2011 Game Changer Kumi Naidoo Discusses The Importance Of Civil Disobedience (VIDEO)

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo has scaled an oil rig, protested apartheid, performed hunger strikes, been expelled, exiled, and arrested.

As he tells The Huffington Post, "Civil disobedience is the most powerful maker of change." Perhaps, in fact, it is "the only maker of real, fundamental, major change."

Real change is what Naidoo and his Greenpeace team have their eye on. Most recently, Greenpeace has fought for sustainable Barbie packaging, created a Vitruvian Man on ice, and launched a new $33 million schooner to "confront environmental criminals across the world."

Founded in Vancouver in 1971, Greenpeace turned 40 years old this September. The organization has evolved over the years, and Naidoo tells HuffPost that it has increased focus on civil disobedience because "what we find is governments are showing a big lack of capacity to hear what their citizens are saying, and we need to keep the pressure, because time is running out in terms of climate change."

Naidoo was recently nominated as one of HuffPost's 2011 Green Game Changers for "risking his life to reinvigorate Greenpeace and globalize the environmental movement."

Comments

[Skydiver63]

11:37 AM on 10/26/2011

PEACEFUL Civil Disobedience...

[Stephen R Concklin]

11:19 PM on 10/20/2011

Kumi Naidoo, from Green Peace, makes a convincing case for civil disobedience as the only way open for real change in addressing the climate. History records that civil disobedience is the road most successfully associated with change. The ballot box won't do it when the process is controlled by the ruling elites.

[grover2hb]

02:50 PM on 10/19/2011

Greenpeace- Happy 40th anniversary! Thank you for all your unselfish hard work. Getting married, raising a family, working 9-5 is only one lifestyle and I'm really not thinking it's the best in todays world. Can't find a job-Join GREENPEACE

[quixmar]

09:50 AM on 10/19/2011

Dr. Kumi Naidoo. It depends on who's civility is being disobeyed.
Maybe it's a non-issue for you, but some of us have problems with
those who oppose the use of toilet paper.

[Anya Khan]

12:57 AM on 10/19/2011

Greenpeace tends to protest the US more than Eastern Russia or China because that is where they are safest. The US will be never attack a GP ship and they know it. They can protest US bases around the world knowing with certainty they will never be fired upon. Their protest are not brave, newsworthy maybe, but not brave.

[StephenJK]

07:14 AM on 10/19/2011

Not brave, but, smart?

[Rooster Coburn]

09:50 PM on 10/19/2011

Next stop?  Pyongyang?

[MightyYowp]

10:12 PM on 10/18/2011

Nonsense.
How's that Arab Spring working? No violence?
My prayers go out to my bothers and sisters in Syria and Lybia.
We had to toss our dictator through violence in 1778.
Civil Disobedience only works in a civil society.

[Daniel Jackson Freed]

09:07 PM on 10/18/2011

I've often found Greenpeace far too radical in the environmental movement. However, Dr. Kumi Naidoo makes a great point; very often civil disobedience is the only action that spurs individuals in a society to take notice and act to inspire social change and equality, such as documented in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Nevertheless, I still hold the opinion that non-violent civil disobedience is as effective, if not more effective, than violent civil disobedience.

[Linus521]

09:17 PM on 10/18/2011

Tragically, the more the individual is versed in the science of ecology, the more radical he becomes. This is most assuredly representative of the case, ignorance is bliss.

[Toddynho]

07:10 AM on 10/19/2011

Excellent, it's impossible not to be angry when you're up to speed on what is going on.

[MrBIgp]

08:59 PM on 10/18/2011

Does the green movement support civil disobedience for everyone, or just people who agree with their viewpoint? Suppose a group of gun owners didn't like the gun laws, so they started carrying loaded pistols and shot guns in urban areas and call it civil disobedience, would that be justified? How about ranchers who don't like grazing regulations who move their cattle illegally onto federal land and call it civil disobedience - would that be justified?

[judibluiz]

05:15 PM on 10/18/2011

Yes, it would be nice to see Greenpeace, who fired Paul Watson, one of their earliest activists, take a more active role in the environmental movement instead of street theater.

Don't get me wrong, the environmental movement can use all the help it can get, and Greenpeace's unfurling banners calls attention to many environmental injustices.

