Greenpeace has applied its tired formula to many companies in disparate industries. Last week we profiled the experience of Apple and the consumer electronics industry. This week we present the sportswear industry and Nike. In July 2011, Greenpeace launched a fundraising campaign targeting Nike and its manufacturing processes. Despite Nike’s attempts at cooperation Greenpeace launched a second round of attacks in 2012.

Why do companies cooperate with Greenpeace?  The same reason why individual donors get roped in to giving them money: they want to believe Greenpeace acts in good faith for the good of the planet. But Greenpeace only cares about the sustainability of Greenpeace. And just as individuals come to regret giving Greenpeace access to their wallets, so too do corporations regret letting activists through their front doors.  Once in, they never leave.  And appeasement only intensifies their attention.

Many conscientious companies in different industries have fallen prey to the Greenpeace cycle of abuse, a three-step process by which Greenpeace raises money.

• Step One: The cycle begins when Greenpeace targets a high-profile company or brand.  “This company is destroying the rainforest, or the ocean, or the planet itself,” they will claim. They’ll photograph the Greenpeace blimp flying over the corporate headquarters. Activists wearing plushy costumes will coach people on the street to make harassing phone calls.  And they’ll misuse trademarked images  — often in a violent context.

• Step Two: The targeted company invites Greenpeace to discuss their grievance in the hope that their disagreement is just a misunderstanding.  After all, dialogue is how reasonable parties resolve their differences.  But Greenpeace isn’t interested in conflict resolution.  Conflict is how they make money.  They’ll accept the invitation and quickly wear out their welcome.

• Step Three: With some evidence of cooperation, Greenpeace declares victory and uses the triumph to solicit donations from its mailing list of supporters and in advertising campaigns that hijack the target company’s carefully cultivated reputation.

This cycle turns out to be endless because Greenpeace will never stop pestering the target company even well after the business has yielded to the activists’ demands.  The demands simply get more demanding and the cycle resumes with a new attack.

We’ve created a series of graphics that show how this cycle has ensnared some of the most savvy and successful companies.  Greenpeace, for example, attacked Apple, in 2006 on claims the company refuted. Greenpeace then took credit for the company’s own “Greener Apple” initiative that Steve Jobs launched in 2007.  Posed as an activist win, Greenpeace used Apple’s initiative to raise money for its own organization. Greenpeace has not left Apple alone and has in fact stepped up the pressure in recent months with amorphous and baseless complaints that amount to nothing more than attempted extortion.

1) Attack, 2) cooperate, 3) declare victory and raise money . . . REPEAT. That’s the Greenpeace Cycle of Abuse.

A word of friendly advice for Greenpeace: you might be more successful at raising money if you don’t alienate reasonable people with vitriol and violence.

Case in point, Greenpeace recently launched a mobile phone app that encourages players to kill as many fish and sea turtles as possible. And not just kill them, but slash and decapitate the innocent sea creatures with bloodthirsty glee.

Of course, Greenpeace says the point of this make believe game is to raise awareness of fishing practices it deems insensitive, even though one Greenpeace web developer admits, “You feel a bit wrong playing it.” How about a lot wrong? A barbaric game complete with axes, multi-blade weapons, and other barbaric instruments of cruelty not only encourages insensitivity — it delights in violence uncharacteristic of anyone who truly cares for the oceans.

But using disturbing tactics is not new for Greenpeace. It has repeatedly used grisly and violent images in its fundraising campaigns and has a troubling habit of gratuitously exploiting children’s cartoon characters in its endless quest for more money.

What explains the curious fixation with grisly violence? That’s all Greenpeace has to make its case. The science is against them. Greenpeace’s preferred fishing method for tuna — pole and line — would require a massive fleet of small diesel powered boats producing a carbon footprint 300 times larger than the over 400 year-old practice of using fish aggregating devices to attract schools of tuna. Without the facts on their side Greenpeace has to rely on shock and awe to grab the attention of potential contributors. The comparative success of mainstream environmental organizations shows that Greenpeace’s adolescent antics, harassing phone calls, and unrelenting panhandling are wearing thin even with own base.

Greenpeace’s new “killer app” is more proof that its radical activists don’t know the difference between edgy and over the edge.

Greenpeace, the multi-issue extremist organization, indignantly criticized the Australian tuna brand, John West, when the company blocked posts on its Facebook page submitted by non-regional users.  “Sometimes the world seems upside down,” wrote Greenpeace in its newsletter this month, “especially when you see that self-censorship is used as a shield to resist the truth.”

We decided to put these truth-seekers to the test.  Would they censor their own Facebook page if something contrary to their carefully cultivated, yet erroneous, narrative showed up there?

We posted a link to an article from the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) that shows how Greenpeace mischaracterized ISSF data to make an ill-informed case against the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs).  Read the ISSF article here.

The post didn’t last long on Greenpeace USA’s Facebook page.  It was taken down in a matter of minutes.  The same thing happened on Greenpeace International’s page when we posted the same link there.  (See before and after images below).

We respect Greenpeace’s right to police its Facebook page and delete material it believes is threatening, but it cannot have it both ways. Greenpeace feels entitled to disrupt and harass the operations of companies it dislikes such as John West.  But they will not tolerate peaceful, reasonable dissent — even if it’s simply a link to a science-based conservation organization.

