After graduating from Bernards High School in 1972,[1] he worked his way through the University of Pennsylvania as a taxicab driver, projectionist and theater usher.
In 1993, both Hinck and his wife Juliet Browne took positions as Assistant Attorneys General in Palau, a United Nations trusteeship in the Western Pacific.
[8] Hinck also successfully prosecuted criminal cases including one where he gained the conviction of legislators for trafficking in dangerous narcotics.
[10] In November 1978, Hinck took a job in Seattle working for a monthly newspaper published by the environmental organization Greenpeace, then based in Vancouver, B.C.
[13] The Greenpeace campaign achieved a ban on oil supertankers in Puget Sound and an end to plans to construct the Northern Tier Pipeline.
[17][18] The site was placed on the federal Superfund list and was eventually completely cleaned up with money from WPC and its clients, including Boeing.
In that capacity, Hinck worked with Greenpeace Canada to confront a Russian whaling operation on the Siberian coast in the North Pacific.
On July 18, 1983, Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior sailed into Soviet waters off Siberia just as the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission was underway in Cambridge, England.
The Rainbow Warrior started out to sea in order to deliver to the outside world documentation of the whaling operation and the arrest of Greenpeace workers.
Pursued by a warship, a merchant vessel and a helicopter, the Rainbow Warrior escaped across the Bering Strait to US waters near Nome, Alaska.
The transfer was made at sea on the International Date Line from a Soviet warship to the Rainbow Warrior before a worldwide media audience.
[25] The work of Hinck's team at Greenpeace USA, along with that of collaborators, resulted in the U.S. government's dropping plans to recommence nuclear waste disposal at sea.
[30][31] The efforts of Hinck and Greenpeace colleagues in North America and Europe resulted in a ban passed in the London Convention that effectively ended the practice.
[36][37][38][39] Hinck contributed to environmentalist successes against notorious toxic polluters, including the ASARCO Tacoma smelter in Washington state.
837, An Act to Prevent Infant Exposure to Harmful Hormone-disrupting Substances, which would have set new guidelines for chemicals in children's products, including a ban on Bisphenol A, popularly known as BPA.
In 2010, Hinck successfully sponsored LD 1535, An Act To Create a Smart Grid Policy in the State, which was signed into law in 2010.
Some anti-wind power activists alleged that Hinck, as co-chair of the Utilities and Energy Committee, had a conflict of interest regarding projects from which his wife's clients would benefit.
[65][66] On November 12, 2011, Rep. Hinck announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat then held by Olympia Snowe.
Under his leadership in 2016, Portland: 1) committed to the construction of Maine's largest municipal solar power installation;[71] 2) joined the fewer than two dozen municipalities in the United States that require energy building benchmarking of large commercial and residential buildings;[72] and 3) committed to replace all of Portland's old street lights and changing them out for new energy-efficient LED units.
[81]) In 2014, Hinck also played a lead role when Portland adopted an ordinance requiring a 5 cent fee on all disposable plastic and paper bags provided at supermarkets, grocery stores and other retail shops.
The two candidates agreed on many issues, but Ali advocated for a bond to renovate the city's four most run-down elementary schools while Hinck supported an alternative plan that entailed a request for partial state funding.