Whatever people may think of some of the campaigns that they mount, there can be no doubting the determination and indeed the courage of individual members of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace. It was probably the sinking of the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand's Auckland harbor in 1985 that made the organization's reputation. With other activist groups, Greenpeace had been sailing to protest French nuclear tests on the Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific. The sabotage of the ship which was carried out by French special forces resulted in the death of one crew member. In the subsequent international furor, the French announced that they no longer needed to carry out further tests. It was a great victory for all who opposed nuclear weaponry and its testing. The latest in a long list of spectacular campaigns on environmental issues has been Greenpeace's protest over the exploitation of Arctic waters by oil and gas companies now able to reach areas that were once iced-in for all or much of the year. Some of the 30 crew members on board Greenpeace's icebreaker Arctic Sunrise last month attempted to board a Russia oil rig owned by the state company Gazprom. They were arrested and have been taken to Murmansk where the authorities say they are going to be charged with piracy for which the maximum sentence is 15 years. There have been howls of protest from Greenpeace and its supporters, to say nothing of the families of the mostly young activists who have been arrested. Yet any dispassionate view of what happened would support the view that because Greenpeace members endeavored to board another “vessel” in the face of opposition from that vessel's crew, this was indeed tantamount to an act of piracy. It does not matter that rather than seizing control of the rig for personal gain, the protestors were probably going to erect banners and chain themselves to equipment in an attempt to impede its operation. What they did looks very like piracy. Yet it is clear from the shock with which the organization has greeted the Russian's uncompromising treatment of its people that it imagines that the law of the sea, let alone Russian law, somehow does not apply to it. And herein lies the great weakness and danger of activist pressure groups of which Greenpeace is the best known. Because they assume that they are acting in a just cause, because middle-class supporters in Western countries pour money into their coffers, and because they are charities, they regard themselves as somehow invulnerable. They act as if, whether they are confronting Japanese whaling ships, boarding toxin-filled SPAR platforms or assaulting a Russian oil rig, they have some special rights. In this vaunting assumption that it knows precisely what is best for the world and can behave precisely as it wishes, without consequences, lies Greenpeace's greatest weakness. It may be entirely right about the environmental risks of Arctic oil and gas exploration. However, in making its protest on the issue, its activists should have been prepared to be punished for what they did. That would really have driven home their point because it would have proven that no one involved thought that this was merely some sort of game of protest.
