (CSCAR). Formed in 1983 with money from coal producers and electric utilities with the mandate to eviscerate the Clean Air Act, CSCAR had exactly one "citizen" among its ranks of corporate supporters. Using inflated estimates of the costs of complying with the act's regulations, CSCAR rallied a grassroots letter-writing campaign that flooded Congress with mail. In its heyday in 1986, CSCAR spent $3 million on lobbying--more than any other registered lobbying group in Washington. Five of the highest-polluting utilities in the United States were its major supporters. CSCAR has spawned many imitators, including the Alliance for a Responsible CFC Policy, the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, the American Council on Science and Health and the National Wetlands Coalition (see p. 9). But the master of misleading advertising is the nuclear power industry. Through their front group, the U.S. Council on Energy Awareness (USCEA), reactor builders have placed print ads in nearly every major magazine and newspaper arguing that nuclear power would, among other things, rid us of our dependency on foreign oil. The truth, however, is a little more complicated: Less than 5 percent of our electricity is generated by oil, and most U.S. uranium supplies are, in fact, foreign-owned. With an annual budget of roughly $18 million donated by utilities and reactor builders like Bechtel, USCEA has concentrated almost exclusively--and with considerable success--on changing the public's attitude toward nuclear power. CORPORATIONS DO NOT ALWAYS WORK through false front groups. The pressure to appear environmentally correct is great enough to warrant massive public relations campaigns, an activity so common of late, it's gained its own name--"green washing." Dr. Ariane van Buren is director of energy and environment programs for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in New York, which has organized stockholder pressure to reform corporate practices. "Some corporations seem genuinely interested in changing the way they do things; others won't even return our phone calls," she says. "And then there are a handful of right wing extremists who see environmentalism as a conspiracy." Virtually every major chemical and oil company has launched a PR campaign touting its environmental sensitivity (see "Green Consuming Unmasked," Greenpeace, May/June 1990). But their money often doesn't go where their mouth is: While Chevron, ARCO, Du Pont and Exxon pay for good environmental PR, they also funnel money to foundations, front groups and campaigns with a subtle anti environmental agenda. FOR EXAMPLE, THE CHEMICAL MANUFACTURERS Association places glossy ads in popular magazines, promising a new era of "responsible care" and accountability. Meanwhile, members of the Responsible Care campaign are maneuvering to gut Superfund toxic waste clean up laws. Companies liable for clean up will sue a town or municipality for clean up costs under Super fund's joint liability laws, hoping to get local governments to press Congress to weaken Superfund laws. A similar feel-good campaign, Keep America Beautiful, was started by packaging manufacturers, including, among others, Dow, Du Pont, Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Sea grams. Supposedly aimed at discouraging litter, the Beautiful campaign also ensures continued business for the packaging industry by telling Americans to toss bottles, cans and paper into the trash instead of recycling them. In the same way, the Chlorine Institute, a trade group funded by industries that manufacture and use chlorine, has manipulated public relations to paint a picture of a chemical far less dangerous than the latest studies suggest. When a scientific conference on dioxin concluded last year, the Institute sent out an information packet and press release announcing a "consensus" among the attendees that dioxin, a common byproduct of chlorine use in certain industrial processes, was less dangerous than previously thought. However, no such consensus has been reached. Several of the scientists associated with the conference have since distanced themselves from the Institute. (See "The Dioxin Deception," Greenpeace, May/June 1991.) Sometimes tactics are less subtle. The Clorox Company, makers of bleach as well as Combat and Max Force insecticides and Pine Sol cleaning products, recently hired a public relations expert who suggested portraying Greenpeace as "terrorists" in order to deflect any potential criticism of the company's reliance on chlorine. Similarly, a coalition of home products manufacturers and trade groups such as Scott Paper and Procter & Gamble, who publicly tout their environmental sensitivity, successfully lobbied EPA to shelve an Environmental Consumer's Handbook that offered such apparently subversive tips as bringing a coffee cup to work instead of using paper or polystyrene. All the major oil and chemical companies are guilty of green washing at one time or another, but Du Pont is a particularly bad actor While Du Pont pays to broadcast ads depicting seals applauding its use of double hulled tankers by its Conoco subsidiary, its chemical branch is the number-one destroyer of the Earth's ozone layer. According to an investigative series of art ides in the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal, Du Pont hid information on the toxicity of CFCs as they were used in increasing numbers of applications. And, the series revealed, Du Pont even covered up the toxicity of its CFC alternatives. THE THIRD FRONT OF THE ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL movement is occupied by the charitable foundations and think tanks that provide legal, financial and philosophical support for the movement. They range from the activist National Legal Center and the conservative Heritage Foundation, to the radical right Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (see side bar, "The 'Wise Use' Movement Declares War," p.10) and the Center for Libertarian Studies. In addition to corporate support, money for these efforts comes from several right wing groups such as the Adolph Coors Foundation and the "four sisters"--the John M. Olin, Sarah Scaife, Smith-Richardson and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundations. Other less well known groups include the Colorado- based Independence Institute, the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, California's Reason Foundation and Pacific Research Institute, and the Goldwater Institute in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Denver-based Adolph Coors Foundation, for example, funded an American Council on Science and Health documentary on manmade chemicals entitled, "Big Fears... Little Risks." The Coors Foundation also funds the Independence Institute, the Washington, D.C.,-based Heritage Foundation, Pacific Research Institute and dozens of other right wing organizations that peddle an anti environmental agenda. Meanwhile, Coors, IBM, Exxon, Pepsico, Ciba-Geigy, Union Carbide and Bethlehem Steel are major funders of Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia, right wing organizations famous for siding with corporations and the Pentagon in efforts to muzzle the free press and for badgering liberal college professors. The National Legal Center for the Public Interest, located in Washington, D.C., was created by business interests, including Ford, Exxon, Amoco, Marathon, Phillips Petroleum, Gulf Oil and conservative foundations in 1975 to fight pro-business legal battles under the cover of the "public interest." (It, in turn, spun off seven regional centers, including the infamous Mountain States Legal Foundation, from whose offices emerged James Watt, Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, and Anne Gorsuch, Reagan's scandal-ridden EPA administrator.) At the far-right fringe are the pundits and small think tanks that characterize environmentalism as anti-Christian or the new "Red Menace." Llewellyn Rockwell of the