the how and the why of being a green activist

I have been working with Greenpeace for the past 4 years, since I was 17 years old. And like everyone who joins Greenpeace with a passion for Environmental activism, I have been in awe of the Rainbow Warrior (RW for the ones well versed in Greenpeace lingo). The ship that sank and came back, the biggest blot in the French conscience since Waterloo , the ship that pretty much change the entire course of Environmental activism around the world. And believe me none of this is an understatement.

So finally I found myself on the RW 2 months ago, trying to stop what is probably the biggest threat to human life. No, its not cholesterol related. It doesn’t even have any connections with Nuclear weapons. Its our friendly neighborhood climate change. It might sound impossible to a lot of us sitting in air-conditioned rooms on comfortable seats, but if scientists across the world are to be believed (and not the soon-to-be-extinct Bush administration) it seems climate change is the single biggest threat to our culture, our way of life and even to our very existence. In other words . Its true, and its happening to you, you just don’t know it yet.

3 thousand years of human civilization, everything from languages to music to digital watches (the non waterproof kind of course) is at threat. And who is the biggest criminal ? well its that harmless piece of black coal that we have been mining and burning for the past 100 years. Quite an irony , 100 years of dumb humans is all it takes to wipe out 3000 years of smart ones. But at least we are not going down without a fight, large corporations and some countries think that making a quick buck is better than saving the planet from environmental destruction, and they seem almost amazed when someone tells them any different. That’s where we come in, the ship, the activists and the truth. We stopped them at map da phut , Thailand. We stopped them at Ashkelon , Israel. And we will try and stop them from burning a single piece of coal if we can. We have been beaten, bombed , shot at, kicked in strange places, thrown vegetables at .And its not stopped us before , do you think we let it stop us now. I don’t think so.

Captain Mike Fincken used to say these words ,’ for the past 37 years Greenpeace has fought at the front line of environmental activism, but all that has only been a dress rehearsal for the fight that lies ahead. Climate Change is the biggest threat to human life and coal is the biggest criminal. ,”