Patrick Albert Moore (born June 15, 1947) is a Canadian industry consultant, former activist, an early member and past president of Greenpeace Canada.
Moore was born in 1947 to Bill and Beverley Moore in Port Alice, British Columbia, and raised in Winter Harbour, on Vancouver Island.
He is the third generation of a British Columbian family with a long history in forestry and fishing.
His father, William D. Moore, was the president of the B.C. Truck Loggers Association and past president of the Pacific Logging Congress.
1969
Moore was educated at St. George's School, then attended the University of British Columbia, where he obtained a B.Sc. in Forest Biology in 1969, and a Ph.D. in 1974.
For his PhD, Moore researched heavy metal contamination in Rupert Inlet by mine tailings.
He concluded that existing mechanisms had failed to prevent unacceptable pollution.
The committee had formed to plan opposition to the testing of a one megaton hydrogen bomb in 1969 by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
1970
The Don't Make a Wave Committee (DMWC) was formed in January 1970 by Dorothy and Irving Stowe, Ben Metcalfe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, Paul Cote, and Bob Hunter and incorporated in October 1970.
1971
In 1971, Moore joined the committee as a member of the crew of the Greenpeace, a chartered fishing boat originally named the Phyllis Cormack which the Committee sent across the North Pacific to draw attention to the US testing of a 5 megaton bomb planned for September of that year.
As Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter wrote, "Moore was quickly accepted into the inner circle on the basis of his scientific background, his reputation [as an environmental activist], and his ability to inject practical, no-nonsense insights into the discussions."
In May 1971, Moore travelled to Alaska with Jim Bohlen, representing the DMWC at US Atomic Energy Commission hearings.
Moore attended DMWC meetings, and was part of the committee when its name was changed to the Greenpeace Foundation.
Other committee members included committee founders Bob Hunter, Rod Marining and Ben Metcalfe.
Moore describes himself as a founding member of Greenpeace, but the organization denies this claim.
1972
Following US President Richard Nixon's cancellation of the remaining hydrogen bomb tests planned for Amchitka Island in early 1972, Greenpeace turned its attention to French atmospheric nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.
In May 1972, Moore travelled to New York with Jim Bohlen and Marie Bohlen to lobby the key United Nations delegations from the Pacific Rim countries involved.
Moore then went to Europe together with Ben Metcalfe, Dorothy Metcalfe, Lyle Thurston and Rod Marining where they received an audience with Pope Paul VI and protested at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
In June, they attended the first UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm where they convinced New Zealand to propose a vote condemning French nuclear testing, which passed with a strong majority.
1975
Moore again crewed the Phyllis Cormack in 1975 during the first campaign to save whales, as Greenpeace met the Soviet whaling fleet off the coast of California.
During the confrontation, film footage was caught of the Soviet whaling boat firing a harpoon over the heads of Greenpeace members in a Zodiac inflatable and into the back of a female sperm whale.
The film footage made the evening news the next day on all three US national networks, initiating Greenpeace's debut on the world media stage, and prompting a swift rise in public support of the charity.
Patrick Moore and Bob Hunter appeared on Dr. Bill Wattenburg's talk radio show on KGO and appealed for a lawyer to help them incorporate a branch office in San Francisco and to manage donations.
David Tussman, a young lawyer, volunteered to help Moore, Hunter, and Paul Spong set up an office at Fort Mason.
The Greenpeace Foundation of America (since changed to Greenpeace USA), then became the major fundraising center for the expansion of Greenpeace worldwide.
1977
In January 1977 at the annual general meeting of the Greenpeace Foundation, Moore ran for president against Bob Hunter, eventually losing by a single vote.
Soon after, Hunter stepped down and Moore assumed the presidency, inheriting an organization deeply in debt.
Greenpeace organizations began to form throughout North America, including cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco.
Not all of these offices accepted the authority of the founding organization in Canada.
Moore's presidency and governance style proved controversial.
Moore and his chosen board in Vancouver called for two meetings to formalize his governance proposals.
During this time David Tussman, together with the rest of the founders, early activists of Greenpeace, and the majority of Greenpeace staff members announced that the board of the San Francisco group intended to separate Patrick Moore's Greenpeace Foundation from the rest of the Greenpeace movement.
After efforts to settle the matter failed, the Greenpeace Foundation filed a civil lawsuit in San Francisco charging that the San Francisco group was in violation of trademark and copyright by using the Greenpeace name without permission of the Greenpeace Foundation.
1979
The lawsuit was settled at a meeting on October 10, 1979, in the offices of lawyer David Gibbons in Vancouver.
Attending were Moore, Hunter, David McTaggart, Rex Weyler, and about six others.
1986
Since leaving Greenpeace in 1986, Moore has criticized the environmental movement for what he sees as scare tactics and disinformation, saying that the environmental movement "abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism".
Greenpeace has criticized Moore, calling him "a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, the logging industry, and genetic engineering industry" who "exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson".
Since leaving Greenpeace, Moore has frequently taken sharp public stances against a number of major environmental groups, including Greenpeace itself, on many issues including forestry, nuclear energy, genetically modified organisms, and pesticide use.
Moore has also denied the consensus of the scientific community on climate change, for example by claiming that increased carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is beneficial, that there is no proof that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for global warming, and that even if true, increased temperature would be beneficial to life on Earth.
These views are contradicted by the scientific consensus on the effects of global warming, which holds that climate change is expected to have a significant and irreversible negative impact on climate and weather events around the world, posing severe risks like ocean acidification and sea level rise to human society and to other organisms.
