Posted on 01/30/2005 3:06:14 PM PST by .cnI redruM
Scare tactics, disinformation go too far
I am often asked why I broke ranks with Greenpeace after 15 years as a founder and full-time environmental activist. I had my personal reasons, but it was on issues of policy that I found it necessary to move on.
By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. I became aware of the emerging concept of sustainable development: balancing environmental, social and economic priorities. Converted to the idea that win-win solutions could be found by bringing all interests together, I made the move from confrontation to consensus.
Since then, I have worked under the banner of Greenspirit to develop an environmental policy platform based on science, logic and the recognition that more than six billion people need to survive and prosper every day of the year. The environmental movement has lost its way, favoring political correctness over factual accuracy, stooping to scare tactics to garner support.
We're faced with environmental policies that ignore science and result in increased risk to human health and ecology. To borrow from the vernacular, how sick is that?
• Genetic enhancement: Activists persist in their zero-tolerance campaign against genetically enhanced food crops. There is no evidence of harm to human health or the environment, and benefits are measurable and significant. Genetically enhanced (GE) food crops reduce chemical pesticides, boost yield and reduce soil erosion. Enriched with Vitamin A, Golden Rice could prevent blindness in 500,000 children per year in Asia and Africa if activists would stop blocking its introduction. Other food crops contain iron, Vitamin E, enhanced protein and better oils. The anti-GE campaign seeks to deny these environmental and nutritional advances by using ''Frankenfood'' scare tactics and misinformation campaigns.
• Salmon farming: The campaign against salmon farming, based on erroneous and exaggerated claims of environmental damage and chemical contamination, scares us into avoiding one of the most nutritious, heart-friendly foods available. The World Health Organization, the American Heart Association and the Food and Drug Administration say that eating salmon reduces the risk of heart disease and fatal heart attack. Salmon farming takes pressure off wild stocks, yet activists tell us to eat only wild fish. Is this how we save them, by eating more?
• Vinyl: Greenpeace wants to ban the use of chlorine in all industrial processes. The addition of chlorine to drinking water has been the greatest public-health advance in history, and 75 percent of our medicines are based on chlorine chemistry. Greenpeace calls for a ban on polyvinyl chloride (PVC or vinyl), claiming it is the ''poison plastic.'' There is not a shred of evidence that vinyl damages human health or the environment. Apart from lowering construction costs and delivering safe drinking water, vinyl's ease of maintenance and its ability to incorporate anti-microbial properties is critical to fighting germs in hospitals. Banning vinyl would raise the cost of an already struggling healthcare system, denying healthcare to those who can least afford it.
• Hydroelectricity: International activists boast to have blocked more than 200 hydroelectric dams in the developing world and are campaigning to tear down existing dams. Hydro is the largest source of renewable electricity, providing about 12 percent of the global supply. Do activists prefer coal plants? Would they rather ignore the needs of billions of people?
• Wind power: Wind power is commercially feasible, yet activists argue that the turbines kill birds and ruin landscapes. A million times more birds are killed by cats, windows and cars than by all the windmills in the world. As for aesthetics, wind turbines are works of art compared to some of our urban environments.
• Nuclear power: A significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions seems unlikely given our continued heavy reliance on fossil fuel consumption. Even UK environmentalist James Lovelock, who posited the Gaia theory that the Earth operates as a giant, self-regulating super-organism, now sees nuclear energy as key to our planet's future health. ''Civilization is in imminent danger,'' he warns, ``and has to use nuclear -- the one safe, available energy source -- or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.''
Yet environmental activists, notably Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, continue lobbying against clean nuclear energy and for the Band-Aid Kyoto Treaty. Renewable energies, such as wind, geothermal and hydro are part of the solution. Nuclear energy is the only nongreenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.
