![\"Andreas](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/10\/5aa947ba-unnamed-1024x768.jpg\" "\\"Andreas")
Do you remember the moment you first decided you had to take action? What was it?<\/b><\/h5>\n\n
Andreas Magnusson (AM):<\/b> I always lived close to the forest and nature and it was always nice to go out there and to just be. My father took me out there every day since I was a child. I started learning about things like climate change in school but then they went to the next topic and continued. And I thought … that film you showed just told me we are going to die in 30 years and you are continuing [with the class]? I\u2019ve been reading and watching documentaries and learning and I felt so sick, thinking what can I do about this? Now I\u2019ve been an activist for over a year and it\u2019s been a hell of a year. <\/span><\/p>\n\n Ell Ottosson Jarl (EO):<\/b> I watched a YouTube video about mass extinctions. It was something I didn\u2019t know about before and I got really interested, so I started researching and I found lots of papers on a bunch of different things, so I binge-read for about two weeks straight. <\/span><\/p>\n\n I read the IPCC report and a lot of other things and I understood it at a new level. It was an \u201coh fuck\u201d moment. You distance yourself a lot; I go a bit numb from it and don\u2019t feel it. But there are times when you hear something and it hits you like a brick. This was such a moment for me. I was like \u201coh it\u2019s real, I need to act now\u201d and I felt a little bit braver and I decided to go out. <\/span><\/p>\n\n Rex Weyler (RW):<\/b> I first became politically active in the peace movement. I was in university and I was a physics student and in the summer I was working for the aerospace industry, which was making weapons among other things. I was a young engineer and I never knew what I was working on. We would just get an assignment to design a circuit or something but we didn\u2019t know what it was going into. That made me feel uncomfortable.<\/span><\/p>\n\n The first summer I was at university, the Vietnam war was going on. There was no internet, there were no videos, but we did have television and I remember seeing pictures of the war. I specifically remember seeing pictures of poor children from little villages – villages burning and children running down the road and crying and mothers holding their babies and I think that was the moment for me. That was the moment I said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to have anything to do with that world, I don\u2019t want to be involved in any way. I don\u2019t want to work as an engineer, I want to do something to stop this. This is insane, this is crazy.\u201d So I started going to more peace marches. And when military recruiters came to our school we occupied the building.<\/span><\/p>\n\n It\u2019s not always through logic that you come to this. You realise at an emotional level this is totally wrong – and I feel the same way now with what\u2019s happening with global heating and the acidification of the oceans and the disappearance of so many species.<\/span><\/p>\n\n It\u2019s totally wrong and we can\u2019t as a civilisation keep going like this.<\/span><\/p>\n\n AM:<\/b> I talk to my friends. I talk to friends in Australia and in the US and I talk to Luciana in Switzerland and I talk to Ell in Stockholm. That\u2019s how I manage to keep it up. I can write to them and say I must talk about this. That\u2019s how I vent. You need to get it out sometimes. To get everything out of my head and have it out there and then you\u2019re ready to take in new information. Being able to talk to friends all over the world is helping a lot. <\/span><\/p>\n\n EO:<\/b> Anger is quite a big motivator for me. I get pissed off that I have to do this. I shouldn\u2019t have to deal with all of this. This gives me quite a lot of energy to just get this done. We need to fix this now – it\u2019s not fair. Whatever I\u2019m feeling if it\u2019s sadness or feeling overwhelmed or tired it always grounds me because I think I shouldn\u2019t have to sacrifice my whole peace for whatever it might be. That drives me. <\/span><\/p>\n\n RW:<\/b> I have felt overwhelmed many times. It is so huge and the system moves so slowly. A lot of what drives me has been anger at the slow pace and the stupidity of some of the people in positions of power and authority. Not just the stupidity, but the greed and selfishness. I think in a way I\u2019ve already gone through so much depression and being overwhelmed that I know how bad it is, so I don\u2019t have to go there. I just keep going. I know how bad it is, I know how dysfunctional human society is.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Activism itself gives me energy – if I was just sitting and not doing anything I think I would go crazy. <\/span><\/p>\n\n AM:<\/b> Yes – me too.<\/span><\/p>\n\n RW:<\/b> But when I am active on something I realise I can\u2019t do everything in the world, I can\u2019t fix the whole world but I can do this thing I\u2019m doing and I stay focused on that. I think being active is like a medicine for the frustration and the depression. Also the community – your friends and family all over the world who are all working and doing their part – we stay in communication with each other, we give each other energy and support. It\u2019s the community and it\u2019s staying active.<\/span><\/p>\n\n EO:<\/b> Oh, it can be quite overwhelming at times. The future is so unpredictable. We have no idea if what we are doing is going to work. I feel like I will prioritise this over anything – everything – in my life. This is the one thing we need to fix otherwise nothing else is going to matter. So just keep going and see what happens and where we end up. <\/span><\/p>\n\n AM:<\/b> I feel the same. This is the one thing I will prioritise and I will continue to work on. I feel some kind of responsibility to keep this pressure on world leaders, but to continue to lay that pressure on all the time is a hard thing. That\u2019s why we have all these people around the world to talk to and exchange ideas with and learn from. You know Belgium managed to get their environment minister to resign – how did they manage to do that? <\/span><\/p>\n\n It\u2019s some kind of responsibility to keep this pressure because if we lose the pressure we lose the movement and I don\u2019t want that to happen so I will continue with that. It\u2019s my future. <\/span><\/p>\n\n EO: <\/b>It can feel quite heavy sometimes, like the world relies on us. But there\u2019s a lot of us now. Which makes it a lot easier than it was in the beginning. People are starting to wake up and to want a change. I notice ads on TV are starting to have a lot more greenwashing – and for me I actually think that\u2019s quite a good sign because it means that more people want that thing that they\u2019re trying to get at. I try to find positive things everywhere I can.