Criticism of Greenpeace

Throughout its history, the non-governmental environmental protection and conservation organization Greenpeace has been criticized by a number of groups, including state governments such as Germany's, members of industry such as BP, and political groups such as the US Republican Party. The organization's use of direct action has also caused controversy.

Criticisms

Some critics have said the organisation is too mainstream. Paul Watson, who was pushed out of Greenpeace in the 1970s and later founded Sea Shepherd, once called Greenpeace "the Avon ladies of the environmental movement," because of their door-to-door fund-raising that relies on the media exposure of deliberately orchestrated and highly publicized actions to keep the name of Greenpeace on the front pages. Bradley Angel, who organized communities in California and Arizona for Greenpeace, left the organization to found Greenaction in 1997. Greenpeace had summarily shut down its community-building operations, terminating more than 300 employees in the US alone, in what Angel called "a betrayal".

A prominent critic of Greenpeace is Icelandic filmmaker Magnús Guðmundsson, director of the documentary Survival in the High North. Gudmundsson's criticisms focus largely on the social impact of anti-whaling and anti-sealing campaigns, which have had disastrous affects on the native people of Iceland, Greenland and Canada, who depend on these activities for subsistence. After lobbying efforts by Greenpeace, Guðmundsson's documentary was judged to be libellous by a Norwegian court in 1992, and he was ordered to pay damages to Greenpeace. A Danish tribunal held that allegations that Greenpeace faked video materials were unfounded. Media sources who published Guðmundsson's allegations, including TVNZ and the Irish Sunday Business Post, subsequently retracted and apologized.

A former Greenpeace founding member, Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, is also a critic of the organization. Moore's main criticisms have been leveled at the campaign to protect the forests of British Columbia.

The factual basis of particular campaigns has also been criticized. In 1995, Greenpeace mounted a successful campaign to force Royal Dutch Shell, co-owner of the Brent Spar oil storage buoy, to dismantle the platform on land rather than scuttling it at sea, which involved the platform's occupation by Greenpeace members. A moratorium on the dumping of offshore installations was adopted in Europe soon after the affair, and three years later the Environment Ministers of countries bordering the northeast Atlantic sided with Greenpeace, (PDF) adopting a permanent ban on the dumping of offshore installations at sea.

After the affair, it came to light that Greenpeace has misled the public as to the amount of toxic waste present aboard the Brent Spar. Greenpeace admitted that its claims that the Spar contained 5000 tons of oil were inaccurate, apologizing to Shell on September 5. However, Greenpeace dismissed the importance of the amount of oil on board, pointing to wider industrial responsibility as the main issue at hand, as the Brent Spar was to be the first offshore installation to be dumped in the northeast Atlantic ocean; Greenpeace claimed that it would likely have been followed by the scuttling of dozens or hundreds more platforms, setting what they consider to be a dangerous precedent. The organization went on to point out that Shell's decision to scrap the platform had been taken before Greenpeace announced the existence of an incorrect amount of toxic waste, and that their mistake therefore did not influence Shell's decision.

Anti-DDT Campaign

Greenpeace supports the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, a legally binding international agreement which aims to phase out substances such as DDT. However, both the Stockholm Convention and Greenpeace allow DDT to be used for malaria control. Libertarian critic Paul Driessen claims the permit process has been so elaborate that up to 85% of USAID toward Malaria control is spent on environmental consultants needed to comply with the convention. According to Roger Bate, a libertarian critic of Greenpeace, the organizations campaign to shut down the last major DDT factory in the world located in Cochin, India, would make the eradication of malaria more difficult for poorer countries.

Anti-GMO campaigns

Dr. Patrick Moore, ecologist and an early member of Greenpeace, has broken with the group over a range of issues, including its campaign against genetically modified crops. He stated that "the campaign of fear now being waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic."

Greenpeace spends roughly $12 million annually on campaigns against genetically modified crops, and have thereby encouraged governments to establish regulation which an industry funded lobby group, AgBioWorld claims is overly restrictive.

Among other anti-GMO campaigns, Greenpeace opposes golden rice. The alternative proposed by Greenpeace is to discourage mono-cropping and to increase production of crops which are naturally nutrient rich (containing other nutrients not found in golden rice in addition to beta-carotene). The Golden Rice Project acknowledges that "While the most desirable option is a varied and sufficient diet, this goal is not always achievable, at least not in the short term."

Although it had admitted efficiency to be its primary concern as early as 2001, statements from March and April 2005 also continued to express concern over human health and environmental safety despite the fact that these sorts of fears have been widely discredited. While calling for human safety testing, Greenpeace has also opposed the field trials which would provide the needed material. Field trials were not conducted until 2004 and 2005.

The renewal of these concerns coincided with the publication of a paper in the journal Nature about a version of golden rice with much higher levels of beta carotene. This "golden rice 2" was developed and patented by Syngenta, which provoked Greenpeace to renew its allegation that the project is driven by profit motives.

Dr. C.S. Prakash, who is the director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at Tuskegee University and is president of the industry lobby group AgBioWorld Foundation expressed the opinion that "[c]ritics condemned biotechnology as something that is purely for profit, that is being pursued only in the West, and with no benefits to the consumer. Golden Rice proves them wrong, so they need to discredit it any way they can."

