Greenpeace is on tour. Literally. They took their famous Arctic Sunrise ship on a tour of the Eastern seaboard so that people like you and me could tour the boat. And, let's be clear, touring a boat is always awesome (says the girl who, no exaggeration, never leaves home without dramamine). The irony of the Greenpeace vessel is that it's an old seal-hunting icebreaker ship from the 1970s that two decades later was recommissioned into a stop killing seals, whales, and other beauties of the oceans. And what's also cool is the ship looks like it's nearly 40 years of age with cool steampunk contraptions like this talking piece:
Oh, I know it looks like a movie prop, but it's a legit form of communication between the bridge and the guy up in the ice house at the top of the mast. Even with radar, someone's gotta look for the appropriate cracks in the ice because how the ship breaks it up is it essentially goes up onto the cracked ice and crushes it on its way down. This is a very sea-sick inducing round-bottomed ship. Other neat contraptions are the gyrocompass:
What was most amazing about the tour was talking with a member of the crew about pirates. Turns out that even for Greenpeace, they have to have continengency plans for being attacked, and in fact spoke of stories about barely escaping. It makes you realize how much these folks put their lives on the line for the causes they believe in because beyond the legal skirmeshes of protest, they now have deadly pirates as an issue.
Greenpeace fights for a lot of causes that I personally believe in; however, what was interesting was how mixed I felt about the one for which the boat was on tour about: The coal industry. Coal mining is what puts food on the table for members of my family, plus even Jonathan Franzen will tell you how strip mining actually better protects the land in the long-term (because replanting has long-been a requirement) for the animals and the birds as the land will revert back to forest. However, as Greenpeace points out, coal is the number one polluter of greenhouse gases and it is coal that powers our homes. So, how do we change that? We find way to make alternatives more affordable, such as solar. And we recognize that these alternatives can offer a lot of jobs—turns out that wind now employs more people than coal in the United States.
I'm still not sure I am clear on the coal issue; however, I know that touring that boat did inspire me to renew my membership, which is still great news for Greenpeace.