/ Xeni Jardin / 12:14 pm Thu Jul 8, 2010

Greenpeace founder Jim Bohlen has died

bohlen.jpgJim Bohlen, a Greenpeace founder, died this week at age 84. He trained as a US naval radio operator, then obtained an engineering degree and worked for a defense contractor on Long Island, where he met R. Buckminster Fuller. He was a Quaker and a longtime peace activist. "Jim is survived by his wife Marie, a stepson, a son and daughter by his first wife Anna, and a global environmental organisation."

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  1. Ef this guy. He is part of the reason we do not have nuclear energy. He apologized for this, but the damage is done. He is basically responsible for every bit of human suffering and environmental damage caused by our inability to get off the oil and coal standard.

    1. Did he personally sabotage the power plants at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? Those incidents (and the public reaction) had far more impact on our current energy policy than any peace activist ever did.

      1. Let’s add to that from Brainspore – not only did public reaction have a lot to do with it, but also political attitudes based on appeasing said public. And don’t forget that Greenpeace is a global organisation. Not a US one. Plenty of other countries have plenty of nuclear power. That’s quite an attack on a recently late, and very influential guy you’ve made.

  2. Oh, blow it out your ass.

    Every watt of electricity in this country could be generated by nukes and we’d still have coal mining (for steel) and oil drilling (for vehicles).

  3. Is he the guy responsible for those jerks standing on the street corner harassing people for money as they walk by?

    Greenpeace seems like a sham to me.

    1. Yes, he picked out the locations and personally drove each canvasser to his post each morning, often making them chew on garlic cloves on the way.

      Then he spent the money they raised on whale porn, video poker, and betting on dog fights.

    2. First, full disclosure: I am a Greenpeace volunteer. Meaning, I’m one of the people who occasionally stand around somewhere holding a picket sign, or collecting signatures, etc. That kind of stuff. (Nothing as exciting as climbing stuff, or chaining myself to stuff, I’m afraid. ;-)) And, like you, the practice of collecting money in the streets like Greenpeace, WWF and so on do, used to seem a little dodgy to me. I’m still not too fond of it. – HOWEVER: how do you think non-governmental, non-commercial organisations finance their activities? Where, for instance, does the money for Greenpeace to maintain a small fleet of ships come from? Exactly: it all comes from donations. Sure, we could try just relying on the donations we get without direct fundraising – but we’d be a *lot* smaller and less effective, then.

      1. I know donations are key to these sorts of things, but plenty of non-profit organizations get donations without acting like homeless beggars.

        Speaking of the “small fleet of ships,” why, exactly, does Greenpeace own ships?!

        1. >plenty of non-profit organizations get donations without acting like homeless beggars.

          And operate on a much smaller scale – at least partly as a result of a lack of funds. GP achieves a pretty high degree of international visibility, with a lot of its campaigns; that’s very, very difficult to do without a relatively significant amount of money.

          >Speaking of the “small fleet of ships,” why, exactly, does Greenpeace own ships?!

          Errrrm… you did notice that over the past few decades many of the most important GP campaigns were sea-based? Trying to stop French nuclear testing, saving whales, that kind of thing? Or, recently, protesting tuna fishing? Protecting the oceans is still one of the main purposes of the organisation. Having a few ships helps tremendously with that. Imagine having to charter a ship for every campaign; imagine the difficulties of chartering a ship when you have a reputation for taking it into nuclear testing areas, or into the line of fire of whaling harpoons…

          1. You know that a charity is only worthwhile if it uses lots and lots of paper and hires phone banks to do its calling and only channels 15% of donations to the actual cause because its overhead is so high.

        2. Really? Why do they own ships?

          Hm….

          I still donate annually. Go Greenpeace. RIP, dude. Did well.

        3. The price of not having people standing at street corners asking for individual donations will be to have organisations like Greenpeace financed by governments and giant corporations and lose all independence. Greenpeace never accepts donations from corporations and governments.
          So, would you like environmental NGOs to be financed by BP?

  4. Projects for nuclear energy had already dwindled by the time the events at 3 mile island and Chernobyl took place. The anti-nuclear movement helped to drive away investors and therefor drive up the costs of building plants. By the time of 3 mile island there were very few power plants being built, and of those some were stopped because they ‘would hurt the environment’. Greenpeace was a huge force in all this.

    We will always use coal and oil to some degree, and we should. Our energy consumption must be diverse for strategic reasons. Nuclear energy would afford us some freedom from relying on others for our energy requirements and do so for pennies on the dollar.

  5. Nuclear energy is a boondoggle.
    It’s dirty and has never paid for itself as advertised.
    With all the hundreds of billions (trillions?) of dollars that we have thrown at the petro-assholes and the nuke industry, we could have built a much better infrastructure around cleaner energy.

  7. Sure, we could try just relying on the donations we get without direct fundraising – but we’d be a *lot* smaller and less effective, then.

    Nothing wrong with small. Small organizations are more nimble and, perhaps counterintuitively, *more* effective due to a focus that larger organizations, who have to account for more perspectives, can’t have.

    1. I happen to think it takes both – big organisations *and* small ones. And, luckily, both types exist. There are hundreds of thousands of small environmental groups, and they’re doing great work. (A lot of people volunteering with GP also volunteer with smaller groups.) But it’s still good that there’s also a couple of 600 pound gorillas around, on the environmental protection “scene”. There’s some things you just can’t do small and locally.

  8. A man with honest (if sometimes misguided) intentions. Honour the man; hate the organisation.

    RIP

    1. Agreed. Seems like he had noble intentions, yet in the end he created a monster beyond his control.

  10. I am not now and never have been either a contributor or member of Greenpeace.
    That said, I’m glad that they – and many thousands of other associations, clubs, guilds, etc etc etc – exist.
    For the more of such groups exist, groups made up of individuals bound not by compulsion but by voluntary interest, the richer the society in which they are found. And always the more truly democratic that society.
    Membership in such groups IMHO forms the very fabric of a democratic civil society.
    But there must be many many many of them – the more the better – to reflect the diversity of life: “single-group” societies (if such slavery could be truly termed a “society”) – ie totalitarian states or the religious institutions of history, pervasive and unique in their powers – are their antithesis, the “un-civil society”.

  12. The failure of nuclear had nothing to do with politics or activism. It failed because of simple project economics in the form of high interest rates and monolithic plants. You just can’t get a positive net present value for a nuclear plant if you have to borrow at 14% +

    The invention of modular plants combined with low interest rates makes a positive NPV today.

    While people were happy to take credit or place blame, politics had (almost) nothing to do with it.

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