Center for Libertarian Studies in California calls environmentalism an ideology "every bit as pitiless and messianic as Marxism," while conservative columnist Walter E. Williams charges that "since communism has been thoroughly discredited, it has been repackaged and relabelled and called environmentalism." At the absurdist extreme is Lyndon LaRouche, the perennial presidential candidate who is now serving time for tax evasion. In publications with wooden names like the Executive Intelligence Review and the now- defunct Fusion, LaRouche posits bizarre theories that have the Queen of England, the World Wildlife Fund, Henry Kissinger, UNICEF and Greenpeace involved in either international satanism or drug-running. THE PREROGATIVES OF BUSINESS HAVE governed U.S. policy to varying degrees since the signing of the Constitution, suggesting that much of the recent anti-environmental activity could be considered an extension of business as usual. What makes the current campaign different is the degree to which corporations and their allies are able to use public relations firms, advertising, front groups and insider lobbying to covertly and overtly dismember the hard-earned environmental gains of the last three decades. The enormous financial and political resources that industry and its allies in government command could be the greatest lever in history for ensuring the wise stewardship of the planet. But instead, vast quantities of money are being spent on a variety of artful attacks and dodges, not channel led toward clean up of past mistakes or development of beneficial products for the future. Too many companies are choosing the most obscene of deceptions, and while not everyone may be deceived, we are all paying the price. Resources: AD the Vice President's Men, on Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, by Christine Triano of OMB Watch and Nancy Watzman of Public Citizen. $10 from OMB Watch, 1731 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20009; 202-234-B494. Fronting for Big Business in America, by Andy Friedman and Mark Megalli. $20 from Essential Information, P.D. Box 19405, Washington, DC, 20036; 202-387-8030. Hold the Applause, on Du Pont's green washing campaigns. $5 from Friends of the Earth, 218 D St., SE, Washington, DC, 20003; 202-544-2600. What you can do: Write your senators and representative and urge them to press for strong controls on the council. Demand public disclosure of all council actions and an end to council intervention in federal agency business. Tell them to press for oversight hearings on the council, and for written substantiation of all council decisions. Write them at the U S Senate, Washington, D C. 20510 or the U S House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515. The "Wise Use" Movement Declares War Pity the poor miners, the loggers, the ranchers, the oilmen, the snowmobilers, the dirt-bikers and the hunters. They've been abused and maligned since the '60s by meddlesome bureaucrats and radical preservationists--the nuts who want to deny them their God-given right to enjoy, destroy and profit from public lands. The crafty tree-huggers have duped millions of Americans, they argue, into believing industry and sports enthusiasts are raping Mother Nature by manipulating simple but emotional images, like sludge covered otters or doe-eyed baby seals. That's the word from the folks who gathered last March for the Fourth Annual National Wilderness Conference. The three-day meeting, held in Denver, brought together about 300 people representing more than 230 groups. The conference was the brainchild of Attorney Grant Gerber, the chairman of the Elko, Nevada-based Wilderness Impact Research Foundation (WIRFI, and has become the annual focal point for a growing coalition of corporate-funded entities organized loosely in what they call the Wise Use movement. The event's co-sponsors include the Mountain States Legal Foundation [the outfit that gave us former Interior Secretary James Watt] and the Pacific Legal Foundation, the conservative law offices that often serve as the point people for industry in its battles with environmentalists. Money for the annual conferences has also come from Exxon, Chevron, and timber and mining companies. Upon examination, the goals of the Wise Use movement blend very nicely with corporate use goals. People for the West, for example, calls itself a "grassroots" group, yet 12 out of the 13 members of last year's board of directors meeting were mining industry executives. 'For them to call themselves grassroots is absolutely fraudulent,N says Jim Jensen of the Montana Environmental Information Center. Furthermore, People for the West admits its primary focus is to preserve an antiquated and environmentally destructive mining law--called a "a law with no brain" by Mineral Policy Center Director Phil Hooker. The law dates to the end of the last century and grants mining rights on virtually any public lands. In the Pacific Northwest, timber companies are providing support for the "grassroots" pro-business activism of small mill owners and workers, even as the large timber companies ship jobs and raw logs overseas. With names like the Communities for a Greater Oregon, Yellow Ribbon Coalition, Mother's Watch and We Care, the groups offer a homespun flavor, some claiming to have formed over coffee in the kitchens of members. This summer, Mother's Watch and We Care allied themselves with three major timber companies and the Sahara Club la group that advocates violence against environmentalists in defense of its "right" to dirt-bike in designated wilderness) to form the Alta California Alliance, a timber industry support group. "Most of the little groups go to timber industries [for funding]," says Jim Peterson, a public relations expert for the Southern Oregon Timber Association [a coalition of 150 companies], who helped found the Yellow Ribbon Coalition four years ago. "The existence of grassroots groups provides a comfort level--so that a member of Congress can say, 'Look at all these people putting pressure on me.'" Firing up the rank and file with slogans like "STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! YOUR WAY OF LIFE IS BEING TAKEN AWAY," timber companies regularly give workers paid days off to attend pro-industry rallies. Some northern California timber companies asked their employees to donate a portion of their pay to fund the successful campaign to derail California's l99O old-growth ballot initiative. When Freres Lumber Company closed its mills and paid its workers to travel to a rally in California's capitol in chartered buses, legislators were angry. "They were there because they were told to go," fumed State Representative Dave McTeague. "It makes a mockery of the process to employ that kind of tactic." Wise Use activists find their ideological underpinnings in a pamphlet, Wise Use Agenda, written and published by Gerber compatriot Ron Arnold, a self-proclaimed former Sierra Club member who defected from environmentalism and started the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise [which has shared funding and offices with the American Freedom Coalition, a Unification Church-funded right wing fringe group]. Arnold is now a fixture on the anti-environmental lecture circuit. On the Wise Use agenda are: opening up "all public lands, including wilderness and national parks, to mineral and energy productions; and lifting Endangered Species Act protections from all "non- adaptive species" such as the California condor. The creepy fringe radicalism of some of the movement's leaders, and their connection to the controversial Korean "messiah" Reverend Sun Myung Moon, is well-documented. Nevertheless, the Wise Use agenda has found friends in high places. Republican Senators Steve Symms of Idaho, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Conrad Burns of Montana, Ted Stevens of Alaska and former Idaho Senator James McClure have endorsed a Wise Use group, Idaho's Our Land Society. