On the 12th and 13th November 2011 a masterpiece of sustainable naval engineering could be visited right in the heart of London. The ‘Rainbow Warrior 3’ is the recently built leader of the “rainbow” fleet. A project co-financed entirely by Greenpeace donors, myself included, to add strength, hi-tech and environmental sustainability to Greenpeace off-shore missions.
I didn’t want to miss this opportunity and travelled from Edinburgh to off the symbol of the world’s financial capital city (the Canary Wharf), on the river Thames to finally visit the ship personally. Right from the hundreds people-long queue to enter the boat I started feeling inspired by posters showing images and explanatory text on Greenpeace actions since its birth, back in the 80s. Other posters called the imminent involvement from all of us to oppose to environmental injustice, including images of bulldozers raping forest land, harpooned whales bleeding in agony while still alive, lonely bears on ‘crumbles’ of ice sheets amongst many others. All this accompanied by big-screen videos of powerfully inspiring action, and a set of stools with information material and offering visitors the opportunity of supporting Greenpeace campaigns.
The camera of a member of the Greenpeace media crew caught me unexpectedly with two questions: Describe in a few words the ‘Rainbow Warrior 3’? Give a message to Greenpeace activists? Conciseness has never been my strength and the shortest messages I came up with is:
“Rainbow Warrior 3: disarming like genuine beauty; powerfully inspiring like a bright coloured sky!” and to activists “Let’s persevere brothers protecting mother earth!”. Ok... I hear your giggles, but that’s how I feel about what I do...
Certainly meeting like-minded people and randomly bumping into inspiring characters on my way to my destination was the cherry on the cake.
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