Greenpeace & the Irony of Advertising Its Own Failure

Promoting the next in its long line of colossal failures, Greenpeace targets American tuna companies by attacking them on billboards that are thinly disguised fundraising tools designed to fill their coffers rather than fix the challenges they claim exist. While reasonable, responsible environmental and ocean health organizations work hand-in-hand with tuna canners, who spend millions on sustainability efforts, Greenpeace harasses businesses with billboards, blimps and costumed protesters.

Not to put too fine a point on it but no one takes Greenpeace seriously in this country.

And why would anyone? Cartoon billboards, embarrassingly under attended days-of-action and rhetoric that consistently fails to match reality are all things that marginalize organizations. Greenpeace has been marginalizing itself for years and its latest stunts only serve to further isolate it from the adults doing the real sustainability work.

What Greenpeace fears most is having its ineffective shenanigans exposed, not to American consumers, who already don’t care, but to its institutional donors. They don’t want those big-dollar givers, who help Greenpeace bring in $700,000 A DAY in donations, to realize that stunts don’t equal sustainability work. Fancy yachts and funny videos are hardly the type of return on investment that most donors are looking for.

Perhaps next time it rents out a billboard, Greenpeace will simply write on it the dollar amount they’ve spent on tuna sustainability science. In fact… we dare you.