Greenpeace: An Antidote to Corporate Envionmentalism

An Interview with Peter Bahouth

Peter Bahouth is Executive Director of Greenpeace USA. He holds a B.A. from the University of Rochester and a J .D. from the Northeast School of Law. Bahouth has worked with Greenpeace since 1979. He coordinated the legal agreement for damages when French secret service agents sank the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship for Greenpeace International. He was also the original coordinator for the Rainbow Warriors record project in 1987.

The corporations should have to start putting money aside... so that people can be compensated and retrained and the communities can be put whole again. MULTINATIONAL MONITOR: What is Greenpeace?
PETER BAHOUTH: We are an international environmental organization that takes an ecological approach. We have offices in 23 countries. We have a fleet of 7 oceangoing ships. We work on 37 different campaign issues that fall under the general categories of nuclear, toxics, ocean ecology or atmosphere and energy. We have 4 million supporters worldwide and 2 million supporters in the United States. [We have] the only full-time non-governmental base in Antarctica.
Beyond the stats, we are an organization which is trying to redefine the ways that people see themselves in relation to the natural world and also to each other.
We are an activist organization that goes to the site of problems, whether its Washington, D.C., where certain policies are being made; or the ocean, where 35,000 miles of drift nets are dropped every evening, if it's a chemical company's pipe out the back of its factory, we'll be there. We want to go to where the problem is actually happening, show people what is going on and take some action.
MM: How is Greenpeace different from other environmental organizations?
BAHOUTH: Direct action. People define their feelings about the organization in terms of that activism. In other words, people like us because they see us out there or they don't like us because of those particular tactics.
We are not incrementalists. We really are not trying to be success-oriented on a short-term basis. We want to think much more long-term, to be in a leadership role, to be really on the cutting edge of particular issues.
The fact that we're international is different from a lot of other organizations and also that we take an ecological approach.
MM: What does it mean that you take an ecological approach?
BAHOUTH: We see the connections between a lot of different issues. If you want to talk about the oceans, you can talk about so many different issues in the oceans: it involves toxic pollution; it involves what's going on with rainforests; it involves what's happening with the ozone and how that affects the oceans; it involves how we deal with the commercialization of species and how we do things like overfish; and it involves how we over-utilize non-renewable resources; it involves the nuclear navies. So we see the connectedness between the environmental issues and things in nature.
MM: What are some of the things that Greenpeace has accomplished?
BAHOUTH: The International Waste Trade Campaign has been instrumental in getting information out and confronting the problem directly, and also in getting 82 different countries around the world to ban the importation of waste from industrialized nations. To me that's a very large success. It was accomplished in a very pragmatic way, that actually went directly to the countries that were receiving waste. That is a very current success that we're having, and it involves every country in Africa except for South Africa and many countries in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Another example is our effort to combat pollution and disposal sites around the country, most notably incinerators. There are probably 8,000 community groups right now fighting toxic facilities in their neighborhoods, and we've had a role in that, in trying to connect a lot of these groups up with each other and providing information to them.
We have also had success in endangered species, most notably with whales and the hunt of seal pups.
We have been successful in the fact that there's a moratorium on low-level radioactive dumping at sea. We have had a lot to do with the fact that [nuclear] testing has become a big issue, and is operating underground at least at this point, and is no longer atmospheric.
And I think generally we've had a strong role in raising people's awareness about the environment. Our approach is very activist and confrontational. Confrontation is something that is always scary to people, and it is something which brings them out of their routine, and it is not something that people are brought up to feel comfortable about. But I think that people have been somewhat encouraged and empowered by the type of tactics that we utilize.
MM: Is Greenpeace working on Earthday?
BAHOUTH: Since we confront environmental problems as they occur, we don't particularly have a timeline that is given to us by an organization like Earthday. So, if we are protesting the deployment of the Trident II missile system on Trident submarines, we do that when the submarine leaves King's Bay, Georgia. If we're going to protest DuPont continuing to manufacture CFCs, we're going to do it according to a timeline which makes the most sense tactically to carry it out. And that doesn't always necessarily occur on April 22. So, although we're an educational organization like a lot of others, we do it through our actions. Our actions have a strategic purpose to them. They are well-thought out and they don't just naturally occur on a single day.
The approach that Earthday is taking is both good and bad. A lot of people will certainly be drawn towards environmental activism that hadn't been before. However, Earthday is also an opportunity for corporations and governments to try to co-opt public interest.
We're also afraid that people might be lulled into thinking that some of the solutions to environmental problems are simple. There has been a plethora of books and publications about 50 simple things that you can do to save the world. Although those things are important, I think we're going to have to assume that we're going to do those things in the future. We have to go quite a bit beyond that and really get at some of the root problems.
MM: What do you think is the most important thing for environmentalists to be focusing their resources on now?
BAHOUTH: Given public interest, we have an opportunity here to stop ambulance chasing on the environment. In other words, we can get beyond chasing after oil spills or a particular pollution accident.
All of those ambulance sirens that the environmental groups have been sounding over the last 20 years have woken a lot of people up. They are now ready; they want to be involved and their minds are open.