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney sits on the board of Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. And the cover of the Wise Use Agenda pictures Arnold's co- author, Alan Gottlieb, in a clinch with George Bush. At this year's conference, U.S. Bureau of Mines Director T.S. Ary won a huge round of applause by telling the crowd, "I don't believe in endangered species. I think the only ones are sitting in this room." Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK), the oil companies' pal, showed up to deliver a plug for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson was on hand to give a tongue-lashing to "radical environmentalists." Kayne Robertson, an assistant Des Moines, Iowa, police chief and a top National Rifle Association official, admitted in a keynote speech that the "enviros" have taken a big lead. "This terrorism is beginning in the schools," he told the crowd. "Revolutionaries have infiltrated America's classrooms from kindergarten to the university level to spread the green message that will be the ruin of Western civilization. They're educated and well informed." In fact, the only guest who didn't join in the fray was Rita Klimova, the Czechoslovakian ambassador to the United States, who had the crowd in the palm of her hand when she complained that communist control of industry and environmental quality led to an ecological nightmare. But Klimova fumbled when she said that strong government watchdogs will be necessary to clean up the mess. The crowd applauded politely, anyway, but outside, Gerber and his staff were in a noticeable tizzy--clearly, this was not what she had been invited to Denver to say. Many of the conference attendees took their cues from their enemy, the environmentalists. The Multiple-Use Land Alliance, for example, boasts it copies the Sierra Club by establishing a computer bank of the 1.2 million Americans who hold permits to graze, mine and log, who can be contacted quickly to write letters to elected officials or bureaucrats to sway policy. WIRF is also copying the Sierra Club calendar that's proven a popular and profitable fund raiser. Instead of pristine nature scenes, it will feature skiing, snowmobiling, camping and ranching. While raising money isn't much of a problem for oil and mining companies, making friends isn't as easy. Attendees at the conference sought out worthwhile causes to throw their weight into, or looked for help with their battles against the government and environmentalists. Jeff Wilson, a young Dan Quayle look alike from the Western States Petroleum Association, says the oil industry is ready to lend financial and strategic support to others embattled by the enviros. "It's a roll-up- your-sleeves effort," he says. "We've found you can no longer win these battles alone." "There's a realization that we're in this together," William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation says later. The spotted owl controversy in the Pacific Northwest "is not just to stop timber. It's to stop mining, grazing and other development. Everybody realizes today it's timber, but tomorrow it will be something else." "I'm here to gather information to help fight this war," says Dennis Brossman of the American Freedom Coalition. "And believe me, this will be war." --Kevin Lynch and Rebecca Rosen THE ULTIMATE FRONT GROUP You're a businessman with a problem: Environmental regulations are cutting into your profits. Maybe the government won't let you pave that wetland, or they're making you recycle your trash. You need someone who can pull strings for you. Someone discreet whom the public will never suspect. If you're today's smart businessman, you'll think of...Dan Quayle. Vice President Quayle heads industry's strongest ally in government, the Council on Competitiveness. Quayle's council is spiritual heir to Reagan's Commission on Regulatory Relief, headed by George Bush and set up to free business of the undue burden of environmental and public health regulations. The council--composed of Quayle, Richard Darman, John Sununu, Nicholas Brady, Richard Thornburgh and Robert Mosbacher--was ostensibly organized to encourage ways to improve American economic competitiveness. But its sights are focused not on better training or education, but on gutting environmental and public health rules that industry doesn't like. Says Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D-MN): "[The council] can't point to a single item that has made American industry more competitive. What they can point to is a bunch of back door, secret decisions that bailed out special interests--business interests." The council recently produced regulations that eviscerate the Clean Air Act, enabling utilities and industries to dodge pollution limits. It killed an Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring incinerators to separate some recyclables from their waste. It streamlined the introduction of genetically engineered plants and animals into the American market. It removed half of the country's wetlands from protected status. Lately the council has been casting about for ways to make industry less responsible for misdeeds: Quayle recently proposed that individuals suing corporations must pay the corporation's legal costs should their suits fail--thus ensuring very few lawsuits. Any legal underpinnings to the council's authority are hazy at best, based mainly on an executive order issued by Reagan in 1981 which requires agencies to submit any new rulings to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a cost-benefit review before the rules are published. The council, according to its members, is designed to administer this requirement, providing it with the authority to rewrite agency decisions. In practice, according to a recent study of the council released by consumer groups OMB Watch and Public Citizen, the requirement "gives the council free rein over all areas of federal policy- making." The cost-benefit requirement has enabled the council to override significant environmental legislation, yet the council has never published any concrete figures to support its decisions. The council also refuses to release even basic information to the public: accounts of meetings with outside groups, its ongoing activities, or its budget. A recent U.S. District Court decision, however, may open some of the council's files under the Freedom of Information Act. In addition to lacking any system of oversight, Quayle's council simply doesn't have the technical expertise needed to analyze complex agency decisions. Nonetheless, the council has stated its intention to previews ocean pollution laws, radioactive waste controls, regulation of lead levels in tap water, and a host of rules on corporate liability. --Laura Harger OUR TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY by Judy Christrup In the United States, Greenpeace's twentieth anniversary passed with a modicum of fanfare. Some didn't want to celebrate at all. Twenty years of work to stop planetary destruction, the reasoning went, is nothing to celebrate. We shouldn't have to do it. Elected officials are supposed to protect the public good. Multinational corporations aren't supposed to dump poisons into our waterways. Our judicial system is supposed to put felons behind bars, whether their weapon is a gun or a stream of toxic waste. Twenty years ago, when peace activist Marie Bohlen suggested sailing a boat to the Aleutian Islands to stop a U.S. nuclear test, she never imagined that this Quaker tactic of "bearing witness" would be used again and again by hundreds of activists working in dozens of Greenpeace offices around the globe. The realities of the world and the pace of destruction have surprised us all. Environmental problems have grown. The public's concern has grown. Greenpeace has grown, too. Relatively speaking, the organization is still small--a tiny fraction of the size of the companies we come up against. The yearly