In the six short months since returning to his home province of Alberta, Mike Hudema has been seen using a bullhorn to heckle Premier Ed Stelmach on the election campaign trail; interrupting a Shell Oil recruitment meeting accompanied by the Radical Cheerleaders protest group singing, “Let’s shut down the oil machine”; and hanging suspended off Edmonton’s High Level bridge, 40 metres above the North Saskatchewan River, while unfurling two 15-metre banners featuring the message Stop the Tar Sands.

From his picture, you might think Hudema, a bespectacled young man with a friendly face, was just your average nice guy — someone who got good grades in school and was every mother’s idea of the perfect son-in-law. The only stereotype this homegrown activist fulfils, however, is that of a Greenpeace campaigner: passionate, in-your-face and media savvy.

Hudema, a 31-year-old native of Medicine Hat, is the point man for a Greenpeace beachhead into Alberta. Last August, the high-profile international environmental organization decided to open up an office in Edmonton, its first-ever direct foothold in the province. And, according to Hudema, Greenpeace’s reasons for being here are clear.

“This is where the line needs to be drawn,” states Hudema, Alberta Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner, saying that the tar sands developments in northern Alberta are having serious environmental, social and health implications for Alberta, Canada and the world.

Hudema cites a number of criticisms concerning the multibillion-dollar oil extraction project, from the massive greenhouse gas emissions being produced (“By 2020 it will generate double the greenhouse gases produced by all of the cars and trucks in Canada today”); its drain on water resources (“It’s already depleting the Athabasca river — it takes three to five barrels of fresh water to extract one barrel of oil”); its pollution effects on downstream communities (“First Nations peoples in Fort Chipewyan are facing cancer rates they’ve never seen before”); and its impact on deforestation (“We’re turning a lush boreal forest into a moonscape in Fort McMurray”).

“Greenpeace just felt that this was a project that was so massive that it could not stand on the sidelines,” he says.

For Hudema, Greenpeace’s reputation for direct, even sensational activism is a good fit. Over the past 12 years Hudema has battled passionately on behalf of a variety of social, civil and environmental causes. Though he supports traditional consensus-building forms of advocacy, he also feels that when dealing with intransigent opposition, one can’t shy away from direct confrontation — and a willingness to use “more expressive tactics to get your message out.”

For example, as president of the University of Alberta Students’ Union, Hudema once paid for his tuition in nickels and dimes to protest tuition increases. While protesting the opening of a mine near Hinton, he dug a mock open-pit mine in front of then justice minister Anne McLellan’s constituency office.

According to Hudema, however, his style and zeal for activism really started when he travelled to India as a 19-year-old man. There he witnessed something that would be unusual to most Canadians: a participatory government meeting, with more than 20,000 people gathering to debate and decide on budget priorities for their village.

“I saw [in India] a different way that democracy could work. In Canada, citizens aren’t really encouraged to get involved except once every four years when it’s time to vote. But being a young person at the time and looking at some of the tremendous problems that our world is facing and seeing other people making decisions for me — and not liking the decisions they were making — I felt I needed to get involved to try and change it.”

These days, that means trying to stop, or at least slow down, the economic juggernaut that is the northern Alberta oilsands development.

It’s a daunting task, but political science professor Dr. Steve Patten, who teaches a course on citizenship and democracy at the University of Alberta, thinks his former student will make a difference here. “Mike has already been effective at increasing Greenpeace’s profile in Alberta,” says Patten, noting that Hudema’s creative, headline-grabbing performances have “drawn a lot of attention to issues that would otherwise be ignored.” But Patten adds that Hudema’s knowledge of politics and law will also enable him to build consensus down the road. “Mike is a unique person because he really understands the political system, but at the same time, he knows for some agendas you have to work outside of traditional politics.”

Hudema is presently the Greenpeace office’s only full-time staffer, but there are plans for additional hires down the road. In the meantime, he is busy recruiting volunteer activists to the cause, a process he says is going well, noting that the majority of ordinary Albertans support the environmental cause. And though he is at times frustrated by a provincial government he calls “unwilling to listen or compromise,” Hudema points out that frustration or feelings of being overwhelmed aren’t an excuse to be apathetic.

“That’s how people in power want you to feel — they want you to feel powerless, that you can’t do anything. It’s very easy, then, to retreat into our own lives because that’s where we’re in control. The best way to turn that tide is to get involved — whether it’s joining a group like Greenpeace, joining other groups working in the same direction, or just speaking out on your own. The more that we have active citizens speaking out, the more likely we’re going to get the change we want to see.”

Though Hudema admits that Greenpeace’s ultimate mission is to stop the Northern Alberta oilsands project entirely, for now its goal is to convince the government to stop any new approvals on tar sands development.

For more information or to get involved, visit www.greenpeace.ca/tarsands and www.nonewapprovals.ca.