In July 2022, Greenpeace leaders deplored the inclusion of gas and nuclear in the European green taxonomy (this new classification of sustainable finance aimed at directing financing towards clean or transitional energies), denouncing a “defeat for the climate.”

“Their contradictions are becoming heavy to bear,” observes historian Anna Veronika Wendland, a former figure of the German Greens, now panicked by the disastrous climate record of the energy policy conducted in Germany, where the Greens-SPD coalition in the Bundestag has just decided to intensify the production of its coal-fired power plants.

“You can’t fight a low-carbon energy source and at the same time claim to defend the climate. For the first time in twenty years, their narrative is cracking… And the questions that hover around the organization, which in fifty years has become a formidable multinational agit-prop, are resurfacing.

…

While some campaigns will allow real progress by forcing companies to become aware of their ecological impact and a profound change in their practices (in terms of deforestation, recycling, overfishing…), others have only a distant relationship with the environment and have pushed several historical members of the movement to distance themselves.

“Greenpeace‘s first goal today is to spread fear – of nuclear, GMOs, technology – because fear allows them to collect donations,” said Patrick Moore, who was one of the organization’s first presidents.

[Editor’s note: This article has been translated from French and edited for clarity.]

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