operating budget of Greenpeace worldwide is equal to a days worth of sales for a first-class polluter like Du Pont. We will never have size and money on our side, but we do have the commitment and support, both material and spiritual, of 5 million people around the world. We frame the environmental debate in moral terms. This means saying some obvious but unpopular things: It's wrong to turn healthy rivers into industrial sewers; it's wrong to turn a profit at the expense of people's health; it's wrong to destroy the habitats of endangered animals. Human beings seem to be able to rationalize every conceivable form of planetary destruction. Our job is to punch holes in the rationalizations and point to the truth. We get the message across in scholarly reports, scientific research, editorials and op-eds, national legislation and international treaties. But standing up for what we believe in still means putting our bodies on the line. We hope our actions inspire others to speak up for the environment, for the preservation of species and for the health of future generations. Twenty Years of Firsts In the USA alone, Greenpeace receives about 5,000 letters and requests for information every day. Greenpeace Magazine: circulation: 1.2 million. Greenpeace has five million supporters in 30 countries. Greenpeace Action canvassers talk to some 40,000 people in the United States about environmental issues every night. Green peace has 46 offices in 26 countries, with about 1,000 full-time staff, connected by an international computer network. Green peace activists have participated in thousands of non- violent demonstrations and actions for which they were arrested hundreds of times. Green peace is actively involved in some 30 international conventions for the protection of the environment. 1972: U.S, stops nuclear tests in Amchitka, Aleutian Islands. 1974: French government moves nuclear tests underground. Auckland office opens. 1975: San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, offices open. "Save the Whales" campaign launched. 1976: Greenpeace intercepts Soviet whaling vessels. London; Paris; Sydney; Honolulu and Seattle offices open. 1977: Amsterdam and Boston offices open. 1971 AMCHITKA: BEARING WITNESS TO NUCLEAR TESTS Canadian activists are angry: The United States continues to test atom bombs on Amchitka Island, off the Alaskan coast. As part of the growing opposition, Jim Bohlen, Irving Stowe and Paul Cote form "The Don't Make A Wave Committee" in Vancouver, British Columbia, and decide to go to the test site. But they need a boat to get there. The only captain willing to risk the trip is John Cormack, owner of an old halibut seiner called the Phyllis Cormack. Over the next year, the committee changes its name to "Greenpeace," raises money, fixes up the boat and departs for Amchitka on September 15, 1971. "It was unthinkable that we would not reach our objective, or that it would not matter. Even though the Phyllis Cormack didn't make it all the way to Amchitka, our tenacity, the dedication of our supporters and an aroused public expressing its outrage resulted in the shutdown of the test site. It is now a wildlife refuge." --Jim Bohlen, 1991. 1972 MORUROA: CHALLENGING FRANCE David McTaggart, Nigel Ingram and Grant Davidson try to stop a French atmospheric nuclear test on tiny Moruroa Atoll in the southern Pacific Ocean by sailing McTaggart's ketch Vega (renamed the Greenpeace III for the voyage) in international waters near the test zone. They succeed in disrupting the testing schedule but are continually harassed by French ships and aircraft. Eventually, the French minesweeper La Paimpolaise disables their boat. "BALLOON RAISED OVER MORUROA LAST NIGHT GREENPEACE III SIXTEEN MILES NORTHEAST. SITUATION FRIGHTENING. PLEASE PRAY" Telegram transmitted by the Vega's crew as the French fly a nuclear trigger device over Moruroa. 1973 MORUROA REVISITED Opposition to French nuclear testing grows, especially in New Zealand and Australia, where trade unionists block French ships, planes, mail and telephone communications. In the spring of 1973, 25 boats prepare for a protest sail to the test site at Moruroa, but by August 14 the Vega is left alone near the atoll. On August 15, Mary Lornie, Ann-Marie Horne, David McTaggart and Nigel Ingram are on board when three French ships close in on the Vega. Commandos board and use truncheons to beat McTaggart in his kidneys, spine and head, rendering him unconscious and temporarily blinding him in one eye. "We were trying to scamper in every direction we could, but there was no way out. Mary and I took our stations with the cameras. Mary was on the side deck and I was on the starboard bow. It all seemed to happen really, really fast--they were coming closer and closer and we started shouting: 'Go away! Go away!' But within a flash they were across the back of the boat and just flailing David. "--Ann-Marie Horne, The Greenpeace Story, 1989. 1975 VOYAGE TO SAVE THE WHALES Greenpeace turns the tables: In Moruroa, the French had outmaneuvered the Vega in high-powered inflatable Zodiacs, so a group of Greenpeace activists on the West Coast buys a couple of Zodiacs for itself. They confront Soviet whaling ships 50 miles west of Eureka, California, and manuever themselves in between the whales and the Soviet harpoons. "I remember clearly that the hair on my neck stood up and goosebumps ran over my body, for the whales had turned and were racing--a whole pod--directly toward us, dragging the Russian whaling boat along in their wake. The whales could have fled in any direction. That they chose to come directly to the protective flank of the Phyllis Cormack was too much of a coincidence. "--Robert Hunter, To Save A Whale, 1978. 1976 THE SEAL CONTROVERSY Greenpeace travels to Canada's Arctic pack ice, 30 miles north of St. Anthony, Newfoundland, to intercept the Norwegian commercial sealing fleet, which skins newborn harp seal pups. Green peace's seal campaign continues for eight years, using tactics such as lobbying government officials, blocking sealing ships and spraying baby "white coats" with green dye to make their pelts worthless. "For nearly a decade, Canada enforced its Seal Protection Act only against people who tried to protect seals. The act said that you couldn't get within a half nautical mile of a seal unless you had a permit to kill it. It was purely a device to keep cameras away from the large-scale commercial seal slaughter. We couldn't have come up with a better argument for the power of the camera than Canada did when it tried to hide the seal hunt from public view with a law to 'protect' seals." - -Peter Dykstra, 1991 1977 FUNDRAISING 101 Greenpeace activists take the whalers to task on two continents- -North America and Australia. Both the Americans and Australians effectively raise public awareness about whales. Their success is especially remarkable considering the setbacks they endure: the boat that the Australians charter is called back to port; and in California, the team of anti-whalers is faced with zero cash flow. "Before the '77 trip, Mel Gregory took a copy of our film "Voyage to Save the Whales " to Jerry Garcia (of Grateful Dead fame), who agreed to do a concert in the parking lot at the marina. The crew acted as ushers for the concert, and we raised enough money for fuel. We had to come to land again in Monterey. We were broke again, so we set up a table and sold T-shirts from morning to night until we had enough money for fuel to leave. Sometimes Mel and I would just sing in taverns and pass a hat." --Campbell Plowden, 1991. 1978 Australia shuts down its last whaling station. 1979 Greenpeace exposes Taiwanese pirate whalers. Greenpeace receives World Press Photo award for photos of GEM nuclear waste dumpers at sea. Copenhagen, Denmark; Hamburg and Great Lakes offices open. 1980 For three days, Greenpeace stops ships from dumping 10,000 tons of acid waste from the Bayer Chemical Company into the North Sea. The Rainbow Warrior and crew escape from Spain, after five months in custody for protesting Spanish whaling. Washington, D.C., Office opens. 