INTRODUCTON
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. --Victor Hugo (1893)
On September 15, 1996, the 25th anniversary of the first Greenpeace campaign, I was asked how the idea of Greenpeace came about, and, did I think, at the beginning, that it might grow into the world's most influential environmental organization. The short answer was no. At that time, we were focused on the one direct action in front of us. When we stood on the street corners of downtown Vancouver, wearing 'Ban the Bomb' sandwich boards, we were held together by personal commitment to stop nuclear testing.
As I thought back through my life, in search of a deeper answer, the importance, and the influence, of past events began to take hold. It was then, that the idea of this book came to me.
I had been making waves all my life. Some ebbed gently to shore, others tumbled back upon me with a frightening momentum. The best ones cascaded forward, rippled outward. I never knew, beforehand, which would be which, I only felt compelled to stir the waters.
I had started life in the 'Roaring Twenties,' in New York City. When I was three, the New York Stock Exchange crashed. The Great Depression was the background to my boyhood.
The United States entered World War II in December of 1941, the year generally considered to be the end of the Great Depression. I was fifteen.
Before long, I was seeing, firsthand, the devastation wrought by the nuclear bombs that had hastened the war's end. I was brought, inescapably, into a new age; once the bombs had been dropped, nothing would be the same. People were profoundly affected by the atomic bomb; they dug backyard bomb shelters and taught schoolchildren to dive beneath their desks.
After the war, a newly formed Federation of Atomic Scientists lobbied for control of atomic power to be shifted into civilian hands. Their efforts helped shape the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which created the Atomic Energy Commission. But the AEC's creation was to raise as many problems as it answered.
I married, I pursued a career, I traveled, I had children.
An "iron curtain" descended through the middle of Europe, dividing Berlin; missiles steamed towards Cuba, chilling and frightening; the Korean War, the forgotten war, was fought; then, the Vietnam War, where young men died without the faintest idea why.
In my position as research scientist, I saw the direction in which we were headed and didn't like it. I moved my family to the relative safety of Canada. We protested the war and organized to receive draft-dodgers and war objectors.
The '60s were an exciting, revolutionary, turbulent time that brought radical changes to the country, but it was the 1970s--the anti-nuclear, anti-war, energy-starved '70s--that transformed it. It signaled the beginnings of a new public awareness of the environment, and, the impact of human development on it.
Oil shortages were the defining events of the 1970s. Thus began a rush to diversify our energy base and to reduce dependence on imported oil. The AEC broadened its nuclear horizons. In 1972, they held a series of public hearings on the topic. We challenged the nuclear industry demanding stiffer safety criteria.
I sought an alternative lifestyle, one that was ecologically appropriate. I invented energy self-reliant technologies. I entered politics.
Although it was not my first campaign of protest, from the moment the plan to confront the bomb was announced, the idea of Greenpeace was born. Motivated by the Quaker tradition of "bearing witness," we would set sail from Vancouver, to stop the nuclear explosion at Amchitka--in a halibut fishing boat. Her official name was the Phyllis Cormack, but within a very short time, she became popularly known as the Greenpeace.
What follows, in this book, is the long answer to the question, did I think, at the beginning, that that first Greenpeace action would became a dramatic focal point for an international movement. I enter into its writing with a deep sense of humility and appreciation. Over the years, thousands of people have worked for Greenpeace. Many have contributed substantial portions of their lives to shaping and building it.
Jim BohlenNovember 2000