One target of the campaign has been Velsicol Chemical Corporation, which as we have seen, was treated as a major villain in Silent Spring and consequently tried to stop the publication of the book by accusing Carson of scientific irresponsibility and of participating unwittingly in a communist plot. Velsicol is still producing and exporting heptachlor and chlordane, two controversial pesticides that Velsicol, in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency and under the threat of an impending ban, pulled off the U.S. market. In addition to trespassing on the premises of Velsicol's plant in Memphis, Tennessee, to hang banners in protest of this activity and thereby to create an impressive photograph opportunity for local reporters, Greenpeace also issued a follow-up report, "Exporting Banned Pesticides: Fueling the Circle of Poison," billed as "A Case Study of Velsicol Chemical Corporation's Export of Chlordane and Heptachlor." The ultimate aim of the report is to influence the legislative process, specifically to close "the loophole in federal law which permits 'for export only' production of pesticides which cannot be used in the United States". To achieve this effect, the report draws upon a wide range, indeed an eclectic set of sources, including a good number of papers reporting the results of solid applied scientific research on the toxicity of the pesticides in question. In addition, an appendix to the report gives a set of uninterpreted and unrefereed measurements taken by Greenpeace's own staff members aboard the Beluga, the organization's floating laboratory, during its campaign on the Mississippi River. With the review of the literature and the presentation of raw data from original research, there is a clear claim to scientific legitimacy made in the report.

Against this claim, Velsicol directed its response in a five-page press release issued the same week as the report. The release asserts, "Greenpeace is trying to lead the public to believe that they have compiled a scientific report. In reality, their report has absolutely no basis in science"; the report is "fueled by emotion," contains "footnotes that do not substantiate their claims," and presents expert opinions that "in court proceedings have been labeled 'legally incompetent,' 'fatally flawed,' and 'insufficiently grounded in any reliable evidence'" (Velsicol). Velsicol thus demonstrates that the Greenpeace report depends upon, and is itself, "gray literature" rather than refereed scientific literature; draws unwarranted conclusions from applied scientific research; and in general, refuses to respect the limits of scientific data, applying findings freely to human as well as natural conditions. In short, Velsicol shows, quite correctly, that the Greenpeace report -whatever we may say about its rhetorical power to influence legislators and voters -- is not a scientific document. By claiming, even implicitly, to have scientific status, the report opens itself to such criticism.

As a foil, the Velsicol press release contains a "Fact Sheet" that the company claims "is substantiated by peer-reviewed scientific information and U.S. EPA documents in the public realm." The Fact Sheet then trots out its own "scientific" evidence in a point-by-point refutation of the Greenpeace report. Nothing that it reports has any more scientific validity than the claims of the Greenpeace report. What it presents as "facts" are rather findings or conclusions of scientific research, even if the papers cited have been reviewed and published in the proper channels of normal science. The one fact in this entire case is that there are as yet no scientific facts on the toxins with which we are dealing. There are contradictory findings and conclusions. The issue is still warm and unsettled in the scientific community. Whichever side you happen to be on in the dispute, you will be able to find scientifically developed information to "support" your claims.

By drawing Velsicol into this press war, Greenpeace has, of course, brought public attention to the company's practices, and it has, once again, had its effect on the community consciousness, receiving media coverage in the local papers and on the local television stations. But has it hurt the environmentalist cause when it provides the opportunity, not just for Velsicol, but also for one of the bureau chiefs of the Food and Drug Administration to refer to the Greenpeace claims as "hype"? It has certainly added credence to the frequently cited criticism of the environmentalist ethos -- the charge that environmentalist appeals to science are unscientific and irresponsible, that they are highly selective and based on gray literature and other uncertified data.