Greener Electronics campaign

In August 2006, Greenpeace released a "Guide to Greener Electronics," which ranked leading mobile phone, PC, TV, and game console manufacturers on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers. Greenpeace encouraged manufacturers to clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances and to take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.

The Guide to Greener Electronics stated "the ranking is important because the amounts of toxic e-waste is [sic] growing everyday and it often ends up dumped in the developing world. Reducing the toxic chemicals in products reduces pollution from old products and makes recycling safer, easier and cheaper." It ranked Nokia and Dell near the top, but essentially gave failing grades across the industry, ranking Toshiba thirteenth, and Apple Computer in eleventh place out of the fourteen brands. The report singled out Apple for its low rank, saying: "Already, many of the companies are in a race to reach the head of the class - that is, except for Apple, who seems determined to remain behind rather than be the teacher's pet we'd hoped for." This caught the attention of tech media news sites, and was widely reported. Greenpeace gave Nintendo a score of 0.3 / 10 based on the fact that Greenpeace has almost no information on the company, which, by Greenpeace's grading system, automatically results in a zero for the affected categories.

Daniel Eran of Roughly Drafted Magazine criticized the guide in an article, saying the Greenpeace guide's "ranking puts far more weight upon what companies publicly say rather than what they actually do. It is also clear that Greenpeace intended the report more as an attention getting stunt than a serious rating of corporations' actual responsibility." In response, Greenpeace attacked Roughly Drafted's credibility, pointing out that it has in the past been called "the lunatic fringe of Mac fandom" by other bloggers after comparing the cost of Windows and Mac OS X.

It is in fact alleged that Greenpeace has had no factual evidence, instead relying on unsubstantiated official company information for the report in order to garner publicity, as well as political and monetary support. The Environmental Protection Agency's EPEAT shows Apple leading the ranks in all categories. ArsTechnica called the Greenpeace report a fraud after factual substantiation was questioned.

Greenpeace responded to the criticisms in a rebuttal also published by RoughlyDrafted. Along with the Greenpeace rebuttal, the article further presented the results of a second Greenpeace report, called "Toxic Chemicals in Your Laptop Exposed," which Roughly Drafted called an 'apology' for the initial claims Greenpeace made in the Greener Guide rankings. While Greenpeace itself has never used the word "apology", they did restate several of their initial claims in a response to Keith Ripley, another reviewer of the report. For example, the data reported findings of minimal traces of TBBPA, an unregulated fire retardant in the Apple computer; the Greenpeace press release said Apple "appears to be using far more of this toxic chemical than its competitors". This is despite the fact that the EU Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks concluded in March 2005 that TBBPA "presents no risk to human health" and "the World Health organisation conducted a scientific assessment of TBBPA and found that the risk for the general population is considered to be insignificant."

More criticism of the statement in the Greenpeace press release followed in: "The most recent report, 'Toxics in Your Laptop Exposed,' did credible scientific tests, but then threw out the data to instead present a lathered up, misleading and deceptive press release that was simply a lie. No amount of credible science is worth anything if you ignore the findings and simply present the message you wanted the data to support."

Greenpeace published an article on its website, addressing the criticism so far, with a special focus on scientific issues.

Removal of ancient tree

In June 1995, Greenpeace took a trunk of a tree from the forests of the proposed national park of Koitajoki in Ilomantsi, Finland and put it on exhibitions held in Austria and Germany. Greenpeace said in a press conference that the tree was originally from a logged area in the ancient forest which was supposed to be protected. Metsähallitus accused Greenpeace of theft and said that the tree was from a normal forest and had been left standing because of its old age. Metsähallitus also said that the tree had actually crashed over a road during a storm. The incident received much publicity in Finland, for example in the large newspapers Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat. Greenpeace replied that the tree had fallen down because of the protective forest around it had been clearcut, and that they wanted to highlight the fate of old forests in general, not the fate of one particular tree. Greenpeace also highlighted that Metsähallitus admitted the value of the forest afterwards as Metsähallitus currently refers to Koitajoki as a distinctive area because of its old growth forests

Anti-nuclear advertisement

In 1994, an anti-nuclear newspaper advert by Greenpeace UK was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because of false and unsubstantiated information. This included a claim that nuclear facilities Sellafield would kill 2000 people in the next 10 years, and an image of a hydrocephalus-affected child purported to be a victim of nuclear weapons testing in Kazakhstan. Greenpeace did not admit fault.

Blunders

Coral destruction

In 2005, Greenpeace was fined for damaging almost 100 square meters of coral in Tubbataha Reef. The group accepted responsibility for the act, and paid a fine of approximately $7,000 equivalent in Philippine Pesos, while claiming that charts provided to them by the Philippine government were outdated and inaccurate.

Mistaken deforestation

In Summer 2005, German Greenpeace Magazin 6/2005 showed a photo with a single scots pine tree alone on a wide snowy area that was said to be a result of the clear-cutting of a Finnish forest (in German "Kahlschlag am nordfinnischen Peurakairasee"). This was later found to be an error; the area seen in the photo was actually a swamp and had never been a forest. Greenpeace admitted and corrected their error and published a photo of an actual cutting area in the next edition.

Press release blunder

In Philadelphia, in 2006, Greenpeace issued a press release that said "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." The final report warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns. According to a Greenpeace spokesman, the memo was a joke that was accidentally released.