1981 Harp seal hunt is cancelled on Prince Edward Island. Greenpeace USA begins publishing a quarterly magazine, The Examiner. Brussels office opens. 1982 Bayer Chemical Company agrees to stop dumping acid waste at sea. International Whaling Commission votes to phase out commercial whaling over three years. 1978 HIGH SEAS DUMP The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) announces its plan to charter a freighter called the Gem and dump 2,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste at sea. Greenpeace UK sends the Rainbow Warrior and its inflatables to document, publicize and interfere with the Gem. Green peace continues its harassment of the Gem over the next four years, until the dumping is outlawed. "Theorizing about how to stop three-ton barrels of waste being tipped into the ocean from a moving ship is one thing, but when it's time to put those theories into practice, the result can be summed up in a word: terrifying. You are faced with an impersonal wall of steel, massive bow waves, high pressure hoses, noise, screamed obscenities, chaos and danger. You brace your back instinctively and wonder what the hell you're doing there." --Peter Wilkinson, 1991. 1979 NEW BEGINNINGS Arguments erupt among Greenpeace offices: Who's in charge? Can anyone use the Greenpeace name? Greenpeace Vancouver sues Greenpeace San Francisco for trademark violation. San Francisco files a counter suit for slander. The day before the trial, David McTaggart flies in and acts as a diplomat, fashioning an agreement whereby Greenpeace Europe pays Canada's debts and everyone (except Greenpeace Hawaii) agrees to be part of a new "Greenpeace International," which holds the "Greenpeace" copyright. "There were arguments, but we made the difficult decision to unite under one set of campaigns, one set of policies, and one name. The transition was remarkable. What had been a bunch of people trying to rock a boat by jumping up and down at different times suddenly started to coordinate what they were doing. That was when we really started making waves."--David McTaggart, 1991. 1980 DOLPHIN DEATH Dexter Cate, from the tiny non-profit Fund For Animals, travels to Japan and witnesses the slaughter of some 1,300 dolphins, which are being falsely blamed for sharp declines in squid and yellowtail hat vests. He is so sickened by the slaughter that he frees some 300 penned dolphins in Iki Island, Japan. Cate is arrested and jailed for three months. His stories and photographs inspire Greenpeace to work to protect dolphins worldwide. "They were angry, but not abusive. They understood, finally, that I had acted from a moral position.... I saved the dolphins just like I would have saved human beings from slaughter. " -- Dexter Cate after his arrest, 1980. 1981 SUPERTANKERS--NO THANKS! The U.S. Coast Guard wants to lift the ban on oil super tankers (of over 125,000 pounds deadweight) in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Puget Sound. To get the public to accept the idea, it brings a super tanker into the strait to "test" its safety. Greenpeace turns this public relations ploy around, blocking the tanker for four days and calling attention to the dangers of turning a pristine marine environment into a major oil port. "There were huge swells out there. We spent most of our time trying to keep our Zodiac from hitting up against the super tanker. By the time the protest was over, we had thousands of signatures on a petition against the tankers, and the Coast Guard was unable to sell the idea."--Kay Treakle, 1991. 1983 MOVING PUBLIC OPINION Bethlehem Steel - at that time the largest polluter of the Chesapeake Bay--is targeted by Greenpeace. In 1983 and 1984 activists hang banners, plug pipes, talk to the press and are arrested. Baltimore's chief prosecutor refuses to try the case, so his assistant is forced to take over. As the activists walk out of the courtroom, the chief prosecutor stops them, stuffs a $10 contribution into one activist's shirt pocket, and says: "You're right...that company is killing our bay." "During the course of doing four or five different direct actions in Baltimore, we actually got three different editorials in the papers. What we did really moved the city. So, in a sense, it wasn't surprising that the prosecutor walked out. It was all part of the flow of things. And certainly everybody knew instinctively that what we were saying was right. "--Dave Rapaport, 1991. 1984 IN THE MEDIA More than ever, Greenpeace becomes a visible force in environmental politics as activists climb everything from smokestacks to statues, drawing attention to environmental issues. In the United States, people who open their newspapers on August 7, 1984, see this image of patriotism, freedom of expression and citizen involvement. "We had acted as tourists for days before: going to the Statue of Liberty, looking at the scaffolding, taking pictures, asking questions. On the day of the action, we were prepared to climb all the way up the scaffolding, but we didn't have to. Luckily, someone left the door open. We were able to run right up the switchback staircase before climbing out to hang our banner. We stayed up there for five hours, until the police talked the park officials into meeting one of our demands--a press conference. As I climbed down, one of the officers recognized me as a 'tourist' from the day before, and he said, 'I can t believe it's you!"' --Sebia Hawkins, 1991. 1983 European Parliament votes for voluntary ban on import of white coat harp seal and blue back hooded seal pelts. London Dumping Convention bans ocean dumping of radioactive waste. Gothenberg, Sweden, office opens 1984 After Greenpeace protests, Boehringer Chemiefabrik shuts down its 2,4,5-T herbicide and HCH insecticide factory. Vienna; Zurich; and Madrid offices open. 1985 Luxembourg office opens. 1986 Greenpeace delays "Mighty Oak" nuclear test at Nevada Test Site Greenpeace is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Buenos Aires; Rome; Palma de Majorca, Spain; and Stockholm offices open. 1987 Greenpeace discredits the science of ocean incineration and campaigns against European hazardous waste incineration ships After considerable pressure from scientists and turtle advocates, including Greenpeace, the U S requires shrimpers to use turtle excluder devices in the Gulf of Mexico Green peace begins waste trade, pesticides and nuclear-free seas campaigns. Dublin office opens. 1988 London Dumping Convention mandates ban on ocean incineration by 1994. Greenpeace receives award for outstanding environmental achievement from the United Nations Environment Programme. Oslo and San Jose, Costa Rica, offices open. 1989 United Nations calls for large-scale, high-seas drift net ban by 1992. Moscow; Tokyo; Helsinki; and Melbourne offices open. 1990 U S. tuna companies announce intention to buy only dolphin-safe tuna. Greenpeace receives Better World Society award for excellence in global communications. Greenpeace launches tropical forests campaign. After a successful campaign against ocean incineration, waste Management, Inc. pulls out of the ocean incineration business. 1991 Treaty signed for 50-year ban on mining and drilling in Antarctica. Germany's Hoechst AG chemical company agrees to speed up its phaseout of CFCs. New York State stops ocean sludge dumping. Green peace launches hazardous import/export campaign and North American temperate forests campaign. Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Athens offices open. SECRET SERVICE ATTACK The French government, tired of Greenpeace's relentless protests against its nuclear testing at Moruroa, instructs secret service agents to plant bombs on the Rainbow Warrior. After the first bomb explodes, everyone but photographer Fernando Pereira scrambles to safety. When the second bomb goes off. Pereira is still below deck. and he drowns. "You could hear water pouring in. I went to the left side. Gotje was with me and Fernando was with me. I remember Fernando saying, 'She's sinking! She's sinking!' Water had already been coming on the deck. . . I was hesitating as to whether to go down because my cabin was down there as well, and then the second explosion occurred, right under our feet. "--Hans Guyt, The Greenpeace Story, 1989. 