I've now done work for 3 organizations with "Peace" in the name.

One great thing about working for Greenpeace: I feel like I can write something honest about working for Greenpeace on a blog and the chances are that they won't kick up a fuss. After all, GP isn't exactly about maintaining the status quo and political correctness, and gettin' arrested is something they're not strangers to.

Speaking of which: Whilst my job has little to nothing to do with the sit-ins or banner-hangings that GP does and which often garner arrests, really respect their line on it. They say that civil disobedience is breaking an unjust law--which GP may do from time to time. But what we do more often is break laws that we think are good, for a purpose. This is why GP activists cooperate and act courteously when the cops show up. We do the things not to get arrested but to call attention to an issue and to achieve a goal that we think outweighs the negatives of being apprehended by the law.

One less-than-nice thing about working for Greenpeace: the imprint the crazy hippies seem to have left on peoples' minds. A few guys with dreads associated with the environmental movement in the 70's act like jerks, and suddenly it's like I've killed your dog. Granted, that's only one or two a-holes per week/month who act like this towards me, but that's all it takes to bring you down sometimes.

Ahem: Greenpeace is just trying to protect the environment, everyone. That's it. I promise. I'm in it now, and I used to be a little wary of it. No, I probably don't agree with everyone at GP about every issue. But I also didn't have to swear an oath of allegiance, unlike the US Peac e Cor ps, where I had to swear to protect the US from "any and all offenders." So please. If you're one that thinks GP is a bunch of crazy eco-terrorists . . . well, stop it. We're not.

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What chafes me about global warming deniers, on a personal level, is that I'll probably never get a real chance to say "SEE? &%$#*&!%@ SEE?! I TOLD YOU!" Because ignorance always fades slowly. All of Florida could fall into the sea, and the ocean could feel like a hot tub, and people would still find a way, at least at first, to say the globe wasn't heating up. I'm sure it took a long time for people to let the flat-earth theory go. We'll look back in 50 years and realize how dumb it was to claim that global warming was a hoax ("Wow, Grandpa, people actually believed that?") but between now and then it'll be a gradual thing. No amount of Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change is going to change that fact of human nature.