In the past seven days, Greenpeace has bombarded its followers with e-mails “urgently” demanding that they rush their most generous contributions and this morning was no different.

For the third time since last Tuesday, Greenpeace claimed that it needed $60,000 to make yet another 48-hour deadline so they could continue harassing tuna companies. Interesting, so either Greenpeace has repeatedly missed its 48 hour deadline… or its total donation request in the last week stands at a whopping $180,000. Nearly 200 grand in just ONE week? Really? That could be the yearly income of three families. Or the tuition for almost 24 students to go to a public university. Or a year’s rent for 20 households. Or 1.4 million meals for the hungry.

So which is it? With so many struggling to get by, does Greenpeace really expect its supporters to fund its latest yacht excursions? Or is its continued begging actually evidence that Greenpeace is struggling to make its phony, self-imposed deadlines usually reserved for unscrupulous televangelists?

The latest news out of New Zealand is bad for Greenpeace. After their campaigners vandalized Ellerslie, a quiet suburb of Auckland, the town is now considering banning Greenpeace from fundraising there. Residents blasted the group in the media saying:

• “They haven’t shown the community any respect.”
• “They’re an organisation that promotes protecting the environment – I think it’s ironic they turn around and vandalise the streetscape.”
• “Greenpeace has demonstrated it is more in tune with tuna than with people.”

Incidents like this one ought to demonstrate just how far outside the mainstream Greenpeace is. How tone deaf and unplugged from civic life does a group have to be to vandalize a town less than 24 hours after their own neighbors put such incredible effort into sprucing up the place?

Here’s hoping the civic-minded residents of Ellerslie follow through on their threat. In the end, that’s the only kind of action that Greenpeace really understands.

Earlier today, the Tampa Tribune ran an op-ed by National Fisheries Institute President John Connelly concerning Greenpeace’s global campaign against canned tuna. Here’s an excerpt:

So, why is Greenpeace targeting tuna?

Environmental activism is big business. Organizations like Greenpeace are no longer run by naïve college kids; they are global operations as big and as complex as many of the corporations they target. Today, Greenpeace is an anti-business business. It is a global enterprise overseen by a board of directors, run by vice presidents and attorneys, and functionally organized by marketing, media experts and a sales force.

And like a business, it has operating expenses. Keeping Greenpeace flush costs more than $700,000 every day. Keep in mind that Greenpeace doesn’t manufacture or sell anything — save fear, perhaps.

The most successful fundraising campaigns promote a provocative claim about an easily recognizable product, like canned tuna. Such an attack is guaranteed to get publicity — and more publicity equates to bigger donations. Thus, Greenpeace isn’t so much concerned with what’s on Americans’ plates as what’s in its coffers.

Greenpeace has nothing to lose, but Americans certainly do. Tuna is popular, affordable and healthy — one of the few bright spots in the typical high-fat, high-sodium American diet. Fortunately, there are plenty of these fish in the sea. And with ongoing smart management, there will continue to be.

Read it all right now.

The New Zealand town of Ellerslie is a quiet suburb of Auckland. In recent days, volunteers there donated their own time to spruce up the place ahead of the 2011 Rugby World Cup and their annual Fairy Festival. It’s the sort of thing we see a lot of ahead of international events. Locals want to put their best foot forward when they’re on the world stage, and it seems the residents of Ellerslie aren’t any different from their counterparts around the world.

Unfortunately, Greenpeace activists don’t seem to have the same sense of civic pride. Yesterday, just as soon as local volunteers had cleaned up the town, Greenpeace campaigners trashed the place, littering it with posters, banners and fliers attacking a canned tuna company. But while Greenpeace labored to get their point across in their typically heavy-handed manner, reports out of New Zealand indicate they made no friends in Ellersie.

Angry residents called the vandalism ”like a kick in the guts” that left them ”fuming.” Far from the actual content of the Greenpeace campaign, reporters and readers alike focused on the eco-extremists’ lack of civility and couth. ”To see this now just makes you sick,” said local resident Sally Eustace.

Unfortunately for Sally and her neighbors this type of selfish nonsense is standard operating procedure for Greenpeace.

Greenpeace launched a campaign to coerce America’s three favorite canned tuna brands into changing the way they fish for tuna. The consequence of such a change would effectively eliminate this nutritious staple from grocers’ shelves.

By creating a crisis — a sustainability crisis that does not exist for the species used in canned tuna — Greenpeace hopes to generate donations from unsuspecting environmentalists. It kicked of its campaign with the release of a sophomoric cartoon called “The Tuna Industry’s Got a Dirty Little Secret,” which has spurred dissent even among their most ardent supports.

For the science-based truth on the robust population of tuna like skipjack and albacore (marketed as “chunk light” and “solid white” respectively) and the truth about by-catch and sustainable fishing methods, watch (and share) this video.

How important is canned tuna? It’s delicious. It’s nutritious. It’s affordable and it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. That’s four reasons this weekend that Americans from North Carolina to New England have been stocking up as Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast.

As the winds pick up, the rain pours down and we reach for that shelf-stable staple to feed the kids by candlelight, remember Greenpeace is actively campaigning to take away your canned tuna.

Friday August 26, 2011 (Picture courtesy of shopper in Williamsburg, VA)

Greenpeace says it’s protecting the environment, but did you know it recently spent $32 million on a new boat? That’s right. In only a few weeks, the group will launch the Rainbow Warrior III, a custom-built, state of the art sailing yacht complete with the latest in diesel engine technology, a media center with high definition televisions and even a helipad.

Paying for such extravagances when the world is near a double-dip recession means that Greenpeace has to concoct a complicated scare story that will get its supporters to dig even deeper to keep them in business. One wonders how far Greenpeace is willing to go in its war on the fishing community now that it has added a $32 million battleship to its fleet.

Greenpeace says “globally tuna populations are in trouble,” and insists that tuna is being pushed “to the brink of extinction.” That’s not true. When you go to the grocery store, canned tuna is always easy to find, and there’s plenty of it available at an affordable price. That’s because virtually all of the nation’s canned tuna supply comes from species that are plentiful.

That conclusion is the consensus of global marine fisheries scientists. One of those scientists, Professor Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, says that there are almost as many tuna in the world’s oceans as there were 60 years ago. Light tuna, known as skipjack tuna, makes up 70% of the canned tuna eaten in the U.S. All skipjack stocks around the world are healthy and abundant.

For all of our friends on Twitter who follow us on @NFIMedia, we wanted to make sure you were aware that standing up to a bully makes you a ”hack.” That is, if you listen to Greenpeace. On Friday, a Greenpeace tuna campaigner lashed out at NFI and then blocked us on Twitter. A screen capture of his tweet is below:

This is what standing up for the truth earns you with Greenpeace—a tongue-lashing from a group whose tantrums are telling.

Can you trust Greenpeace? That’s a question many consumers are asking as the non-profit giant has been attacking the canned tuna industry. According to these sources, people ought to think twice before taking Greenpeace’s word at face value.