1987 BOTTOM OF THE WORLD Helicopters from the MV Gondwana drop construction materials for the new Green peace Antarctica base, which monitors the impact of scientific bases, promotes safe storage and clean-up of wastes, conducts environmental experiments and lobbies to make Antarctica a World Park. "The day that we established World Park Base in Antarctica was the beginning of a direct action that lasted for five years and involved the efforts of hundreds of people from around the world. More than a few national governments told us we were crazy to think we could maintain a base in Antarctica, but they said the same thing about us getting a ban on mining there. I suppose it's a good thing somebody 's crazy. " --Paul Bogart, 1991. 1988 CIRCLE OF POISON The river boat Beluga winds its way through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River, raising public awareness about pollution from pulp, chemical and pesticide effluent. Some of the polluters--like Monsanto and Velsicol Chemical Corporation-- make "for export only" pesticides too toxic for use in the United States. Green peace climbers hang a banner on Velsicol's Memphis, Tennessee, plant and canvassers across the country collect 137,000 signatures, asking Velsicol to stop producing and exporting the banned pesticides. "The climbers were out of reach of the scrambling police, and Velsicol was complaining about how the climbers had destroyed private property by breaking one piece of barbed wire. Meanwhile, city employees told me how workers used to shovel another now-banned insecticide around as if it were snow. They said many have since died; many others are under study because they have excessive rates of liver cancer. " Sandra Marquardt, 1991. 1989 CFC BOX ACTION A&E doesn't stand for "arts & entertainment." At Greenpeace, it's an abbreviation for the atmosphere and energy campaign. In one of A&E's first actions demanding a halt in CFC production, activists chain themselves inside a metal box bolted to the railroad tracks at the Du Pont Chamberworks plant in Deepwater, New Jersey--the world's largest manufacturer of ozone-depleting CFCs. No raw materials could get into the plant, and no CFCs could get out. "Du Pont owned property on one side of the tracks; the other side was residential. A couple of generous people let us use their houses to make phone calls, use the bathroom, watch the TV news. And when the kids came along on their bicycles, I explained what we were doing in terms of suntan lotion and sunburns. 'We re stopping a chemical called CFC. Ozone is like the planets suntan lotion, and without it, we get burned."' -- Norm Oppegard, 1991. 1990 WALLS OF DEATH Sailors, activists, underwater photographers and scuba divers aboard the new Rainbow Warrior set out after Asian driftnetters in the North Pacific. They document the death toll of the fleets that unfurl thousands of miles of unbreakable nylon mesh into the sea every night. "Those were the most dangerous small-boat conditions I'd ever been in. We had to stay night and day alongside the driftnetters. There was heavy fog and the Rainbow Warrior's radar couldn't see us behind the waves. But we came out with hard evidence of the destructiveness of those nets." --Twilly Cannon, 1991. 1991 IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAY... Greenpeace turns 20. Campaigners in Alaska are working against factory trawling, clear cutting and "big oil." On the Great Lakes, activists collaborate with citizens to clean up the act of paper mills. Many debates erupt: Will changes in the Soviet Union endanger our projects there? How do we organize in Eastern Europe? Should we go to the Persian Gulf to monitor the effects of the Gulf War? How do we refocus our campaigns in a recessionary economy? "It was the third day in a row of getting up at 3:00 a.m. to match time zones with Europe. It was the third day in a row of scratchy speaker phones and discussion about sending the MV Greenpeace to the Gulf. Someone mentioned the Voyage to Amchitka and I thought, '20 years of this!' I was depressed for a few minutes, then thought, 'Ah, what the hell else is there to do at 3:00 a. m.? "' --Vickey Monrean, 1991. Special thanks to Julie Nelson, Sam Kittner, Rob Visser and Nora McCarthy for photo research. FIVE THINGS WE NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT GREENPEACE SUGGESTION BOX, PLEASE! In 1980, a wealthy supporter offers to pay for 180,000 tiny helmets to protect baby harp seals from being clubbed to death in the Arctic. Other well-meaning suggestions include hiring crop dusters to dye the entire Arctic ice pack green, and using immense submersible heaters to melt the pack ice and keep the seal hunters at bay. TROUBLING TRANSLATIONS In 1980, the bilingual banner we hang in Boston Harbor to protest Icelandic whaling is unwittingly written in old Norse (not modern Icelandic), reading something like, "Thou shouldest not killeth the whales." In 1988, in the Soviet Union, we make a similar gaffe: A gift of a Russian version of our popular "No Time to Waste" T-shirts are received without much enthusiasm by local environmentalists. Later, we are politely informed that the shirts actually read: "We are wasting our time." BEHIND DOOR NUMBER ONE... In 1987, an unsuspecting door-to-door canvasser in Washington, D.C., knocks on the door of an executive who works for a company we've been battling for years, Waste Management, Inc. They argue for hours about hazardous waste. Then, after admitting that Greenpeace cost his company $10 million (because it had to stop offshore hazardous waste incineration), the executive writes a check to Greenpeace for $250. DON'T TELL THE WHALES After successful actions against Icelandic whalers in 1981, volunteers overhauling the Rainbow Warrior try to replace a mysterious lubricant in the stern tube. A helpful marine supplies salesman says the stuff is no longer available because of "those goddam conservationists." The substance is whale oil. BY THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS In 1986, four Greenpeacers, who are trying to delay a nuclear test, get hopelessly lost in the Nevada desert. When their jeep is stopped by test site guards, they claim that they are looking for wild ponies. One guard points over the horizon and says, "Well, don't go in that direction. That's the Nevada Test Site." With such good directions, they are able to delay the test as planned.