The Big Hollywood Blog has a Greenpeace feature today that is a must read. It includes a video clip from a BBC program in which the cornered Executive Director of Greenpeace squirms quite a bit before he admits that Greenpeace exaggerates and misreports as a matter of strategy. The outgoing Greenpeace honcho calls the tactic “emotionalizing issues” for the public.

When grilled about Greenpeace’s claims that we can expect an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming Gerd Leipold said, “I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake.”

Our friends in the Alaska pollock community could tell us a thing or two about Greenpeace’s “emotionalizing” of “issues.” It wasn’t long ago that the eco extremists lied to anyone who would listen about the status of the pollock stock in order to raise money for the cause.

Is Greenpeace so arrogant it doesn’t realize the damage done to its already derisory credibility when its own head goes on TV and says “…what we have said, by in large, over the last 20 years I think was wise and was rational and reasonable… we as a pressure group have to emotionalize issues and we’re not ashamed of emotionalizing issues”?

Keep in mind this is the same group whose U.S. head, John Passacantando, told the Pittsburg Post Gazette in 2003, “there are many organizations out there that value credibility, but I want Greenpeace first and foremost to be a credible threat.” Then on his first day on the job the new U.S. chief, Phil Radford, made his willingness to work with industry known by threatening businesses, “you can either dance with corporations or dance on them.”

While groups like WWF and the New England Aquarium forge effective partnerships with committed industries that want to continue and improve sustainability efforts, Greenpeace publicly admits it lies to scare people, publicly announces it would prefer to be feared than be credible and publicly takes aim at the very stakeholders who have a great deal of sway on the issues they are most concerned about.

Greenpeace never ceases to amaze.