Greenpeace and Politics

Economic activity and our environment have been closely linked since man first discovered the concept of trade. In the language of economics, the environment has itself, become an increasingly “scarce resource1”. Since economics is about managing these scarce resources, it will be a useful tool when considering some of the environmental issues facing our planet. One of the major concerns confronting the environment today is the overfishing of the world’s oceans, depleting some species to near extinction. With continued advances in technological and industrial proficiency, fishing vessels are able to fish across the globe, further exacerbating the effects of overfishing. Because the oceans are considered a shared or common

As shown above, Greenpeace was created in order to do the right thing as far as the environment and human lives are concerned. Subsequently, all the

Environmentalists host one of America's largest political lobbies. Groups such as Greenpeace protest with millions of members worldwide on issues ranging from destruction of rainforests, oil companies, nuclear wastes, Greenhouse effect, and biodiversity.

The Green Parties primary goal is to help state parties, but they’re committed to many other things to help better the environment for the people. They’re committed to environmental wisdom, peace, social justice, and grassroots organizing. They care a lot about the environment and economy because they both affect the citizens in a variety of ways; the people are their main priority. The Green Party is democratic so all their focus goes straight for the good of the public, every decision, every donation because they receive donations from big corporations, and all their time. For example, if the issue is Universal healthcare, all of their time will go into fulfilling and solving that issue. They’re not as popular as other political parties but they do get the word out there and people follow. They believe that the political system is broken and that’s what grabs the public attention, because a lot of people know that huge corporations like the Koch brothers for example, control part of the government with their money so they can do whatever they please and dump a bunch of waste into our shores. The Green Party wants to attack and straighten that problem, so the top 1% can’t pull things like that. Real leadership is in this party, and that’s what the people like.

The only green America has ever really cared about is cold hard cash. If we look at the history of the United States it was a country that started out with little more than rural land that people would seek to protect to ensure a happy life. After a century of independence there began an exposition where “machinery was the focus” (Divine, Breen and Fredrickson) setting off the United States into a feverous need for industrial development and economic growth. We added a railroad as the nations first big business and industrial empires were built on steel and oil and soon Henry Ford joined the picture with the mass production of cars in factories. What the world had begun creating was what they believed to the foundation of a more leisure filled

These companies have a legal obligation to follow all the laws set by the environmental authorities, federal state or the local government. Green energy is one of the major ways that the organizations are using to minimize the impact on the environment by reducing waste or minimizing the use of fossil fuels.

This movement is centered around two issues which are the, “siting and expansion of hazardous and undesirable facilities in poor and minority communities and the effort to remediate, relocate, and/or pay damages to members of poor and minority communities affected by pollution.” (Allen 2007).

The world we live in today is dying. From the pollutants in the air and water to the litter on the ground, we as humans and organisms living on this world are actively aware of how we are harming it, yet we continue to do the same. No matter if you believe this affects climate change and global warming or not, it is common knowledge to know the actions we take every day, whether its driving to work or school, burning your trash, or the abundant use of plastic, affects the environment. So long as we continue to hurt our environment we continue to worsen the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the homes of all wildlife. Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization dedicated to bringing awareness to this destruction

“Greenpeace is the leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.” The mission at Greenpeace is to make people aware of environmental issues in a peaceful campaign and fight towards working towards a better environment. Currently, Greenpeace is working towards issues such as protecting forests from deforestation, fighting global warming, protecting oceans, living toxic-free and defending democracy. All these issues are contributing to a poor environment that Greenpeace is trying to prevent. They support acts such as “No New Drilling Act of 2010” which ultimately creates support towards an anti-drilling legislation in the house and

Currently NGO’s such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Greenpeace are the main proponents of global fishing amendments; they act as intermediaries between the public and structures such as the FAO. Improved surveillance, more efficient cooperation between regions, enforcement of state port control, and the reduction of economic incentives are a few of the current tactics used to regulate the oceans (Agnew et al., 2009). Increasingly, attempts to protect the ocean have become international. Since the early 1990’s, illegal fishing has been reduced in 11 areas, as stated by Agnew et al. (2009). The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, known as ICCAT, has assisted in the decline

Lego President and CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was surprised when Greenpeace activists, in an attempt to stop Arctic drilling, mounted a campaign criticizing his popular toy company for its cobranding relationship with Shell Oil. At first, Knudstorp and his executive team at Lego headquarters in Billund Denmark didn’t quite understand Greenpeace’s criticism. Was the criticism justified? Why didn’t Greenpeace tackle Shell directly? Would Greenpeace’s campaign be taken seriously or would it simply fade away? As Greenpeace beefed up its efforts through social media, Lego’s top management was left wondering how to respond to Greenpeace or whether they should respond at all. And more importantly, executives didn’t know whether Lego should continue its business relationship with Shell.

This shows how important it is, to let the public knows that their actions actually matters to the world. Especially during my study abroad program, where I travelled to a number of European countries, it is obvious to me that the Northern Europe is way more aware of this situation and their way of living is comparably more conscious of their actions than the current situation in the United States is. Comparably, if the United States can have the same state of mind as these “Green” countries, the ripple effect will be way stronger than those countries as well. This gives me a strong motion to educate my future clients about the impacts they can make and how they can actually do the world a better good.

First of all, the attitude taken by Greenpeace on agriculture is a responsible one. For example, they have a negative stance on the genetic enhancement problem. However, some opponents have totally different opinions. Take Patrick Moore as an example, he said that the activists in the environmental group have no tolerance about the genetic enhanced food (Moore, 2005). It mentioned that there is no evidence show that genetic enhanced food can be harmful to human health and global environment (Moore, 2005). Therefore, he persisted in his opinion and had a conclusion that promotion of genetic enhancement will be much helpful for agriculture. “Genetically enhanced crops reduce chemical pesticides, boost yield and reduce soil erosion” (Moore, 2005). However, it is quiet misleading to say that activists cannot accept it without any reasons. In this case, lacking of evidence does not mean that genetic enhancement and enhanced food are totally beneficial for environment. On the other hand, (Watson, 2005) mentioned more about it. It said that environmentalists were really worried about complex and dangerous bacteria due to irresponsible gene combining. Compared with Moore, Watson provided specific details about the danger of genetic enhancement instead of showing no evidence. To sum up, it is responsible and safe for Greenpeace to oppose the genetic enhancement because it can be dangerous.

The use of nuclear energy is a big topic for debate. Many countries have fully embraced it while others, such as the U. S., haven’t. Nuclear energy is feared for its danger and scorned because of its wastes. On the other hand, nuclear energy does have some pros like cheaper cost of energy and environmentally safe. Reactor breeders show great promise in nuclear waste, but are it enough to convince the nation?

It cannot be denied the important role of non-state actors in order to tackle environmental issues. Firstly, the propaganda tools and persuasions are an effective method of non-state actors in almost case for influencing people and businesses about the importance of protecting the environment. According to D’Estries (2015), environmental NGOs such as: WWF or Greenpeace recognized the attraction of social media, especially Facebook, hence, they used this as a tool to present their environmental campaigns and get a lot of ‘like’ button. This button is an evidence of the concern of a large of population about the environmental issues and it can influence their idea of protecting the environment. In the article “environmental activism, environmental politics and representation: the framing of the British environmental activist movement”, Newlands (2013)