A trip for life and for peace

“A trip for life and for peace,” said Irving Stowe in 1971, before heading up to Amchitka, Alaska, along with his small team of activists, to stop nuclear testing. The boat in which they made this heroic journey was so small that they had to write their team’s name, “Green Peace” as one word.

Grunge reduce, reuse and recycle rubber stamp, vector illustration © Depositphotos | Olegs Cernavskis

At that time, Stowe had no idea that in a half century, the number of his like-minded followers would reach over 2.5 million, and Greenpeace would become a big international ecological organization. Today, Greenpeace has 42 offices around the world, from the U.S. to Indonesia.

One of the co-founders, Bob Hunter, invented a unique visual trick to make people think about environmental problems, that he named “mindbombs.” During various protests to save the planet from the negative impact of humans, Greenpeace activists would use their own bodies as living shields to protect whales from whalers’ spears, keep trappers from clubbing baby seals and prevent nuclear testing by invading and occupying the target sites; putting their very health and lives at risk. Photographs taken during such campaigns inspire people to think about the value of all living creatures on the earth, and occasionally, some viewers will even change their point of view about nature.

Currently, Greenpeace activists are successfully working on many campaigns: reversing global warming; saving the oceans, whales and seafood; protecting forests; stopping nuclear power; eliminating toxic pollution, and fostering sustainable agriculture.

Depositphotos takes an aesthetic approach to support the idea of saving our planet. At present, our library contains more than 100,000 images themed to encourage ecological projects.