Greenpeace's tactics represent a rhetoric of engagement and confrontation, which like the agonistic rhetoric of Rachel Carson and the editorialists in the Sierra ClubBulletin, represent an early stage in the political process. With the coming of age of the environmental movement, that stage may be passing, and the challenge for Greenpeace and the environmentalists becomes a matter of discovering how to move to the next stage or indeed what the next stage will be. In its efforts to extend research and to offer in its reports alternatives to environmentally damaging actions -- "excellent results have been obtained by the use of cultivational techniques such as trap and barrier crops, crop rotation, field sanitation and the use of suitable plant varieties" -- Greenpeace campaigners are struggling toward a realization of a new goal. In this move, they overlap with organizations that have already matured in this discourse practice, such as the Worldwatch Institute. The early history of Greenpeace may well have hurt its chances to contribute to the mature stage of environmental protection. For who will take seriously a scientific report issued by a group whose very name is associated with life-risking commitment and change at any cost?

In its dramatic "actions," especially in the "save the whales" campaign, Greenpeace models a way of life that exchanges anthropocentrism, or human-centeredness, for biocentrism, a view of life that subordinates human needs to the needs of planetary life as a whole. Implicit in Greenpeace's perspective is the ethic of "deep ecology," the principles of which were articulated clearly in 1984 by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (who coined the term "deep ecology") and George Sessions, an American philosopher and environmental activist. The main premises Naess and Sessions formulated are these:
1.         The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
2.         Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3.         Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4.         The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5.         Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6.         Policies must therefore be changed. These policies must affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7.         The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8.         Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

On the map of perspectives developed in our introduction, deep ecology stands in opposition to the views of nature as object and nature as resource. Though deep ecology -- above all an ethical movement and a variant of naturalism -- is not necessarily connected with the idea of the sacredness of nature, we use the phrase "nature-as-spirit" to signify the pole of our continuum that deep ecology shares with nature mysticism, the impulse to merge the human self with the land in an all-consuming oneness, more or less the equivalent of Naess' "Ecological Self", a concept with philosophical roots in Emerson's notion of the oversoul.

In dramatizing the radical biocentrism of deep ecology, Greenpeace has nevertheless kept open the possibility for forming links with more moderate conservation groups as well as groups with distinctively different viewpoints, such as organized labor. From the perspective taken by the most extreme environmental radicals, Greenpeace has bartered away its radical status in this search for broad-based environmentalist hegemony and has thus caused the most radical of its members to form spin-off groups. In 1979, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society emerged from Greenpeace to carry out an angry campaign that has included ramming and sinking whaling ships in the Atlantic; and in 1982, the founders of Robin Wood left Greenpeace out of disappointment over the pace and tone of its radicalism and have since occupied smoke stacks to protest acid rain and have simulated land slides to demonstrate the effects of deforestation in Germany.

Earth First! which has become the best-known model for radical environmentalist groups in America, came forth under similar circumstances. Frustrated with the inability of the Wilderness Society to accomplish its goals in Washington and angered by the deeply entrenched earth-as-resource perspective of government bureaus and conservation groups alike, the Earth First! founders adopted a nocompromise deep ecologist position based on a refusal to be appropriated by mainstream political interests and human-centered environmentalist projects. Where nonviolent protest and theatrical diversions fail to accomplish a local purpose, Earth First! encourages acts of "ecotage" or "monkeywrenching," the purposeful sabotage of the machinery of developmentalism. Out of member contributions, it maintains a newsletter, prints how-to manuals on resistance techniques, organizes demonstrations, and pays a subsistence salary to a few members who carry the message of radical environmentalism around the country.

Earth First! shares with recent theorists of deep ecology a radical desire and a psycho-semantic need to distinguish their perspective from that of other environmentalists. Both the Earth First! radicals and the deep ecologists abandon the appeal of reform environmentalism to the established mores of American life and try to cultivate instead a new language and a new action agenda for an ever-deepening understanding of the human relationship to the natural world. Dave Foreman, one of the group's founders and most articulate leaders, says that the mission of Earth First! is to provide "a productive fringe" where "ideas, creativity, and energy spring up" and "later spread into the middle". In addition to producing energy, however, Foreman and his colleagues have discovered that the search for originality can consume energy as well, demanding constant vigilance against compromise and appropriation and necessitating potentially endless dislocations leftward. The history of Earth First! has thus been characterized by a frenzied commitment to action, usually action, which though far from thoughtless, lacks a clear connection to an established body of ethical or political principles -- but action at all costs.