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Paris. We sort our rubbish. We recycle our rainwater. We worry about depleted oceans, ravaged rainforests, threatened species.

If we fly abroad, buy a car, crank up the heat or air-conditioning, or purchase bottled water, we may think about how we fuel the greenhouse effect.

These reflexes are now anchored among consumers in many parts of the world. Yet 40 years ago, when environmentalism was limited to a tribe of academics and quirky visionaries, such actions would have triggered bewilderment, even a laugh.

Back then, whales were slaughtered commercially on a massive scale. France and China conducted nuclear tests in the atmosphere. People sprayed their armpits with deodorants that gobbled up the ozone layer. Oil was so cheap that the term “gas guzzler” had yet to be invented, much less “carbon footprint.”

Yet it was also in September 1971 that the blithe belief in Earth as a planet of boundless resources began to shrink, thanks in large part to green activism. Born within days of each other, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth launched a mix of grassroots campaigning, provocative and humorous stunts and civil disobedience, jolting a movement that until then had been largely sedate.

“The 1960s and ‘70s were the beginning of large-scale environmental breakdown, and people were aware of it,” said author Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International, established in the late 1970s to oversee the goals and operations of the regional organizations across the globe.

In 1985, Greenpeace’s vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, was blown up by French agents to prevent it from nearing the Mururoa test site in the South Pacific. One person died, and the scandal propelled Greenpeace to global prominence, a status strengthened the following year by the Chernobyl disaster.

Today, with a presence in 43 countries, 2.8 million members or donors and a budget last year that rose 15 percent to 226 million euros ($310 million), it is a force that few governments or corporations can readily ignore. Its 1,200 staff range from “direct action” activists to scientific researchers, policy wonks and iPad-clutching smoothies who twist the arms of policy makers, executives and journalists.

Friends of the Earth boasts 76 member groups and two million members. Their list of exploits is long. Green militancy helped seal the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, blocked Monsanto’s transgenic seeds in Europe, made Shell scrap plans to dump a disused oil rig in the sea and pressured Nestle on palm oil sourced from Indonesian rain forests.

But such clout is strongest in Europe and North America and far weaker in Asia and Africa, where the environment is degrading quickly.

And on climate change — where the biggest bucks are at stake — campaigning “has met with a bloody nose,” as a veteran UN observer put it. The NGOs agitated massively for a worldwide treaty at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009. They were stunned when the summit became a fiasco, leaving climate change in a limbo that is unchanged today.

“The strategy for Copenhagen was really ‘Copenhagen or bust,’” said Paul Horsman of the London-based Global Campaign for Climate Action. “Well, Copenhagen bust.”

After celebrating its 40th birthday today, Greenpeace next month will launch Rainbow Warrior III — a tailor-made, engine-assisted sailing ship, complete with helicopter pad and accommodation for 32 eco-warriors.Like the gray-haired man who buys a Porsche, is this a luxury purchase to boost the testosterone levels, to remind a middle-aged organization of its youth?

One such critic is Paul Watson. He helped launch Greenpeace but split to set up the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which is claiming increasing successes in confronting Japan’s whalers on the high seas.

In his view, the big NGOs have ignored the crisis of human over-population and become gentrified, cozying up to politicians who have no interest in fixing environmental problems as it would cost them their career to do so.

“Anger, which was a very important part of [the environment movement], has left it,” Watson said.

Greenpeace, he said, “are the Avon Ladies of the environmental movement. They’re knocking on doors and asking for money.”

Greenpeace retorts that it still uses non-violent “direct action,” but as part of a mix of smart campaigning, with viral videos, petitions and pressure on culprit corporations and lobbying for policy change. Asked to look back, Greenpeace’s Mike Townsley said: “The last 40 years haven’t been without benefit or purpose. But the failure is that we are still here. It shows that the job’s not done yet.”

Agence France-Presse