If you are old enough, you will remember that the French Government blew up a boat belonging to Greenpeace in the Auckland harbor, New Zealand. (If you arenât old enough - trust me - this is not a movie - this is history.) That was 35 years ago - 14 years after Greenpeace was founded to protest the detonation of a nuclear bomb. Since the early 90s Greenpeace has had a broader goal that puts Climate Change front and centre. They are but one organization fighting that particular battle.
It took until 2016 for The Paris Agreement to come together and really is only the worldâs united effort to start to fight climate change. The only countries recognized as âsignificant emittersâ that have not signed are Iran and Turkey.
Anyway - must be all going smoothly. Right?
Captain Peter Wilcox was the skipper and onboard the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. He still is the skipper of Rainbow Warrior (the third).
âIâm scared that we have lost the battle against climate change. But this stuff gets me up in the morning.....I say weâre losing, does that mean Iâm gonna stop? No. Absolutely not. Iâll go down fighting. Weâre not winning, weâre not succeeding. Global warming is getting worse, and worse, and worse and we havenât even started to change the way we live on the planetâ.
Captain Peter Wilcox
If you feel helpless - imagine how Peter feels.
If I stop using plastic bags, recycle and am I âcarbon neutralâ? What good is that in the fight against climate change? What can a single person do? I donât know âŚÂ but donât tell the mosquito in a tent that it is ineffective.
Moreover, The United States of America has pulled out of the Paris Agreement.
Meanwhile, climate activist Greta Thunberg has risen from relative obscurity to Time Person of the Year and nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in less than 18 months, all the while being made fun of by bullies like Donald Trump and Steve Mnuchin.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you winâ
I think we are around stage two/three on âclimateâ.