[Toddynho]

07:17 AM on 10/19/2011

For all their faults, they do in fact do much more than simply unfurl banners. There's a big old lobby machine behind them dealing with corporations pushing them into more sustainable practices. It's their actions that get noticed, and that helps those behind the scenes get results.

I think sometimes people underestimate the depth and reach of this organization.

[adoseofsanity]

03:34 PM on 10/18/2011

Liberals think it is acceptable to bang on drums, whistle, shout down, and occupy state houses and private property. They think it is socially acceptable to be filthy and uncivil of action, body, and words. What a contrast liberals make with the people who attend Tea Parties and are active in the political process!!!

[dahile00]

05:38 PM on 10/18/2011

I thought you WERE describing Tea Partiers at townhalls. What you call sanity is, in *REALITY* called having your head buried in the sand.

[bad spelling grammar]

07:36 PM on 10/18/2011

you sure your not talking about tea baggers

[horsedrag]

03:14 PM on 10/18/2011

A pamphlet by Thomas Pane lit the fuse to a great civil unrest called democracy whose leaders encouraged civil unrest to perpetuate it.

[Linus521]

02:38 PM on 10/18/2011

I am elderly; I was a brainwashed, unconscious idiot until the 60's when America's most educated and intelligent young people, my generation, took to the streets to stop an unnecessary, earth and man killing war that killed 55,000 of my generation for absolutely nothing. I saw racism die [except for the Native Americans]; they questioned the idiocy of the establishment and questioned Dark Ages societal voices and worldview, and most importantly, Americans were shouting, Ecology Now to save our ecosystem dependent Earth from the avarice of ecologically illiterate man.

The bible of the enviromental movement wrote of the most important words ever written, and for 20 years, Earth actually had a chance. In my opinion, this was the greatest years of Americanism. Civil disobedience came close to changing the worldview on mass murder [wars] and for once since man was spawned, Earth rejoiced and clapped her ecosystems. Now, it's too late.

[JoeMomma]

01:18 AM on 10/19/2011

And then your generation started flipping houses. Next.

[Linus521]

02:39 AM on 10/19/2011

okay.

[Toddynho]

07:19 AM on 10/19/2011

Not all of them.

Next programmed soundbyte?

[iknowscottyknows]

06:43 PM on 10/20/2011

You speak of Kennedy's War, ended by a Republican.

[Synthmatrix]

10:35 AM on 10/21/2011

True. Nixon was listening to the demands of the people being expressed through protest. Just as he was listening to them when he created the Environmental Protection Agency. What's your point?

[GeeziePeezie]

02:38 PM on 10/18/2011

While their methods may not always be "civil", Greenpeace inspires many to think about what could, and does happen when we put politics and profits over the health of the environment.

[Linus521]

09:24 PM on 10/18/2011

Yes, many of Greenpeace's members are literate in the science of ecology and the ecology of our ecosystem-dependent Earth. They say, the more the individual comprehends the ecology of Earth, the more radical he becomes.

[Eric Vidal]

02:36 PM on 10/18/2011

Is Civil Disobedience The Most Powerful Maker Of Change? What do you think? What are the other options? http://www.qwanz.com/headline/more-3/is-civil-disobedience-the-most-powerful-maker-of-change

[MrBIgp]

08:42 PM on 10/18/2011

They could convince the public to use 90% less energy, and live in apartments instead of houses and not to eat meat or fish and get rid of their cars. Movie stars and politicians would be exempt of course.

[sunsetter]

02:14 PM on 10/18/2011

Maybe we should have some taxpaying citizen disobedience for the wasting of our precious tax dollars by unqualified economic illiterates that occupy elected offices - case in point -
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/15889

[dahile00]

04:34 PM on 10/18/2011

How about cutting tax incentives to *all* energy companies, not *just* the green ones that for some reason get more press than the Big Oil ones do. Seriously, Big Oil gets a *lot* more breaks than anything in the "green" department does, but it seems like a lot of shills only like to tout failed solar and wind efforts.

[intolleft]

05:06 PM on 10/18/2011

Oil and gas tax deductions are equivalent or similar to deductions claimed by every US business, large and small, for things like facilities depreciation, equipment, utilities, payroll, and research and development.

What 'green' companies get, are government subsidies in order to move product because it could not sell itself otherwise.