In 1971, I helped found an environmental group in the basement of a Unitarian Church

in Vancouver, Canada.

Fifteen years later, it had grown into an international powerhouse.

We were making headlines every month.

I was famous, and then I walked out the door.

The mission, once noble, had become corrupted.

Political agendas and fear-mongering trumped science and truth.

Here's how it happened.

When I was studying for my PhD in ecology at the University of British Columbia, I joined

a small activist group called the Don't Make a Wave Committee.

It was the height of the Cold War, the Vietnam War was raging.

I became radicalized by these realities and by the emerging consciousness of the environment.

The mission of the Don't Make a Wave Committee was to launch an ocean-going campaign against

US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska, a symbol of our opposition to nuclear war.

As one of our early meetings was breaking up, someone said, peace.

A reply came, why don't we make it a green piece, and a new movement was born.

Green was for the environment, and peace was for the people.

We named our boat the green piece, and I joined the 12-person crew for a voyage of protest.

We didn't stop that age bomb test, but it was the last hydrogen bomb the United States

ever detonated.

We had won a major victory.

In 1975, green piece took a sharp turn away from our anti-nuclear efforts and set out to

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