--JC ON A BRISK SPRING MORNING LAST year, I joined Lee Aulman, a field biologist at the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, in his road-weary pickup for a drive down California's Big Sur coast. As dawn arrived, he gestured out the window. "Look at all this perfect peregrine habitat. Lots of cliffs, lots of birds to eat, and lots of wide open space." Waves crashed against a succession of rugged headlands that faded into blue infinity as they merged with the ocean and the sky. A single sign of human presence was etched like a goat path into the cliffs: the narrow road upon which we were driving. "Don't let the pristine look fool you," he cautioned. "This is the sixth year I've come to collect their eggs before they break." Aulman has devoted the past decade of his life to trying to save California's peregrine falcons. Although his bearded face and steady gaze is that of a grizzled mountain man's, his voice cracks with emotion as he rattles off an alphabet soup of toxic chemicals--DDE, HCB, PCB, and most recently, dioxin--found in high levels in the Big Sur birds. "Many people think that DDE, the toxic breakdown product of DDT, is the single cause of our problems, but we've got a real witch's brew here with combined effects that have never been studied," Aulman said. "When I started falcon work, we thought only about eggshell thinning caused by DDT. Now we're seeing a disturbing increase in embryo deaths that we can t explain." Unlike most endangered species, America's peregrine falcon population didn't slowly taper off. It crashed. As late as 1968, a major reference book on birds of prey called the peregrine "the world's most successful flying bird" because of its stable, near-global population and unparalleled flight abilities. But after the peregrine's abrupt decline was linked to extremely high levels of toxic environmental contamination, the bird became a very different symbol. Dr. Tom Cade of Cornell University in New York, who pioneered efforts to save the peregrine through captive breeding, calls the bird "a unique biological monitor of the quality of the world's environments," a veritable miner's canary that is telling us, by dying before our eyes, that the Earth is being poisoned. Peregrines, like human beings, live at the top of their food chain. This means that toxic contamination in their environment is passed in ever-increasing concentrations from small marine organisms to fish to the bird that is the peregrine's main source of food. Hundreds of artificial chemicals, many of them deadly to birds and mammals in parts per million, billion or even trillion, have been found in the fatty tissues and eggs of peregrines. By the late '60s, scientific evidence isolated the pesticide DDT as the major culprit in eggshell thinning, causing death of chicks--not only peregrine falcon chicks, but also bald eagle, brown pelican and osprey chicks as well. In response, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DDT in 1972, and the following year, the peregrine was declared internationally endangered. To date, more money has been spent on global efforts to save the peregrine than on any other species on the list. At first, the peregrine fared well with all of the attention. Peregrine populations rebounded in inland states such as Arizona so rapidly that by 1985 peregrines were called "the premier example of success in single species conservation" at an international peregrine falcon conference. In response, a number of scientists and politicians began to urge that the peregrine be the first federally endangered species to become officially saved-- down listed to "threatened" or totally de-listed. "By the end of the '70s," recalls ecologist Dr. Robert Risebrough of the University of California, "we all thought the story [of DDT contamination] was over. The pelicans were reproducing again and falcons were on the increase." A surprise came in the '80s, however, when peregrine falcons that had been reintroduced near the California coast showed much higher levels of toxic chemicals in their bodies and lower levels of reproduction than scientists had predicted. That California's peregrine populations are still endangered may well have something to do with the fact that the state's agricultural industry still uses more than 40 percent of the nation's pesticides, including difocol--sold under the brand name Kelthane. Long after the 1972 ban on DDT, agricultural spraying of Kelthane, a mixture of compounds synthetically derived from DDT, continued. The process that Kelthane's manufacturer, Rohm and Haas, uses to convert DDT into Kelthane is not completely efficient, and thus DDT still finds its way into California's citrus crop. And it was in California, during the '50s and '60s, that the Montrose Chemical Company dumped an average of 600 pounds of raw DDT a day into the Los Angeles harbor and in several offshore sites. This residue from pesticide manufacturing continues to haunt California's environment. Extreme hot spots of over 300 parts per million DDT remain on the ocean floor. As a result, large amounts of DDE, a toxic chemical produced when DDT breaks down, continue to enter California's food chain. But the problem may involve more than just DDT and other agricultural chemicals. Rather it may be more evidence of the gradual-- but clearly documented--flow of toxins over long distances, contaminating otherwise pristine environments. For example, it was 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, on Broughton Island, hundreds of miles from any sign of industry, that Inuit Eskimos learned in 1989 that they have higher levels of PCBs in their blood than any known human population on Earth. AS AULMAN AND I PASSED AN ESPECIALLY sheer section of Big Sur coastline, I spotted a peregrine cruising beside us in pursuit of a flock of shorebirds. "Good eyes," Aulman said. "There's a nest in the middle of that biggest cliff down there. You could drive this road a hundred times and never be aware of it." Miles later we came to a small meadow, where we startled a group of picnickers by attaching ropes to a tree at the edge of a cliff and stepping off backwards into space. All signs of humanity vanished as we entered a shadowy realm floored by the surf and roofed by the sky. Both Aulman and I wore hardhats to protect our heads from falling rocks as well as from the fierce, dive- bombing peregrines. When our ropes dangled in view of the nest ledge, we experienced that finely honed killer instinct firsthand. Our mission was to "augment" the nest--to place dummy eggs carefully crafted out of special plastic to have the same appearance, weight and heat exchange characteristics as real eggs, and to remove the thin- shelled real eggs for incubation and Hedging in the laboratory. But to the female peregrine, we were stealing her young. She began circling us with a wild aerobatic display of loops, rolls and vertical dives. As Aulman neared the nest, the male shot out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile targeted for his head, then pulled away at 10 feet, as the female "stooped" close enough to part Aulman's hair. Although there were only two birds, dark forms with swept back wings seemed to be everywhere at once. The air was filled with their machine-gun-like cack- cack-cack cries. Despite our tormenters, we succeeded in removing four fragile eggs. EVEN AFTER SURVIVING THE RIGORS OF hatching from a thin-shelled egg and fledging, it is estimated that 70 percent of the peregrine chicks will not survive their first year, and even fewer still will have the precise survival skills to later nest and pass on their genes. Our group never made it that far. Brian Walton, director of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, later informed me that the entire clutch of four eggs we had collected failed to hatch in the incubator. He sent them for analysis to the Long Marine Laboratory on the outskirts of Santa Cruz. There, in a cluster of buildings nestled in a meadow beside a sea cliff, I passed through a door emblazoned with toxic warnings to meet Wally Jarman, a wildlife toxicologist. He explained that even though the lab housed standard samples of highly toxic compounds to calibrate their machines, the extracts they took from Big Sur peregrine eggs were among the most potent toxics they worked with. "Everyone wears gloves and glasses to handle them," he said. The effect of toxins varies widely from species to species; what may be extremely toxic to peregrine embryos may have no effect on chicken embryos, and vice versa. To determine what has been killing the peregrines, Jarman explained, scientists would have to cage hundreds of the endangered birds and feed them toxic chemicals. "It took years to establish that DDE was causing something as obvious as eggshell thinning," said Jar man. After considering the obvious link, Jar man extended his search to dioxins, the deadliest of all manmade poisons, and a common byproduct of waste incineration and effluent from pulp mills. Just five parts per trillion of dioxin can cause a tumor in a rat or kill a chicken embryo, but little is known about the effect of