History

With reflections on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace’s past, present, and future, here's Rex Weyler - author, photographer, ecologist, Greenpeace International co-founder and long-time trouble-maker. Read it, share it and, if you enjoy it as much as I do, sign up to get the column by email every month. Over to Rex Weyler:

When the first Greenpeace boat sailed across the Gulf of Alaska in 1971 toward the U.S. nuclear test site in the Aleutian Islands, the crew and their supporters in Canada had no idea that the campaign would launch a global organization. Irving Stowe, Quaker leader of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee that launched the campaign, belonged to a dozen such groups and believed that after a campaign the group should disband. His idea of keeping things simple and grassroots has merit, but as we know, that’s not how things turned out.