MM: What would you say the root problems are?
BAHOUTH: Production technology choices being made by very small groups of people who care about the wrong things.
Look at a place like Los Alamos, New Mexico: 50 years ago five people got together and decided that they were going to go up in the mesas above Santa Fe and begin the nuclear era. In DuPont's corporate board room, they make conscious decisions to produce 500 million pounds of CFCs a year, knowing that they are affecting the environmental health of the whole world. Decisions are affecting public health and are made in a very private way, with little thought as to the long-term implications.
The big challenge is to figure out a way that we can affect those decisions so that people can be more involved. People will say, "Wait a minute. We're not going to let a small group of businessmen make decisions which are affecting our health and our quality of life."
MM: Why was Greenpeace not involved in the Exxon boycott?
BAHOUTH: Well, we had a big debate about the Exxon boycott, and we felt that the biggest problem was not what particular company was responsible, but the fact that they are all part and parcel of the big problem. So [oil spills] are not just Exxon's fault, because there is a pattern. It is Exxon this time, but who is it going to be next time? It is going to be Atlantic Richfield or British Petroleum. Do you go from one boycott to another boycott?
If you get tankers going back and forth, you are going to have accidents; and when you don't have accidents, you are going to have pollution. To focus on Exxon is too narrow. Sure they are culpable, but so are the rest of the oil companies.
MM: So Greenpeace wouldn't advocate a strategy based on addressing oil spills and would instead focus on energy use?
BAHOUTH: Right. To us, the issue is not double hulled tankers and making it safer for oil companies to transport oil. The real issue is that they are pushing the use of oil to the extent that they are; that they are fighting to maintain oil subsidies; that they are working against a level playing field in terms of the prices of non-renewable energy resources; that they are actively campaigning against things like conservation and public transportation. The bigger issue is our energy use; the corporations don't necessarily help to solve it.
MM: What are some of the specific campaigns Greenpeace is working on in developing countries?
BAHOUTH: We currently have a campaign that works against the international trade in waste. For example, American Cyanamid ships mercury sludge produced in New Jersey to South Africa. Here we see the connection between poverty and the environment, and race and the environment. This is a real opportunity for Greenpeace not only to stop American Cyanamid's practices, but to illustrate that there is no "away" for these [toxic] substances, that they are always going to go somewhere-- somebody's backyard is going to be despoiled.
MM: How does Greenpeace address conflicts in less developed countries which are eager to embrace industrialization, but are destroying their environment in the process?
BAHOUTH: The challenge for Greenpeace is to exist in non- industrial countries so that we can involve people that are affected by the schemes to achieve development. That is why we are opening campaign offices in Latin America and Asia and Africa and elsewhere.
We are also trying to expand the dialogue about the type of future that we would like to see. When we talk about agriculture, pesticides are obviously a problem. But we also have to be proactive and say it is not just a matter of banning a set of pesticides, its also a matter of encouraging clean agricultural practices that are sustainable for people.
Corporate America is trying to create the illusion of a conflict between the environment and jobs. As far as I'm concerned, it is environmentalists that are actually talking about jobs for people because we're talking about a safe workplace; we're talking about a sustainable, renewable, safe future. It's not the petrochemical companies that are talking about what's going to happen to people's jobs when we run out of oil in 15 years.
The corporations maybe should have to start putting money aside, the ones that are involved in dinosaur industries, like pesticides. So that people can be compensated and retrained and the communities can be put whole again. After all, these corporations made profits as a result of public policies and laws which gave them breaks over the years on behalf of jobs and production. Now the corporations have to give back.
MM: What sort of strategy does Greenpeace pursue on issues like deforestation?
BAHOUTH: Well, we use almost every tactic we can think of, ranging from consumer action to political action at the highest governmental levels. It is also going to involve direct action. You take something like the situation in Burma where the government is destroying and selling the Burmese rainforest to pay for a civil war. To stop that destructive practice which contributes directly to the destruction of the global environment, we have to pressure the U.S. government to take action against fish and other imports from Burma. We are going to have to get our research together to pinpoint the situation; we are going to have to do lobbying activities; we are probably going to have to do direct action at some point. We try to work on every level that we possibly can including working with people in Third World areas like Burma, both on research and trying to address the problem from where it is really happening.
MM: What do you think about the pollution credits proposal?
BAHOUTH: The biggest problem with it is that it is another pollution management scheme, as opposed to a prevention scheme. You've got a situation where these credit schemes or market schemes make pollution into a marketable commodity; they actually provide economic incentives to continue to produce pollution, for example.
The pollution plan suffers from the same problems as other pollution management schemes. One of these for toxics, for example, is to build incinerators. That actually provides an incentive to produce waste to fuel the incinerators and it also acts against and discourages recycling.
