n.
International environmental organization.
Founded in Canada in 1971 to oppose U.S. nuclear testing in Alaska, it later expanded its goals to include saving endangered species, stopping environmental abuses, and increasing public awareness of environmental problems. It has specialized in "direct, nonviolent action" in protests often designed to garner wide publicity. Its members have frequently steered small inflatable craft between the harpoon guns of whalers and their prey. In 1985 the Rainbow Warrior , a Greenpeace ship being used to obstruct French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, was sunk by French agents, resulting in the death of a photographer. Greenpeace has offices in some 40 countries.