Warriors of the Rainbow Greenpeace 40th Anniversary Edition This edition published in 2011 by Greenpeace International Ottho Heldringstraat 5 1066 AZ Amsterdam Warriors The Netherlands www.greenpeace.org in association with of the Publishing Consultant Fremantle Press 25 Quarry Street Fremantle Western Australia 6160 www.fremantlepress.com.au Rainbow Text © Bobbi Hunter 2011 Introduction © Kumi Naidoo/Greenpeace International 2011 First paperback edition printed in 1971 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement from 1971 to 1979 This book is copyright protected. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Designer Tracey Gibbs Printed by Everbest Printing Company, China National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: by Robert Hunter Hunter, Robert, 1941- Warriors of the Rainbow : a chronicle of the Greenpeace movement from 1971-1979 / Robert Hunter. 2nd ed. ISBN: 9781921888809 (pbk.) Includes index. Greenpeace Foundation--History. Environmental protection--History. Nature conservation--History. 333.78216 in association with For further information on Greenpeace activities and membership, see www.greenpeace.org Foreword It is June and summer time in Greenland. Not that I can really tell since it is freezing as a Zodiac inflatable carries me and fellow activist Ulvar Arnkvaern from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza toward the massive oil rig Liev Erikson. Baffin Bay is not where you would expect to find an African from Durban, South Africa—even in “summer”—but there is a multi-national oil company intent on opening up the Arctic to deep sea oil drilling here, and so Greenpeace is also here to protest, bear witness and take action. We have no choice but to do so. The story you hold in your hands is too powerful to ignore. It is the story of the birth and early years of Greenpeace, the most important environmental activist organization to come out of North America. It is a vivid and often hilarious firsthand account of how a group of journalists, For Mother Gaia anti-nuclear campaigners, mystics and mechanics bickered their way through the 1970s, of how their direct tactics inspired popular movements to save the whales and seals, stop French nuclear weapons tests and the live capture of marine mammals and more. This account was written by Bob Hunter, who for many of those early years was the recognised leader of Greenpeace. Hunter was a reporter and a writer before Greenpeace, and during the years this book describes, he ventured into a state of mystical, hallucination-induced hippie vision—one where humans are not at the centre of the universe. By his own admission, Bob was not always easy to work with, in part because of the vision that drove him, but he never ceased being an affable, talented communicator and, in a manner peculiar to the times, an effective and generous leader. It was under Bob Hunter’s tenure that Greenpeace achieved its global reputation for daring, media-savvy campaigns. Using the most cutting edge technology of the day, such as short-wave radio, radio direction finders, Zodiacs and 35mm film, Greenpeace voyages sought to expose and bear witness to environmental malfeasance. They stopped nuclear weapon tests in places where news organizations had not dared to venture and endeavoured to live up to a Cree tale about the Warriors of the Rainbow who literally chased rainbows and the moon across the sea. The name of this book is taken from the narrative described by a Cree elder and grandmother called Eyes of Fire. She foretold of a time when the Indigenous people would lose their spirit, and the Settlers’ greed would destroy Mother Earth. Over time, some of the Native peoples Bobbi Hunter, first treasurer, first fundraiser, first woman to put would regain their spirit, and teach the Settlers to have reverence for the herself between a whale and a harpoon, Bob’s second wife and a stalwart Earth. Together, using the rainbow as a symbol, all the Peoples of the for both he and Greenpeace. world would join together as Warriors of the Rainbow and work with And then there was Patrick Moore, a key figure in the early years one another to end the destruction and desecration of the planet. Hunter who would become a vociferous critic of Greenpeace and other found this story inspirational and shared it with his companions, the idea environmental organizations. Moore has opposed our work from outside stuck and a new legend was born. Greenpeace for longer than he supported it from within. Most organizations have mission statements. Thanks to Bob, and to After ending his formal role with Greenpeace and spending several the Cree tale that inspired him, Greenpeace has a prophecy. years as a freelance writer, Hunter settled in Toronto where he worked Bob Hunter’s narrative