ABSTRACT
In the Introduction we posed the question of whether the Brent Spar affair had been the victory for the environment and the little man that Greenpeace had claimed it was. We don’t know because the jury is still out. The verdict will depend on whether the mistakes made and the lessons learned result in permanent changes in the way all sides deal with these problems. The short-term effect was disastrous, in the sense that the decision not to sink the Spar was prompted by the effects of the highly emotional and ill informed response by the public, particularly in Germany, whipped up by Greenpeace. This is not to say that the decision was wrong, but only that it was taken for the wrong reasons.
