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."