<\/span><\/p>\n\n AM:<\/b> And there are positive things everywhere now. People are talking about it and Tweeting about it and writing Facebook posts and they\u2019re getting a lot of media attention and that is a positive thing. <\/span><\/p>\n\n That is what drives us I think; when we see there is an article about Greta or us our about the movement, it\u2019s positive news – we are getting the attention we need. We managed to get Trump a bit angry the other day because he isn\u2019t getting the attention that he wants. So he doesn\u2019t like us now. And that got us even more attention and that\u2019s good. It\u2019s exactly what we need.<\/span><\/p>\n\n You said there were a lot of offices that started to pop up around the world, how did you get it connected? This is something we are struggling with now. We are a grassroots movement and everyone wants such different things so getting everyone connected internationally is really hard. Do you have any tips? <\/span><\/p>\n\n RW:<\/b> We should start a university for this! Yes, there was a lot of fighting, a lot of disagreements. There were different ideas, different priorities, and there\u2019s nothing particularly wrong with that. It\u2019s a good thing, there\u2019s diversity and diversity of opinion. The difficult part, in my experience, is people, individuals have other personal priorities. Even unconsciously. They want to be recognised, they want to be important, they want their wounds healed, they want to feel better, they want people to listen to them as much as somebody else. They will see somebody who is very good at speaking and has charisma and people want to talk to them and they will want this notoriety for themselves. People see someone and they might think \u201cwhy should they have all this notoriety and fame, we are working as well\u201d. So people get jealous, you have seen this I\u2019m sure. <\/span><\/p>\n\n It\u2019s normal, it\u2019s natural, and it\u2019s what happens when you have a large movement because suddenly you\u2019re working with real people. People have insecurities and selfishness and all of those things. Things were hard in the early years of Greenpeace. It took us about 10 years to develop the international coalition and there was a lot of infighting and bickering. <\/span><\/p>\n\n AM:<\/b> Hahaha, so nine years to go now? <\/span><\/p>\n\n RW:<\/b> Nine years to go! A lot of bickering. But here\u2019s what I think is needed. It\u2019s important for the leaders of a movement to really work on their own selves. Meditate. Study other leaders who have done this.<\/span><\/p>\n\n The goal is to become a better agent of change yourself and to encourage calming the ego. One of the biggest obstacles to success in a movement is ourselves. How are we at bringing people in, helping them feel useful and wanted and helping them participate, let people contribute.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Then you have to manage all the desires of people to want to be more important or whatever. To help people calm down emotionally. To understand that if we are going to have an international movement each one of us is only going to be a tiny part. How can you have a movement of millions of people if you\u2019re not just a tiny part? Help everyone get used to being a tiny part. And if there is conflict you work with that. You can\u2019t just say, \u201cthat person is crazy, get out of here\u201d you have to actually take the time. <\/span><\/p>\n\n For me I did a lot of meditation. I know many of the people in the early Greenpeace like Bob Hunter did a lot of meditation. We studied Buddhism and the Daoists and Martin Luther King and Gandhi. I think the most important thing is to learn how to quiet the ego and to help other people and to become an example of somebody who has learned to quiet your own ego as an example to other people. It\u2019s a very, very difficult thing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n People are wounded, and angry. Anger to the world might turn on you. These are the wounds of every person. Every person has wounds that they want to heal and cure in their work and in the world. That\u2019s a long and delicate process. I would say practice and learn how to help people calm down their own ego.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Simon Black is a Communications Manager at Greenpeace International.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We speak to young activists from the Climate Strikes and one of the founders of Greenpeace to find out how they started global movements.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":24704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[89,104],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-24682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-and-economic-systems","tag-climate","tag-50-years","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24682"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48246,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24682\/revisions\/48246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24682"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=24682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Global](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/09\/b10b7eb0-gp0sttxxd-1024x684.jpg\" "\\"Global")
It can be difficult to maintain your energy and hold all of this horrifying information in your head. What do you do to help take care of yourselves and keep going? <\/b><\/h5>\n\n
![\"Global](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/10\/9d6af048-gp0stu0ke.jpg\" "\\"Global")
Rex Weyler: You\u2019ve done so much in a year: how do you see your life going forward? How do you imagine keeping all this going? <\/b><\/h5>\n\n
![\"Youth](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/10\/07fd1554-gp0stu0dv.jpg\" "\\"Youth")
Ell Ottosson Jarl: When you were organising in the early days of Greenpeace, was there a lot of fighting between the chapters?<\/b><\/h5>\n\n
![\"Greenpeace](\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/10\/b6143ce1-gp03hav.jpg\" "\\"Greenpeace")