David McTaggart, GP Master Strategist, Dies

One of the most important people in the Greenpeace movement died this month. Greenpeace Foundation advisor Don White shares his thoughts on the man and the magnitude of the loss.

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A few days ago the impossible happened, when the world lost David McTaggart and I lost a valued friend of many years. It's almost impossible to convey how big a loss this is to the planet.

David singlehandedly ramrodded a huge number of successful initiatives through the conservation movement and world at large, saving entire species, an entire continent, imposing his vision on chaos through sheer force of will and personality. Many of these accomplishments are well-documented history, but there were a LOT of great things he made happen which will never be publicly known.

It was his burden to nearly always be dealing with people whose vision fell far short of his own, and his standard method of operation was - rather than throwing up his hands in despair - to plot, plan, and manipulate as necessary in a good cause.

Which is not to say he was always right. David was perfectly capable of getting some bee in his bonnet over something which just wasn't going to work, and he was so used to skepticism over his brilliant ideas that he sometimes had a hard time letting go of the not-so-brilliant ones. But ye gods, what a man he was; some unlikely cross between Ghandi, Machiavelli, and Rocky Balboa. Utterly ruthless, he'd cut the knees right out from under you with no warning if it made sense to him, and maybe later explain why he'd thought your knees had been in his way. Yet somehow he also retained a childlike sense of wonder about the world, and he could shift back-and-forth between these modes in zero time flat, which was utterly disarming.

Maybe this is why you often hear people talking about having love-hate relationships with David. For myself, I always loved him, even when he and I were locked in some high-stakes ideological battle-du-jour. He knew it, too, and was perfectly capable of putting his family up as guests in my home while simultaneously threatening me in dire terms about other stuff. And McTaggart in "threatening" mode was awesome.... yet I never had a meeting or phone call with him that didn't dissolve into laughter at some points in mutual recognition of the incongruity of it all.

I met him in 1978 in Vancouver at one of the chaotic angst-fests that passed for leadership meetings in the early Greenpeace movement, and shared a lot of history with him after that.

We lived 12 time zones apart, so weren't drinking buddies. I last saw David at the IWC meeting in Aberdeen Scotland in '96. I was sitting outside the overheated, funky "convention center" with Sue and was made aware of his presence by hearing a commotion inside which suddenly erupted through the double doors. It was David giving holy flaming hell to the Norwegian publishers of the "Harpooner", a pro-whaling propaganda rag published and distributed at each IWC meeting. It looked like a fistfight was going to break out, with McTaggart alternately threatening and insulting the Norwegian propagandists, all of whom stood at least 6 inches taller than him. They got off lightly when they successfully made their getaway; there were only three of them.

David disappeared inside again, and a few minutes later I was passed a copy, on bile-yellow paper, of that day's "Harpooner". To my distress, the editors had gotten their hands on - and printed as a full-page article - a scathing letter I had written in '93 as the original founder of the Greenpeace International Dolphin Campaign. The crux of the letter was that after first dishonestly claiming credit for "dolphin-safe" tuna, GPUSA had reversed its position and was selling the dolphins down the river based on lies, bad science, and questionable motivations; and that "giving a dollar to Greenpeace USA is more likely to endanger dolphins than is buying a can of dolphin-safe labeled tuna in the USA". (unfortunately, this proved prophetic, with GPUSA successfully lobbying for the gutting of US dolphin protection laws in 1997. See the "dolphin alert" section).

The doors opened again ten minutes later and David turned and saw me sitting there reading the "Harpooner". He immediately headed briskly in my direction with a grim look on his face, and - not having seen him in a couple years - I wondered whether I was about to get a piece of what he had given the whalers. Instead, I found myself in a prolonged bear hug, with David saying "Don, Don, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Turned out he felt terrible that GPUSA had put me in the position of having to write that letter, and said the "GPUSA guys" were "F**king idiots" who "should be fired and their work burned". Finding we had no disagreements, we wandered off and started intensely plotting planetary salvation just as though no time had elapsed since our last meeting. He and I spent much of that week strategizing on the best use of the market whale-DNA testing Earthtrust had invented and implemented (I was there representing ET) and hatching other plans and conspiracies. His attention was absolute, his blue-grey eyes locked on my own for hours; utter intensity and concentration. Old friends, old campaigners, hoping to save another few pieces of the world. He and I both "worked the halls" during meetings like that... more our style than being official delegates, I think. As in so much of human endeavor, most of the important stuff happens behind the scenes.

David's loss has hit me like a ton of bricks.

He was a giant in the movement when giants were sorely needed. I've seen it said that Greenpeace International "outgrew" him, that his leadership would have been somehow anachronistic in this day and age (he was retired as Chair of GP International in '91), but the movement today is - if anything - even more in need of his audacity, moral authority and clarity of vision than it ever was.

He was a friend. We shared secrets, discussed the impossible, sometimes made it happen. He toughened me, inspired me, and by his actions behind the scenes reminded me that making great things happen is the real reward, no matter who takes the credit for them. Some of the greatest victories are those on which you leave no fingerprints at all. The whole course of human society, culture, and destiny can and must be steered, and the best way to do that is often anonymously, and any way you can. (Hell, he and I each got in enough hot water just for the stuff people KNEW we were doing.)

David left the world decades too early, but left it a damn sight better than it would have been without him.

And I miss him.

-Don White, March 2001