We all know Greenpeace is hypocritical but spare us the sanctimony.

BEFORE

AFTER

Greenpeace may think plushy outfits, violent cartoon impersonations, and staged protests will rouse the public and impact sustainability policies, but it would appear the rest of the world does not. To everyone else, Greenpeace’s favored antics — harassing companies, whining, and begging for money and attention — are unamusing, juvenile and alienating.

In the latest exposé of Greenpeace— brilliantly titled “When Greens Eat Themselves” — Australian reporter Mike Steketee criticizes their failure to form industry coalitions, resonate with local communities and garner results from full-blown public awareness campaigns.

As Steketee observes, Greenpeace and company are “top heavy, bureaucratic and complacent” and have “evolved from largely voluntary groups into professional organizations focused on large scale fun-raising and marketing strategies.” At some point, presumably in between collecting pre-written meaningless petitions, flying blimps and leisurely cruising on the Rainbow Warrior III, their ineffectiveness got old. Or, as Steketee describes it, they created “a certain staleness in the environmental air.”

Stale, indeed. If Greenpeace wants to be taken seriously, it has to stop playing its game of charades and start contributing to the real work being done by industry leaders, scientists and responsible conservationists to address sustainability challenges.

As it turns out, Greenpeace’s publicity stunts aren’t just preposterous — they’re dangerous.

Using the Access to Information Act, the Canadian Press published excerpts of a declassified government intelligence report on environmental activists’ that places Greenpeace squarely among a “growing radicalized environmentalist faction” in Canada.

This marks the second time in five months that Canadian media has uncovered a threat assessment report that labels Greenpeace “extremist.” Today’s revelation is starkly at odds with Greenpeace’s ludicrous claim that it is a credible, nonviolent organization.

Here are the key findings:

• “Criminal activity by Greenpeace activists typically consists of trespassing, mischief, and vandalism, and often requires a law enforcement response.”
• “Greenpeace actions unnecessarily risk the health and safety of the activists, the facility’s staff, and the first responders who are required to extricate the activists.”
• “Tactics employed by activist groups are intended to intimidate and have the potential to escalate to violence.”

As always, Greenpeace dodges responsibility for causing disturbances to public order and private business and wasting law enforcement resources. Yossi Cadan, campaigns director for Greenpeace Canada, swears, “For 40 years Greenpeace has never behaved violently…We are taking direct actions, but it’s never violent.”

After all of the arrests and fines racked up by all the “direct actions,” protests and harassment campaigns carried out by the “multi issue extremist group,” can anyone take Greenpeace at its word?

Not a chance.

Greenpeace has launched an Apple iPhone app to harass tuna companies right from the store or kitchen. The app asks users to take a photo of a tuna can before submitting their email addresses and sending off pre-written emails that include the usual inaccurate rhetoric on overfishing.

The messages do not go directly to the tuna company but instead they are routed straight to Greenpeace. Why? To allow Greenpeace to identify a group of self-identified “activists” who can be added to their support networks and donor rolls.

As usual, it’s not the action that matters, it’s the money. Sign up and you can count on being hit up for donations again, and again, and again.

Greenpeace efforts always come with a mixture of hypocrisy and irony. In this go-round, Greenpeace is using Apple to host its app even though Apple has been invaded, defaced and hassled by Greenpeace protesters for the past two months because its source of electricity isn’t to Greenpeace’s liking.

Greenpeace describes itself as a “direct-action” organization that sparks “ground-breaking change,” delivers its “message direct to the polluters and politicians” is “steadfast in [their] principles” and “put[s] action behind…words.”

But the Greenpeace Mobile Tactics app delivers messages directly to Greenpeace and no one else. It relies on the genius of a company it has vilified so it also betrays Greenpeace’s supposed principles. And it sparks no action leading to any change other than spare change moving from your pocket to theirs.

Raising money and threatening businesses is the only action Greenpeace excels at.

By refusing to contribute a dime to sustainable fishing solutions and instead spending resources on a meaningless app designed to build its membership and coffers, Greenpeace has yet again signalled where its priorities really lie.

Greenpeace released its contrived ranking of seafood retailers, called “Carting Away the Oceans VI,” in the first week of May 2012.

The non-scientific report was based on a flawed survey with predetermined results. And the media knows it. One of the pressure group’s most potent threats is that it can use its influence with the media to generate news coverage at will.

But how real is that threat? The graphic below compares how little media interest the CATO VI received especially when compared to the human interest story that was fascinating the US public that week.

It’s been said that there are three types of people in the world – those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and the last group who stand around asking, “what just happened?”

Greenpeace’s muddled criticism of a breakthrough proposal on long-term tuna sustainability this week confirms the multi-issue extremist group’s place in the “what just happened” category.

Last month in Bangkok, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) announced an important proposal to limit the capacity of global tuna fishing fleets and share data on catches. It represents the first steps toward a property rights-based system of fisheries management that will ensure the long-term health of global tuna stocks.

Greenpeace is opposed to this but they’re not sure why. More »