I get that, but just the same you probably wouldn't like the folks I associate with. I really don't know who in particular you are talking about so this is a bit blind. What he says and how he backs it up would make about 50% of my friends heads explode.
But, he left GreenPeace for ethical reasons and has spent his time arguing for change and the environment in a way that assumes that half of mankind needs to be eliminated to solve the problem. Instead he assumes we have to find a way to sustain ourselves and not solve the problem through accepting atrocities and then argues how we might do that.
He supports nuclear power, genetically modified foods, he is a big advocate of heat pumps and other sane ideas. I have read a number of his articles now and find him to be pragmatic and open to facts and reason and changes his position when the science provides that a better way is more reasonable.
So we are left with your complaint about his friends. Which friend or friends of his are so disturbing to you?
He came here to Santa Cruz at the behest of Bud McCrary of Big Creek Lumber Co, but I'd known him by email considerably before that. He'd read and commented on some of Natural Process before it was published. Not long after he left Greenpeace and published his first book, Greenspirit - Trees Are the Answer (I have a signed copy) he was meeting and collaborating with major timber corporations of the Pacific Northwest. Effectively, he was making a living promoting his defection. I do not remember specific names because that was about 2002, but I do recall that some of those very companies are mixed up in the ISO 14000 series of UN regulations. He is a big fan of corporate landownership instead of individual stewardship. Now, a lot of people think that is a good thing, but I'll tell you that large global interests are some of the prime drivers behind the kind of regulatory corruption I wrote about in my first book, Natural Process. For similar reasons, it should not surprise you that the California timber market has been dominated by the two corporations that have always had their representatives on the California Board of Forestry (Simpson and SPI). They write and approve rules that make things tough for smaller concerns, economies of scale in the paperwork business being what they are.
Paperwork doesn't do a damned thing for a forest. Focusing only on trees does not a forest make. From the technical side, the complexities of restoration do not lend themselves to large scale ownership. That is just how things are, and it is the essence of where I disagree with Mr. Moore.