• Forestry: Activists tell us to stop cutting trees and to reduce our use of wood. Deforestation is caused by clearing forests for farms and cities. Forestry operations are geared toward reforestation and the maintenance of forest cover. Forests are stable and growing where people use the most wood and are diminishing where they use less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to plant more trees and produce more wood. North Americans use more wood per capita than any other continent, yet there is about the same forest area in North America as there was 100 years ago.
Trees are the most abundant, renewable and biodegradable resource in the world. If we want to retain healthy forests, we should be growing more trees and using more wood, not less. This logic seems lost on activists who use chilling rhetoric and apocalyptic images to drive us in the wrong direction.
• Prognosis: Environmentalism has become anti-globalization and anti-industry. Activists have abandoned science in favor of sensationalism. Their zero-tolerance, fear-mongering campaigns would ultimately prevent a cure for Vitamin A deficiency blindness, increase pesticide use, increase heart disease, deplete wild salmon stocks, raise the cost and reduce the safety of healthcare, raise construction costs, deprive developing nations of clean electricity, stop renewable wind energy, block a solution to global warming and contribute to deforestation. How sick is that?
Patrick Moore is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada
The author's website...
I used to be a bit of a crunchycon myself, until I actually studied atmospheric chemistry and got to see the extent that policy agendas had warped the actual science involved.
bookmark bump
Reading this was a bit like a breath of fresh air.
In retrospect, I made the wise choice to get my degree in ecology at Fresno State University (after my USN career), where the professors taught true science, not enviro-whackism.
yeah, kinda unusual hearing someone of that experience, telling the raw and unadorned truth!
Thanks for posting this. I grew up in a 'green' state and watched the building of the only nuclear power plant in the state. The power plant was built on an island in the river; before the land was bought for the plant it was covered with shanty shacks (one of which I lived in). After they finished the plant, white swans came to live in the water around the area because of the fish and foliage that the plant designers put in. Electricity prices dropped to a level that even a kid (me) heard about it. Several years ago the E-wackos got the plant closed using the China Syndrome strategy and the price of electricity jumped up because of it. The last time I was home, the wackos were trying to 'restore it to it's original, pristine state'; obviously they hadn't been there before the plant was built. The nuclear plant's grounds were much more beautiful than all the run down shacks that were on the island originally!
These are only some of the problems caused by the left wing zealots who took over and co-opted all the major environmental organizations.
For instance, almost all of them support abortion throughout the third world, because they think people are bad for animals. Kill people, save animals.
Most of them support the Kyoto treaty, a huge boondoggle that would suck up money that could be used for better purposes, including real environmental improvements.
I am a very strong environmentalist. Nature needs to be preserved; pollution needs to be cleaned up. But it has to be done sensibly, and people have to be flexible enough to recognize when they have been wrong.
I feel very strongly that conservatives should not attack the idea of environmentalism as such, as freepers often perhaps jokingly do, but that we should take it back from the nutjobs who captured and perverted it in the 60s.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2005012919030002586895&dt=20050129190300&w=RTR&coview=
It says that global warming will destroy the world by 2026.
WWF environmental group scamming for donations.
They are killing millions by not allowing DDT spraying to control malaria.
read later.
True that we have cleaner air and water. But untrue that "there is no disputing that ..." I run into co-workers and friends all the time who are CONVINCED that the air is getting worse, the water is dirtier, and the forests are almost gone. This link to the EPA database comes in handy.
" As for aesthetics, wind turbines are works of art compared to some of our urban environments."
I think that is the most telling quote in the article. So many of these people are frauds who want pristine wilderness around them. I fight over development as well, but I am not some commie loving liar. I don't want big buildings or crime in my area of the woods.
OK, pardon my sentence construction. There is no way to dispute in a true manner that.....
Reads more accurately, I agree.
So it's really not Environmental Control. It's just Control. It's a Marxist deal. If it wasn't the environment, it'd be something else.
Pretty much. Smoking, fat in fast food, anything will do.
In order to have Pristine Wilderness, we'd have to deport 100 million recent immigrants. Which of you would like to go back to the old country? Let's have a show of hands.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.