Greenpeace evolved from the peace movement and anti-nuclear protests in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the early 1970s.

In the following years, Greenpeace evolved into one of the largest environmental organizations in the world.

The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace.

In response, Greenpeace projected an image of the flag onto the castle and attempted to fly the flag from the building themselves.

These " politically neutral " groups tend to avoid global conflicts and view the settlement of inter-human conflict as separate from regard for nature-in direct contradiction to the ecology movement and peace movement which have increasingly close links: While Green Parties and Greenpeace, and groups like the ACTivist Magazine for example, regard ecology, biodiversity and an end to non-human extinction as absolutely basic to peace, the local groups may not, and may see a high degree of global competition and conflict as justifiable if it lets them preserve their own local uniqueness.

On September 15, 1971, the newly founded Don't Make a Wave Committee sent a chartered ship, Phyllis Cormack, renamed Greenpeace for the protest, from Vancouver to oppose United States testing of nuclear devices in Amchitka, Alaska.

After the office in the Stowe home, ( and after the first concert fund-raiser ) Greenpeace functions moved to other private homes and held public meetings weekly on Wednesday nights at the Kitsilano Neighborhood House before settling, in the fall of 1974, in a small office shared with the SPEC environmental group, at 2007 W. 4th Avenue, at Maple Street, across from the Bimini neighbourhood pub.

The social and cultural background from which Greenpeace emerged heralded a period of de-conditioning away from old world antecedents and sought to develop new codes of social, environmental and political behavior.

Historian Frank Zelko has commented that " unlike Friends of the Earth, for example, which sprung fully formed from the forehead of David Brower, Greenpeace developed in a more evolutionary manner.

Some Greenpeace groups, namely London Greenpeace ( dissolved in 2001 ) and the US-based Greenpeace Foundation ( still operational ) however decided to remain independent from Greenpeace International.

For this Greenpeace calls for the industrialized countries to cut their emissions at least 40 % by 2020 ( from 1990 levels ) and to give substantial funding for developing countries to build a sustainable energy capacity, to adapt to the inevitable consequences of global warming, and to stop deforestation by 2020.

Greenpeace is also critical of extracting petroleum from oil sands and has used direct action to block the oil sand operations at Athabasca, Canada.

The activities of Greenpeace in the arctic have mainly involved the Edinburgh-based oil and gas exploration company, Cairn Energy ; and range from protests at the Cairn Energy's headquarters to scalling their oil rigs in an attempt to halt the drilling process.

Greenpeace views nuclear power as a relatively minor industry with major problems, such as environmental damage and risks from uranium mining, nuclear weapons proliferation, and unresolved questions concerning nuclear waste.

Adam Woolf from Greenpeace also stated that, " fifty years ago there were many experts who would be lined up and swear there was no link between smoking and bad health.

Greenpeace aims at protecting intact primary forests from deforestation and degradation with the target of zero deforestation by 2020.

As deforestation contributes to global warming, Greenpeace has demanded that REDD ( Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation ) should be included in the climate treaty following the Kyoto treaty.

In June 1995, Greenpeace took a trunk of a tree from the forests of the proposed national park of Koitajoki in Ilomantsi, Finland and put it on display at exhibitions held in Austria and Germany.

Greenpeace said in a press conference that the tree was originally from a logged area in the ancient forest which was supposed to be protected.

Metsähallitus accused Greenpeace of theft and said that the tree was from a normal forest and had been left standing because of its old age.

In 2008, two Greenpeace anti-whaling activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, stole a case of whale meat from a delivery depot in Aomori prefecture, Japan.

Greenpeace has also supported the rejection of GM food from the US in famine-stricken Zambia as long as supplies of non-genetically engineered grain exist, stating that the US " should follow in the European Union's footsteps and allow aid recipients to choose their food aid, buying it locally if they wish.

Beginning in 1986, " London Greenpeace ", a small environmental campaigning group ( not to be confused with the larger Greenpeace International organisation, which they declined to join as they saw it being too " centralised and mainstream for their tastes "), distributed a pamphlet entitled What ’ s wrong with McDonald ’ s: Everything they don ’ t want you to know.

The group has provided training to Greenpeace, Patagonia, Inc., the California Faculty Association, United Students Against Sweatshops, Students for Bhopal, Student Farmworker Alliance, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Students for a Free Tibet and Detroit Summer.

Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group ; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ; and Greenpeace USA.

The roads used for transport of nuclear waste have been blocked many times in the past by environmental action group Greenpeace.

* Mid-September-The environmentalist group Greenpeace criticizes the government for not doing enough to enforce regulations banning the dumping of international toxic waste in India.

During this time David Tussman, together with the rest of the founders, early activists of Greenpeace, and the majority of Greenpeace staff-members announced that the board of the San Francisco group intended to separate Patrick Moore's Greenpeace Foundation from the rest of the Greenpeace movement.

After efforts to settle the matter failed, the Greenpeace Foundation filed a civil lawsuit in San Francisco charging that the San Francisco group was in violation of trademark and copyright by using the Greenpeace name without permission of the Greenpeace Foundation.

In July 2011, Puma – along with other major fashion and sportswear brands including Nike, Adidas, and Abercrombie & Fitch – was the subject of a report by the environmental group Greenpeace entitled ' Dirty Laundry '.

In the TV campaigns, the group was portrayed as a group similar to Greenpeace, with a mission to save money.

In July 2011, Lacoste-along with other major fashion and sportswear brands including Nike, Adidas and Abercrombie & Fitch-was the subject of a report by the environmental group Greenpeace entitled ' Dirty Laundry '.

In 1972 Peace News co-editor Howard Clark, after meeting activists from the Canadian Greenpeace boats, initiated the group that became London Greenpeace, at first campaigning against French nuclear tests.

Initially conceived of as a South African version of Greenpeace, the group began by playing a radical, anti-apartheid, activist role.

At the same time the Canadian Greenpeace office was heavily in debt.

David McTaggart lobbied the Canadian Greenpeace Foundation to accept a new structure which would bring the scattered Greenpeace offices under the auspices of a single global organization.

The European Greenpeace paid the debt of the Canadian Greenpeace office and on October 14, 1979, Greenpeace International came into existence.

Early Greenpeace member Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore left the organization in 1986 when it, according to Moore, decided to support a universal ban on chlorine in drinking water.

** The Canadian ketch Vega, flying the Greenpeace III banner, collides with the French naval minesweeper La Paimpolaise while in international waters, to protest French nuclear weapon tests in the South Pacific.

According to Greenpeace, the Canadian oil sands operations use of water, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary.

In a press release, Greenpeace the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute noted that they had provided the government a legal opinion prepared by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, which concluded that the government's energy plan would be subject to the province's Environmental Assessment Act.

Bennett Metcalfe ( October 31, 1919 – October 14, 2003 ) was a Canadian journalist and first chairman of Greenpeace, founded 1971.

Tabuns was criticized by some members of Office and Professional Employees International Union ( OPEIU ) local 343 ( now Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union 343 ) in 2002, when Greenpeace terminated its door-to-door fundraising efforts and transferred foot canvassers to telephone fundraising.

* Robert Hunter ( journalist ) ( 1941 – 2005 ), Canadian environmentalist, journalist and broadcaster, co-founder of Greenpeace

According to Greenpeace the Kleercut campaign is " one of the more successful online forest campaigns in recent Canadian history.