How To Change The World

Synopsis: In 1971, a group of long-haired activists sailed into a nuclear test zone and their protest captured the world's attention. Out of this action Greenpeace was born.

Writer-director Jerry Rothwell’s documentary about the early years of Greenpeace has all the ingredients of a good adventure yarn – a plot cataloguing formidable acts of derring-do, engaging characters and gripping human  drama.

Drawing on a vast fund of archival 16mm footage, How To Change The World is the revealing, skillfully-told tale of how Greenpeace grew out of a one-off passionate dash to disrupt a Nixon-era five-megaton nuclear explosion test on the Alaskan island of Amchitka and into a global organization thanks largely to the inspirational commitment of its late leader, Bob Hunter, who died of cancer in 2005.

Hunter was a Vancouver news reporter with a strong interest in environmental issues who with a handful of similarly-minded associates mounted a pioneering non-violent action against the Amchitka nuclear test by chartering a fishing boat and sailing into the test zone.  They were turned back by the American Navy before they reached their destination and the test went ahead but the self-sacrificing directness of the act drew world-wide support (the tests were shortly cancelled).  Flushed by their success the group next turned their attention to the horrors of what was then the largely unregulated whaling industry. Reprising their Alaskan campaign but this time mixing industrial espionage with the I Ching, the group went head-to-head with  the Russian whaling fleet off the coast of California. As a result of their success the Save The Whale movement and Greenpeace was officially born.

Hunter was a gifted media strategist and undoubtedly the leader and architect of the group's early successes but as its profile rapidly rose in the counter-cultural early ‘70s, differences equally rapidly emerged over questions of strategy, particularly between Hunter and members Paul Watson, an adherent of ends-justify-the-means interventions who went on to found the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and Patrick Moore whose softly-softly approach of compromise is considered a betrayal of the movement’s values by many.

All this is skilfully revealed via a plethora of fascinating archival footage (that of the whaling ships is quite distressing) intercut with reflective observations from many of the original participants and guided by readings from Hunter’s diaries, as we follow the movement’s story from being an ad-hoc group of dope-smoking, draft-dodging hippy-era idealists to its eventual transformation into an environmental corporation.

Whilst greenies will no doubt find the material of greatest interest, How To Change the World is also an all-too-true insight into the realities and vulnerabilities of human collaboration.

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