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GREENPEACE
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An environmental hero
finally tells his story
of TheColumnists.com
There are some out there who think of Rex Weyler and his band of "rainbow warriors" from Greenpeace as "environmental terrorists." You don't want to use that term around Weyler, who knows who the real environmental terrorists are--and has risked his life to stop them. It makes him, well....bristle a bit.
"We were just ordinary citizens who got fed up and then stood up to do something about it," he says.
In case you don't quite remember, he doesn't mean they stood up at a City Council meeting and meekly raised their hands in protest of a new urban development. Not the people like Weyler who created Greenpeace. They forged an organization that set out to change the minds of millions on crucial ecological issues. For instance, they just didn't beg foreign nations to stop killing whales. They actually went out to sea and tried to stop the slaughter in person.
It angered them that Russian and Japanese and Norwegian whalers thumbed their noses at the rest of human civilization while they continued to hunt down Earth's last remaining whales with explosive-charged harpoons and mammoth factory ships.
Weyler is one of those who went out on the open sea in tiny boats, looking the whalers in the eye until they finally blinked. Meanwhile, the drama the Greenpeace volunteers created was displayed on front pages and the evening news. They forced millions to deal with the extermination of a species and helped change attitudes all around the world.
His dramatic personal story of the making of a great environmental movement is now being told in the new book "Greenpeace" (Rodale, $25.95). It's a mighty saga, rather engagingly subtitled, "How a group of ecologists, journalists and visionaries changed the world."
Was it akin to terrorism to sail your small boats into the path of whalers, putting yourself between them and their prey? Weyler finds it incredible that the question even comes up, though it always does, sooner or later.
"Greenpeace was always a non-violent organization--from Day One," he said when asked about it at a book-signing recently in Bellingham, Washington, not far from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. "We never harmed anyone, but we certainly put ourselves in harm's way."
Now 55, Weyler is married and very much a family man. He has lived in Canada ever since he left the U.S. to avoid being forced to fight in the Vietnam war. He still remembers those days with considerable displeasure--the nightmare of knowing he was leaving his family behind, possibly forever, to become a federal fugitive with the FBI nipping at his heels.
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His hair now has a touch of silver in it and he looks more like someone who might turn out for one of those PBS pledge night folk singer reunions than an internationally known environmental journalist who led one of the great ecological movements of the 20th century. He can chuckle over some of the hard times of his young adulthood though you can sense the hurt that lingers behind the easy jokes and witticisms. But it might be a mistake to think Weyler has mellowed out too completely, even though, when asked if there still are causes he'd be willing to die for, he says, "Yes, but it's a short list. Dying for a cause can be effective, but it only works once."
He still believes those of us who care really need to keep standing up for our planet, even if we think the battle has been won.
"Every victory we won can be rolled back in just a few years," he said.
Now, a quarter of a century later, Weyler concedes it's discouraging to see America under Pres. George W. Bush turning away from its obligation to help save the world's most precious environmental assets before they are gone. A younger Weyler might have just bad-mouthed Bush and condemned his policies. The mature version argues for trying to find the common ground and reason with your enemy. Well, at least at first.
"He and I do have one thing in common," he quipped, apparently unable to resist the opening for a good joke. "We're both draft dodgers."
Weyler explains that the actual confrontations between Greenpeace and the polluters and despoilers weren't ever expected to stop them in their tracks. He says the dramatic confrontations with the whalers, for instance, were a kind of theater designed to seize the world's attention by producing news events with unforgettable images. Even a biased newspaper or TV network would wind up using those images and telling those stories because the public demanded to know what was happening out there.
He says McLuhan was right that most of us think in terms of "mythologies" about almost everything. He believes the task is to change those mythologies--and that became the great strategy of Greenpeace.
Through the years, Weyler took copious notes on all the Greenpeace expeditions in which he played a part. He wrote frequently about their voyages, along with the other journalists in the group, and wired them back to newspapers and magazines on the mainland. He now has fashioned those notes into a fabulous series of stories that tell the story of Greenpeace from its humble beginnings in Canada to its present status as one of the world's most respected and effective environmental organizations.
As you read Weyler's "Greenpeace," you can't help thinking what a great movie it would make. I mean, imagine what it must have been like to be among those daring non-sailors who set forth upon the vast oceans of the world, trying to track down the whalers whose routes were closely-guarded secrets.
Then I remembered that movie director Ron Howard had long ago announced his plans to do a film called "Rainbow Warrior," named after one of the ill-fated ships of the Greenpeace volunteers. All the the 1990s, I asked Howard about it every time I saw him. He always explained, "We're still trying to get it made."
Weyler told me there actually were two proposed movies. Greenpeace was going to produce its own film and actually hired a screenwriter, but finally dumped that script when the writer insisted there had to be a love triangle to hold the public's interest.
"As if there wasn't enough drama and action without a love triangle," Weyler said. "Not that we didn't have some of that stuff going on. I mean, we probably had love quadrangles! But, you know, Hollywood can take any good story and turn it into crap."
The other film was indeed Ron Howard's "Rainbow Warrior" project, which Weyler says is still technically alive.
Right now, though, Weyler believes a new film project may emerge from his new book. He has reserved the movie rights and has hopes the story of Greenpeach eventually will be told on the screen in a way that will not embarrass anyone and may even help revive public interest in the causes Greenpeace advocates.
I asked Weyler if he fears that the growing number of monopolies in the mediums of mass communication are going to make it harder for the next generation of environmental crusaders to get their stories told. Though he agrees the openings have diminished in the conventional media, he still thinks the Greenpeace approach to create attention-grabbing events and images will work.
"But our ace in the hole is the Internet," he said. "It has democratized communications."
Weyler today serves as editor-at-large for Dragonfly Media in the U.S. and Canada and writes for newspapers, magazines and on the Internet. He has written several books, including the Pulitzer-nominated "Blood of the Land," a Native American history. He was the co-founder of Greenpeace International in 1979 and edited the organization's first monthly news magazine. He also co-founded Hollyhock Educational Centre on Cortes Island in B.C., which is Canada's leading educational retreat center.
With his long years of experience with Greenpeace, Weyler understands that a crusader for environmental causes had better be prepared for long spells of failure. Yet he argues failure to win your battles doesn't really mean total defeat. If you fight for a cause and lose, others will be inspired by your fight and may carry it on elsewhere. In his words, "it clarifies our belief system."
In Weyler's mind, "If I stand up for something, just the act of standing up can be terribly effective."
©2004 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of Rex Weyler and are his copyrighted property.
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