Greenpeace Staff in Turmoil over Leadership Hypocrisy

Greenpeace is in turmoil after more than 40 staff signed a letter calling two of the group’s most senior officials to resign. The group faced ridicule last month after it emerged that Husting chose to regularly fly between his home in Luxembourg and work in Amsterdam, leaving a massive carbon footprint.

NL Times reports that staff members have now penned a letter to Husting and Greenpeace director Kuni Naidoo, calling for Husting’s sacking and also urging Naidoo to "consider his position", adding that only their departure can repair the damage they have caused the environmentalist group. 

The letter has spread among the group’s employees and has now been signed by almost all important campaign leaders and senior staff. Only Dutch director Sylvia Borren is missing, as she believes that dismissal is unnecessary.

Staff are also angry at Husting’s salary, believing it to be far too high. At €6,075 (£4,790/$8,170) a month, staff members say that the amount is "multiple times the average income and a lot of money for most of our supporters".

The letter adds that there is no way for the group to recover its reputation unless both Husting and Naidoo go, as keeping them on will continued to undermine their credibility. 

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Greenpeace Flavored Green Hypocrisy

 

One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 250 miles to work by plane, despite the environmental group’s campaign to curb air travel, it has emerged. 

Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s international programme director, said he began "commuting between Luxembourg and Amsterdam" when he took the job in 2012 and currently made the round trip about twice a month.

The flights, at 250 euros for a round trip, are funded by Greenpeace, despite its campaign to curb "the growth in aviation", which it says "is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change”. 

One Greenpeace volunteer on Monday described Mr Husting's travel arrangements as "almost unbelievable". 

Another said they were cancelling their payments to support Greenpeace in the wake of the disclosure and series of other damaging revelations of of disarray and financial mismanagement at the organization, in documents leaked to the Guardian newspaper. 

Greenpeace was last week forced to apologise for a "serious error of judgment" after it emerged that it had lost £3m of public donations when a member of staff took part in unauthorised currency dealing. 

Each round-trip commute Mr Husting makes would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions, according to airline KLM. 

That implies that over the past two years his commuting may have been responsible for 7.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of consuming 17 barrels of oil, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. 

But Mr Husting defended the arrangement, telling the Telegraph that while he would "rather not take" the journey it was necessary as it would otherwise be "a twelve hour round trip by train". 

"I spend half my life on skype and video conference calls," he said. "But as a senior manager, the people who work in my team sometimes need to meet me in the flesh, that’s why I’ve been going to Amsterdam twice a month while my team was being restructured." 

He said that from September he would switch to making the trip once a month by train due to "the work of restructuring my team coming to an end, and with my kids a little older". 

The head of Greenpeace in the UK on Monday denied that funding Mr Husting's commute showed a lack of integrity.

Read More: The Telegraph