describes the early Greenpeacers sailing for the upstart local television station CITY-TV. By the mid 1990s, he around the Pacific, consuming excessive amounts of recreational drugs, had his sights set on the goal of stopping catastrophic climate change. bickering over internal politics, risking their lives, developing arguments Environment ministers would cringe when CITY-TV’s Eco-Specialist about whales being sentient beings and staving off bankruptcy. Somehow attended their news conferences. Environmental activists were they managed to start a global movement, take on both super powers delighted when their campaigns were brought to air, and to life, by a of the time, save seals and whales, protest oil tankers in coastal waters man who always had time to encourage activists. He covered numerous and drive nuclear testing underground. No author of fiction would have Greenpeace actions in Canada and the U.S., travelled to the 1997 Kyoto dared propose a tale this amazing. Conference, and wrote a paper for Greenpeace International on the Along the way they were denounced by movie stars like John Wayne, threat of climate change, which was transformed into the last of his feted by movie stars like Brigitte Bardot, and supported by 1970s musical thirteen books, Thermaggedon, Countdown to 2030. icons such as Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Country Joe McDonald, James In preparing this edition only a few sentences have been altered from Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot. the original, changes that Bob himself had agreed should be made to any Several of the figures mentioned in the book went on to have a great future editions, at the request of a crew member from the first voyage. influence in the environmental movement, and their more recent history We are pleased to be able to honour that now. is worth mentioning. Greenpeace carries with it to this day the Spirit of Bob Hunter, as do Paul Watson, prominent in early accounts of Greenpeace campaigns, many others. Among them is Bob’s youngest daughter Emily, who has was ejected from the Greenpeace Board in 1977 and later went on to followed in her father’s footsteps as an eco-activist and journalist. We found the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Together, Hunter and continue to value life more than material things, we continue to sail ships Watson were named among the men of the twentieth century by Time with rainbows painted on the bows, and we still make it our business magazine. Hunter went on to advise Sea Shepherd and accompanied to voyage to the frontiers, to bear witness to environmental destruction Watson on numerous campaign journeys and the two remained friends and, where we find it, we take action to stop it. until Hunter’s untimely death in 2005. There have been many books and memoirs written by participants of David McTaggart was in Australia, the Pacific Islands, or in France for these events. All are worth reading. The first, the most poignant, and the much of that period, pursuing his own campaigns against nuclear testing. best is Warriors of the Rainbow. It is also, in my humble opinion, the most Later McTaggart would carry on the work Bob Hunter had started in hilarious. driving Greenpeace’s expansion around the world. Paul Spong, who introduced Bob Hunter and Greenpeace to the plight of the whales, continues his important research on cetaceans to this day. Rex Weyler, the photographer on many of the early voyages, would Kumi Naidoo become an important Greenpeace historian with the publication of his International Executive Director, Greenpeace book Greenpeace. 2011 Author’s note We all bear witness: What plays nightly on the newscast if not Twilight of the Gods? Deserts on the move. Oceans turned black and lifeless. Birds vanishing from the sky. Jungles burning. Smog tightening its carbon dioxide grip around city after city, while the countryside turns to sand. More Northern forests aflame than ever. The sky itself rotting before our computerized censors while we do nothing to save ourselves from perishing in a few generations from unbearable extra ultraviolet radiation. A storm called Greenhouse Effect. Like a new kind of all-at-once global tsunami of savage climatic gyrations. A steady percolating-to-the-boiling-point inside the goldfish- bowl atmosphere, followed, as some computer projections foresee, by a swift and terrible plunge in temperature leading to a million-year Ice Age. Super-hurricanes that sweep the soil away across backed-up empty lakebeds. The nightmare this very day, you can truthfully agree, is no longer a future prediction. It is upon us. Not along. Not striving in a vacuum. An aspect of Nature. Such a notion smacks of legendary old-world magicians who could reportedly make nature do their bidding.