This is the last week I’ll be greeting you as “Mark Floegel of Greenpeace.” By this time next week, I will no longer be working for Greenpeace.
I’m sure many of you have heard the news reports of Greenpeace’s recent financial woes and our subsequent downsizing. I’m part of that downsizing. Much has been made of Greenpeace’s difficulty. The press is full of pundits, half of whom claim Greenpeace has become obsolete; that confrontational direct action belongs to the past and Greenpeace is just one more dinosaur lumbering off to extinction. Other pundits say Greenpeace is in trouble because it has sold out, become just another green-group, inside-the-beltway lobbying organization that has lost touch with its roots. Whatever else one can say about Greenpeace, such diametrically opposed criticisms cannot both be correct.
It has fallen to me to represent Greenpeace in several of the aforementioned news stories, and I’ve done my best to do that. What I have to say here is not said on behalf of Greenpeace; these are my own views.
First, I think it should be acknowledged that mistakes were made in the management of Greenpeace. But Greenpeace’s mistakes were mistakes of the heart; they were worth making. People donated money to Greenpeace and we spent that money trying to protect the environment. If we had been more selfish and spent some of that money on institution-building, we would not find ourselves in these desperate hours. If we had compromised our principles and accepted corporate donations and by doing so provided aid and comfort to industrial polluters and exploiters, as have so many of our most vocal critics, then we might not have so many passing judgment on us right now.
The recent weeks have been extraordinarily difficult for us at Greenpeace, but my heart brims with admiration for my colleagues. People at Greenpeace do not earn lavish salaries, many of us are facing financial uncertainty as we become unemployed, but the overwhelming concern at Greenpeace in the last month has been for the work, for the fate and future of the communities and ecosystems the individuals at Greenpeace have worked so hard to protect. For those of us at Greenpeace, this is not a job, this is our life. This is what we do and how we see ourselves in the world.
At the end of a cold, rainy day in autumn 1991, I was returning to the Greenpeace boat Moby Dick, which was visiting towns in the Great Lakes to raise awareness of persistent toxic pollutants. The boat had been open to the public that day, but I was sure the public had long since gone home. Our message of industrial pollution was not a popular one in the Rust Belt, where even dirty jobs are hard to come by. The boat itself was not particularly attractive, nor were the people on it, after long months of duty on the lakes. So I was shocked to arrive at the Moby Dick and find a long line of people standing in the cold rain for a chance to visit our boat. I watched the people for a long time, wondering why this should be. What I finally realized was this: the people at Greenpeace really believe in something and are willing to do something about it. That’s a rare commodity in our world and even people who don’t necessarily agree with Greenpeace are willing to come out in the rain just to get a look at it.
I think that’s an ideal that’s still worth supporting.
The Job is Over, the Work Goes On
This is the last week I’ll be greeting you as “Mark Floegel of Greenpeace.” By this time next week, I will no longer be working for Greenpeace.
I’m sure many of you have heard the news reports of Greenpeace’s recent financial woes and our subsequent downsizing. I’m part of that downsizing. Much has been made of Greenpeace’s difficulty. The press is full of pundits, half of whom claim Greenpeace has become obsolete; that confrontational direct action belongs to the past and Greenpeace is just one more dinosaur lumbering off to extinction. Other pundits say Greenpeace is in trouble because it has sold out, become just another green-group, inside-the-beltway lobbying organization that has lost touch with its roots. Whatever else one can say about Greenpeace, such diametrically opposed criticisms cannot both be correct.
It has fallen to me to represent Greenpeace in several of the aforementioned news stories, and I’ve done my best to do that. What I have to say here is not said on behalf of Greenpeace; these are my own views.
First, I think it should be acknowledged that mistakes were made in the management of Greenpeace. But Greenpeace’s mistakes were mistakes of the heart; they were worth making. People donated money to Greenpeace and we spent that money trying to protect the environment. If we had been more selfish and spent some of that money on institution-building, we would not find ourselves in these desperate hours. If we had compromised our principles and accepted corporate donations and by doing so provided aid and comfort to industrial polluters and exploiters, as have so many of our most vocal critics, then we might not have so many passing judgment on us right now.
The recent weeks have been extraordinarily difficult for us at Greenpeace, but my heart brims with admiration for my colleagues. People at Greenpeace do not earn lavish salaries, many of us are facing financial uncertainty as we become unemployed, but the overwhelming concern at Greenpeace in the last month has been for the work, for the fate and future of the communities and ecosystems the individuals at Greenpeace have worked so hard to protect. For those of us at Greenpeace, this is not a job, this is our life. This is what we do and how we see ourselves in the world.
At the end of a cold, rainy day in autumn 1991, I was returning to the Greenpeace boat Moby Dick, which was visiting towns in the Great Lakes to raise awareness of persistent toxic pollutants. The boat had been open to the public that day, but I was sure the public had long since gone home. Our message of industrial pollution was not a popular one in the Rust Belt, where even dirty jobs are hard to come by. The boat itself was not particularly attractive, nor were the people on it, after long months of duty on the lakes. So I was shocked to arrive at the Moby Dick and find a long line of people standing in the cold rain for a chance to visit our boat. I watched the people for a long time, wondering why this should be. What I finally realized was this: the people at Greenpeace really believe in something and are willing to do something about it. That’s a rare commodity in our world and even people who don’t necessarily agree with Greenpeace are willing to come out in the rain just to get a look at it.
I think that’s an ideal that’s still worth supporting.