Greenpeace vs. Sea Shepherd: An Unfortunate Conflict
Greenpeace issued a lengthy statement on their website in an attempt to further distance themselves from Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd yesterday. With an aim at setting the record straight, Greenpeace made the statement out of frustration with what it claims are lies and falsehoods propagated by Watson, compounded by a general public misconception that Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are associated with one another.
Greenpeace takes issue with what they describe as a fundamental difference in the anti-whaling tactics practiced by each organization. It is interesting to note how Greenpeace characterizes and differentiates their tactics versus that of Sea Shepherd, particularly their characterization of what constitutes violence.
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For Greenpeace, violence constitutes doing something that might put a human being in jeopardy, something they say Sea Shepherd and Watson are guilty of.
However, in their attempt to illustrate how proactive they are in the fight to save whales, Greenpeace makes reference to how in the past, Japanese whalers run from their ship at high speed when faced with a potential confrontation.
Regardless of Greenpeace’s non-violent policies, would the Japanese ship run from them, or resort to bringing the coast guard, if there wasn’t a perceived threat of violence? The success of Greenpeace’s anti-whaling efforts is clearly connected to the willingness of Sea Shepherd to take tough action and thereby instilling fear of the protesters in the whalers’ minds.
And anyway, is there a huge difference between sabotaging a propeller or sinking an unmanned whaling vessel (Sea Shepherd tactics) and blocking a harpoon vessel from shooting a whale with your ship (a Greenpeace tactic)? All these tactics are designed to achieve the same result, namely to prevent or reduce the killing of whales, and none particularly put lives at risk. Can’t we all just get along?
Image credit: Michael Dawes at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Actually, the whalers usually also run from Greenpeace. Here’s a blog from the last whaling season about it.
Totally agree with you that we need to keep the focus on the issue.
There need to be more Sea Shepard’s!
Andrew,
I think the point is that yes, the whalers run from both of them, but isn’t the fact that they run from Greenpeace evidence that the whalers fear what the activists could do? And isn’t that how Greenpeace defined violence in their press release — using the threat or the fear of violence is just as bad?
-Alex
Greenpeace as a history of stomping on more radical forms of direct action, including earth first, not to mention ELF… And any conversation about morality, or being “bad” should be left for ethics class… where one is quickly robbed of the security of assuming moral absolutes. This is not about holding the moral highground but saving whales… And green peace deserves to loose respect in environmental communities due to thier lack of solidarity.
Also, Everyone should read “How Non-violence Protects the State” or Derek Jensen’s “Endgame.”
So, I think there’s good info here, but one key assumption here isn’t accurate - the whaling boats do NOT run due to the perceived threat of violence, but rather to avoid the exposure of their whaling practices via video, press releases, etc., by either Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd. The need, or perceived threat of violence, is not the underlying motivation here, and in that, both violent and nonviolent actions are equally effective. The rub though, is that by engaging in violent direct action, the Sea Shepherd has effectively cut themselves out of the political arena. Although their tactics are quite effective on the ground, when they can find the whaling fleet, their overall strategy dooms them to returning each and every year to the southern ocean, with little chance of long term success. This annual game of hide and seek will do little to protect the whales in the long term.
Gabe,
Do you think they really mind video footage of their whaling being taken? There’s already plenty of that available, I don’t see why they’d be so afraid of there being more.
-Alex
greenpeace is just jealous of the press that the sea shepherds have been getting.
Alex,
There is a difference between me telling you I’ll beat you up if you don’t stop acting stupid (threat) and beating you up for acting stupid (action).
See? They are not equally bad, and the “fears” are invented anyway since Greenpeace does not use violence.
Shame on everyone involved, you are only seeking to garner attention for yourselves and make money off the plight of the whales. Every season the whalers leave port you follow in your hydrocarbon spewing death machines, doubling the rate of global climate change and hastening the inevitable extinction of the polar bear. If you truly cared you’d stay on land and not put to sea, one of the most fragile ecosystems we have on earth.
HBX,
From Greenpeace:
“We differ with Paul Watson on what constitutes violence. He states that nobody has ever been harmed by a Sea Shepherd action. But the test of non-violence is the nature of your action, not whether harm results or not. There are many acts of violence — for example, holding a gun to someone’s head — which result in no harm. That doesn’t change their nature. We believe that throwing butryic acid at the whalers, dropping cables to foul their props, and threatening to ram them in the freezing waters of the Antarctic constitutes violence because of the potential consequences. The fact that the consequences have not been realized is irrelevant.”
The question is whether Greenpeace’s tactics (which include chasing the ships) would be effective if Sea Shepherd were not there “holding the gun” to the whalers’ heads. In other words, does Greenpeace exploit Sea Shepherd’s “violence” for the success of their campaign?
-Alex