Greenpeace is a global campaigning network founded in Canada in 1971. Its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity", with campaigns focused on issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering and the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements. It uses
direct action, advocacy, research and
ecotage to achieve its goals. Greenpeace had its origins in protests staged in the late 1960s against
Cannikin, an American underground nuclear weapon test in the tectonically unstable island of
Amchitka in Alaska, amid concerns that the test would trigger earthquakes and a tsunami. This 1971 photograph shows the nuclear device that sparked the creation of Greenpeace being lowered into its firing hole for Cannikin.
Photograph credit: United States Atomic Energy Commission; retouched by Kylesenior and Bammesk