MM: What do you think about population control as an environmental issue?
BAHOUTH: I have a hard time with the population issue. A person in the United States uses about 40 times more resources than somebody in, say, India. We have to address that problem before we address population. We are using as much as 40 percent of the world's resources as a country, and we certainly don't have 40 percent of the world's population. When people talk about population, a lot of times they are referring to Third World populations, and I think that has the danger of pretty easily becoming racist.
MM: This issue of Multinational Monitor contains an article about corporate executives serving on environmental groups' boards. What do you think about that practice; would Greenpeace ever consider putting a corporate executive on its board?
BAHOUTH: No, we would never consider something like that. It is not our role to be part of what I call the regulatory-industrial-negotiating complex. There are plenty of other people who are out there trying to forge compromises between environmental concerns and corporate interests.
It is discouraging to me that environmental groups would allow corporations to get good will for very little cost. Instead of cleaning up their act, the corporations are cleaning up their image. And one of the ways that they can clean up their image is to say, "Hey, we support environmental groups. We are not a problem."
I think [putting corporate executives on environmental groups' boards] is an insult to people who are fighting some of these companies. Waste Management, Inc., for example, is able to say, "We are on the board, and we support some of the largest environmental groups in the country." What does that say to people that are fighting Waste Management, Inc.'s incinerators or fighting their landfills? This is a company that was fined and assessed penalties more than any other company in the 1980s, over $40 million in fines and settlements either paid or pending in the 1980s.
This sort of thing is a real danger for environmental groups. People don't trust Congress or the White House; they are getting to the point where they don't trust the inside-the-beltway, national environmental groups. I think a lot of people who support these groups would be horrified to know that some of them are taking money from certain corporations.
MM: In addition to the message that it sends and what it reflects about the philosophy of the organization, do you think that the corporate board members influence policy at those organizations?
BAHOUTH: All the organizations would say that they don't, but I think subtly they do. It is like who you hang out with; you are always influenced by the people you pal around with, and that is what the environmental groups are doing here, they are "pal-ing" around with corporate polluters, and I think it subtly changes their approach.
The other thing is that companies are gaining access to what the organizations are all about. I think that letting Waste Management, Inc. have access to what groups are all about and what groups are doing is a problem. For example, Waste Management, Inc. is either on or trying to get involved with a group called the Environmental Grantmakers Association. I think it is a very chilling thing. A lot of groups that get money from foundations can't speak out because they are getting money from some of the foundations that Waste Management Inc. is trying to influence.
MM: Reports of severe environmental degradation in Eastern Europe are becoming common. What prospects do you see for environmentalism in Eastern Europe?
BAHOUTH: The connections between the political changes in Eastern Europe and environmentalism are very interesting. People want more control of their lives, whether it is control of their government, or control of the companies that come into their communities, it is all the same thing. Communities are at risk.
In Eastern Europe, people have the opportunity now to reorder their communities and society. They have the opportunity to start from scratch. But they are trying to go from dirty 19th century technology to dirty 20th century technology, whereas we are trying to convince people over there to try to think about 21st century technology that might be clean. Instead of importing better pesticides or more efficient scrubbers for pollution plants, we are encouraging them to consider technological options that would prevent the types of problems that this country is suffering from now.
Countries in Eastern Europe have a choice. They can pursue our model, or they can begin using the types of agricultural practices which don't involve pesticides and which are safe for people, such as integrated pest management or organic farming-- even the U.S. National Academy of Sciences says that this is a process that works.
There is a better opportunity in Eastern Europe to deal with some of those situations. Unfortunately, I think that instead of developing their own prevention technology, they are going to adopt our management technology; in part, it is going to be forced on them.Ten years from now they are going to have their own Environmental Protection Agency licensing companies to pollute and managing their waste. The opportunity is there to do it a different way.
Both the United States and Eastern Europe should adopt what can be called a precautionary principle in our approach. Currently, chemicals are almost given a bill of rights; in other words, they are out there in the environment unless they are proven guilty, proven to be harmful. We should be saying that chemicals don't have rights, people have rights, and our right should be to a clean environment. We should not let synthetic chemicals into our environment unless they are proven to be safe. That is the sort of thing we have to talk about and that is the sort of thing that has to happen here, in Eastern Europe and throughout the world.

People don't trust Congress or the White House; they are getting to the point where they don't trust the inside-the-beltway, national environmental groups.

Table of Contents