Greenpeace USA
In November 1978,Hinck took a job in Seattle working for a monthly newspaper published by the environmental organization Greenpeace,then based in Vancouver,B.C. The next year,Hinck was hired as the Media and Campaign Director for Greenpeace Seattle. In late 1979,he represented that office at a meeting of the U.S.-based branches of Greenpeace and joined in the creation of the new national affiliate,Greenpeace USA. [11]
In the years that followed,Hinck was instrumental in building Greenpeace USA into one of the nation's largest and most influential environmental groups. [12] He led Greenpeace campaigns on a range of issues related to preserving clean air and water,protecting the marine environment,and encouraging development of clean energy.
From 1979 to 1981 Hinck played a leading role in efforts by Greenpeace Seattle and Greenpeace Vancouver to prevent oil pollution on the Northwest Coast. [13] The Greenpeace campaign achieved a ban on oil supertankers in Puget Sound and an end to plans to construct the Northern Tier Pipeline. [14] [15] [16]
Hinck led Greenpeace in some of its earliest work on controlling toxic pollution. In 1982,Hinck and Greenpeace exposed the dangerous practices of the Western Processing Company,a waste-handling firm. The company,located in Kent,Washington,had surreptitiously buried thousands of barrels of dangerous toxic compounds on company grounds. Greenpeace pressure eventually led to federal EPA enforcement proceedings. [17] [18] The site was placed on the federal Superfund list and was eventually completely cleaned up with money from WPC and its clients,including Boeing. [19] [20] [21]
In 1983 Hinck assumed Greenpeace USA's key leadership position of Campaign Director. In that capacity,Hinck worked with Greenpeace Canada to confront a Russian whaling operation on the Siberian coast in the North Pacific. On July 18,1983,Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior sailed into Soviet waters off Siberia just as the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission was underway in Cambridge,England. The Greenpeace ship landed at a remote whaling station,where seven Greenpeace activists went ashore and were arrested. The Rainbow Warrior started out to sea in order to deliver to the outside world documentation of the whaling operation and the arrest of Greenpeace workers. Pursued by a warship,a merchant vessel and a helicopter,the Rainbow Warrior escaped across the Bering Strait to US waters near Nome,Alaska. The Greenpeace activists were held captive for five days while Hinck negotiated their release with Soviet authorities. The transfer was made at sea on the International Date Line from a Soviet warship to the Rainbow Warrior before a worldwide media audience. [22] [23] [24]
Hinck collaborated on the worldwide effort to prevent dumping nuclear waste at sea. [25] The work of Hinck's team at Greenpeace USA,along with that of collaborators,resulted in the U.S. government's dropping plans to recommence nuclear waste disposal at sea. [26] [27] [28] Greenpeace subsequently achieved a total ban on nuclear dumping through the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter,an international treaty now commonly referred to as the London Convention. [29] Hinck also initiated efforts to curtail the incineration of highly toxic waste at sea. [30] [31] The efforts of Hinck and Greenpeace colleagues in North America and Europe resulted in a ban passed in the London Convention that effectively ended the practice. [32] During this period,Hinck testified before Congressional committees and consulted on marine pollution issues with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. [33] [34] [35]
In 1985,Hinck led Greenpeace campaigns for the control of pollution and protection of clean water throughout North America. [36] [37] [38] [39]
Hinck contributed to environmentalist successes against notorious toxic polluters,including the ASARCO Tacoma smelter in Washington state. [40] [41] For example,Chemical Waste Management (now WMX Technologies),later admitted that charges made against it for mishandling waste and other practices had "proved well-founded" and had resulted in important improvements. [42]
Hinck initiated efforts related to toxic waste and toxic product exports from the Western industrialized countries to lesser developed countries. This campaign culminated in the adoption of a treaty known as the Basel Convention,which regulates transboundary shipping of hazardous waste;160 nations are now signatories to this treaty. [43]
In 1986 and 1987,Hinck and Greenpeace colleague Kelly Rigg initiated the first Greenpeace campaign to tackle environmental harm arising from the lending practices of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks. [44] [45]
In 1996,after attending law school and practicing law in California,Palau and Maine,Hinck returned to Greenpeace. He was hired by Greenpeace International Executive Director Thilo Bode to serve as International Campaign Director. In that capacity,working out of the Amsterdam headquarters,Hinck served as delegate to the 1997 convention in Kyoto,Japan,which generated the Kyoto Protocol. [46]