dioxin on peregrines. In 1989, Jarman contacted Bob Stephens of the California Department of Health Services Hazardous Materials Lab in Berkeley, one of the few facilities in the West equipped to test for dioxins, to analyze seven California peregrine eggs, six from the Central Coast. "The first results knocked my socks off," Stephens told me on the phone. "I thought something might have gone wrong until I ran the tests again and got the same extreme levels: five to ten times the amount [of dioxin] that will kill a chicken embryo." Were there broader implications? The lack of specific studies on the effects of the 210 different known varieties of dioxins on peregrines deepened my curiosity. "The pattern of the dioxin compounds in our tests is like a fingerprint," said Stephens. "We can roughly tell whether major components come from pesticides, pulp mills, the burning of fossil fuels, or such things as the manufacture of wood preservatives. The fingerprint of the coastal peregrines is quite general with no indication of a typical point [or singular] source of pollution. That's not a good sign. You can more easily go in and clean up a point source." ALTHOUGH CALIFORNIA'S URBAN AND coastal peregrines capture the most attention from both media and biologists, 61 of the state's 90 known pairs nested in the vast northern interior in 1989. Most coastal birds carry more toxins than inland birds, and at first biologists rejoiced at the presence of what appeared to be a healthy breeding inland population. Now, however, scientists are seeing inland eggshells that average 17 percent thinner than normal eggs--only 1 percent better than the state average and precisely the thresh hold value below which scientists say a population is in decline. At first, many researchers suspected that the young birds that resettled the interior simply accumulated a greater toxic load as they aged. However, the data fail to support this conclusion, and the situation remains an enigma. Joel Pagel, a peregrine specialist for the U.S. Forest Service, monitors peregrines in a large region of Oregon and the far north of California. When I joined him on a cliff high above California's Trinity River to band three wild-hatched chicks, he told me, "I stopped believing in the myth of pristine interior populations after I began going out in the field here. In 1989 I documented 78 percent nest failure in my region. Even at such high failure rates, these numbers don't tell the full story. A nest is considered "successful," for example, if even one peregrine hatches out of a nest full of eggs. "You Can't tell me that one out of four is a successful nest, yet it goes in the report that way," says Pagel. Equally deceptive is the number of peregrines that have been released into the wild by the Santa Cruz Group since 1977-- almost 700. Though this number is relatively high, it is achieved through very labor-intensive means which are increasingly losing funding. Whether groups like those in Santa Cruz will be allocated the necessary funds by Congress--funds that are already in short supply--to continue their battle to save the peregrine remains in question. But the state population is rapidly approaching the 120 breeding pairs (designated as the point at which the federal government can down list the species to "threatened," or fully delist it). This may mean an end to the sort of work peregrine specialists know must continue in order to save the species on the California coast. "We've done our job and it's still bad," says Walton. "The population isn't stable and we're scheduled to stop augmenting birds after 1992." The Western Peregrine Falcon Recovery Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering changing the way endangered species are protected--from a national approach to a more regional one. "In much of the American West, the peregrine has increased rapidly, reproduced normally, and is no longer 'in imminent danger of extinction,' the definition of 'endangered,"' says team leader Dr. James Enderson. "We're suggesting that the bird be listed on a region-by-region basis, just as the grizzly is endangered in Wyoming but not in Alaska. We may conclude that the peregrine is still endangered along the entire Pacific Coast and on the northern prairie, threatened in some interior regions," he continued, "and has recovered in the Southwest, where a hundred birds nest along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon region." In the big picture, little has changed since the Big Sur poet Robinson Jeffers eloquently linked the peregrine to human destiny over half a century ago as "a symbol on which many high tragic thoughts watch their own eyes." The situation of the peregrine begs for more research, as well as greater public awareness, and direct action to prevent repeated failures in dealing with endangered species in the future. Resources: Predatory Bird Research Group, Lower quarry, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95046; 408-459-2466. Tours by appointment. The Peregrine Fund, 5666 West Flying Hawk Lane, Boise, ID 83709; 208-362-3716, THE ENDANGERED ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT As the plight of the peregrine falcon indicates, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is simply a stop-gap measure, a finger in the dike of catastrophic loss of the world's species due to habitat loss and toxic contamination of the biosphere. More than 1,000 species of plants and animals, from the humpback whale to the whooping crane, have been listed as threatened or endangered since the ESA became law in 1973, and an additional 3,500 await possible protection. Because the listing process is so slow, however, many species become extinct before they have been listed. Scientists anticipate that, within the next few decades, approximately one-fourth of the Earth's plant and animal species will become extinct, their place in the delicate web of life lost forever. Though humanity may survive this initial loss, it is highly unlikely that we could survive a loss of 75 to 80 percent of the Earth's biological diversity. Yet, at current rates of habitat destruction, losses of this magnitude are entirely conceivable within the next 100 to 200 years. No one nation can stem the tide of extinction on its own. But the United States, as a world leader, holds a greater obligation to preserve the planet's biodiversity. However, the U.S. is failing to take this leadership role. Despite the need for even stronger protection for endangered species, today the ESA is under its heaviest assault ever. Since 1973, it has been weakened twice: First, in 1978, it was amended to allow for economic consideration in cases where species protection would take too large a toll on human activities. This provision allows the secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI) to convene a special Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the "God Squad," to determine whether or not to waive the act and allow a species to become extinct if the price to save it is too high. Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, who has called the ESA "just too tough," recently convened the cabinet- level God Squad to decide whether to resume logging in the old- growth forests of the Pacific Northwest where only 3,000 endangered spotted owls remain. The ESA was weakened again un 1986 when the DOI ruled that the ESA did not apply to any project or action outside of the U.S. receiving federal approval or funding. This ruling allows, for example, the U.S. Animal, Plant and Health Inspection Service to underwrite a major pesticide spraying program in Guatemala, which threatens the wintering habitat for the endangered migratory yellow-checked warbler. A lawsuit brought against DOI by the Defenders of Wildlife and other environmental groups in conjunction with Travis County, Texas, the principal breeding range of the migratory bud, will determine whether this double standard will be allowed under the law.