Greenpeace | Quakers

Greenpeace Aotearoa

Greenpeace is an international environmental organisation, with a long-standing Quaker connection. In New Zealand, its main project, known as the Climate and Energy Campaign, focuses on promoting renewable energy sources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and advocating for policies that support a low-carbon economy.

This campaign aims to address the root causes of climate change by pushing for a transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.

Greenpeace New Zealand actively advocates for the adoption and implementation of renewable energy technologies, seeks to influencing government policies, encouraging investments in renewable energy infrastructure, and raising public awareness about the benefits of clean energy.

A significant part of the Climate and Energy Campaign involves opposing the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and use in New Zealand. Greenpeace campaigns against oil drilling, coal mining, and gas exploration, highlighting the environmental destruction and long-term consequences associated with these activities. They organize protests, engage in legal challenges, and mobilize public support to pressure the government and corporations to move away from fossil fuels.

Greenpeace provides public information about the impacts of climate change, the importance of renewable energy, and practical steps individuals and communities can take to reduce their carbon footprint.

Greenpeace lobbies for the implementation of regulations and incentives that promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and emissions reductions.

Today, many Friends are involved with Greenpeace, by making regular donations and as members and activists.

Greenpeace: Quaker roots.

Greenpeace evolved from a grassroots peace and ecology movement in Vancouver, Canada between 1968 and 1972. Two of the four founding couples were Quakers: Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe (pictured) and Marie Bohlen and Jim Bohlen.

In the 1950s, Dorothy and Irving Stowe had begun campaigning against nuclear weapons, using the Quaker ideas of “bearing witness” to wrong-doing and “speaking truth to power.” In 1961, to avoid supporting the Vietnam War with their taxes, Dorothy and Irving immigrated to New Zealand. However, when New Zealand sent troops to Vietnam in 1965, the Stowes moved their family to Canada. Jim and Marie Bohlen met at a Quaker peace march in Pennsylvania in 1958; they immigrated to Canada in 1967 to keep Marie’s son Paul out of the Vietnam War. Jim and Marie Bohlen first met Irving and Dorothy Stowe at an End the Arms Race Rally in Vancouver.

After the U.S. announced a series of nuclear tests on Amchitka Island in Alaska in 1968, the Bohlen’s and Stowes wanted to do something to stop them. They agreed to sail a boat out to the test zone and chartered a fishing boat named Phyllis Cormack.

They renamed it Greenpeace and set out to sail to the island, but were stopped by the US Armed Forces. The bomb was still detonated but the resulting publicity about the peace campaigners led to the cancellation of further planned tests on Amchitka.