Posted by Like all organisations, NGO’s and environmentalists are not immune to the phenomenon of mission creep. I have commented on this previously and Greenpeace is a good example. It traces its roots and origins to anti-nuclear testing in the 1970s using the slogan “Don’t Make A Wave. It’s Your Fault If Our Fault Goes” making the false assumption that nuclear tests would crack the fault line and create massive tsunamis (see any parallels to current “climate change” arguments)? Greenpeace then went on to their “save the whales” campaign by facing off with Soviet whaling boats in rubber zodiacs. It now champions a virtual cornucopia of causes including:
- Creating an energy revolution to address the number one threat facing our planet: climate change.
- Protecting the world’s ancient forests and the animals, plants and people that depend on them.
- Defending our oceans by challenging wasteful and destructive fishing, and creating a global network of marine reserves.
- Campaigning for sustainable agriculture by rejecting genetically engineered organisms, protecting biodiversity and encouraging socially responsible farming.
- Creating a toxic free future with safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in today’s products and manufacturing.
In other words, Greenpeace is now a huge multinational business operating in over 40 countries and according to Wikipedia, had a budget of €236.9 million (2011) and staff of 2,400 (2008). The outdated data on financing and staff suggests how secretive this organisation is in its disclosure, preferring to let the public think of them as a small group of starving eco-activists rather than the massive organisational bureaucracy it has become. A French journalist went undercover and infiltrated Greenpeace’s Amsterdam global headquarters where he found secret documents showing that over half the budget went into salaries and administration costs.
After decades of portraying Greenpeace as environmental activists fighting the good fight to save the planet (not surprising given the liberal bias of most mainstream media), it appears that the pendulum is finally shifting. Surprisingly, even the dullards in the press are finally cottoning on to the truth that Greenpeace is nothing more than a bunch of radical eco-terrorists. They are neither scientists nor ecologists trying to find solutions to environmental problems but a bunch of hippy wanna-be’s with a radical political agenda and they are not above spreading lies and propaganda (as well as occasional bouts of violence and law breaking) to further their cause. One of the key original founders and former President of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, figured this out a long time ago and quit the organisation in 1986 because, “[Greenpeace] took a sharp turn to the political left” and “evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas”. “[They] abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism.” All I know is that he must be on the right track because Greenpeace has devoted a whole page on their website denouncing him and trying to discredit him. Patrick Moore, has come out swinging and is doing a Texas Holdem Poker “all in” by saying that not only are carbon emissions not causing lethal climate change, they are actually saving life on the planet. I have read the longer paper, “The Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions on the Survival of Life on Earth,” before and it does go on for quite some length so you can read the shorter summary which is easier to digest:
All life is carbon-based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere… As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth. At about 150 ppm, plant life dies due to carbon dioxide starvation. It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments…The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees.
I talked about my skepticism about the current hysteria over “climate change” at great length previous in this article. Having said this, while I find Patrick Moore’s paper interesting and thought provoking, on balance I think it might be too exaggerated to the other extreme. If I could sum up my view, I would say the logic is simple: While man-made carbon emissions may be a contributory cause to “climate change” (the verdict is still out on whether there actually is global warming despite lies that the “science is incontrovertible”), we don’t know if it is the main cause or what to do even if it is. Would going back to the stone age and going emissions (CO2) free actually change things or even make a difference? What are realistic (ie, won’t collapse the economy and cost a fortune) goals and plans to reduce carbon emissions that would have a significant impact given that China and the USA aren’t exactly going to be paragons of carbon reduction (despite huge investment and subsidies in China to green energy – more than anyone else in the world – the impact will be modest). The truth is, we don’t know squat and can’t really predict squat with any degree of accuracy so anyone who says that this is fact and that the solution is so-and-so, is full of crap.
Back to Greenpeace. It is with a little amusement that I ran into this article in the Globe and Mail with the headline “Greenpeace is a menace to the world“. I thought maybe the title was misleading – it wasn’t. Here’s some juicier quotes:
Greenpeace has branded Resolute as a “forest destroyer” that is risking a “caribou herd death spiral” and harming the region’s First Nations. It has vigorously lobbied Resolute’s customers – including the world’s biggest book publishers – to boycott its paper and print products…
Last year Resolute launched a racketeering lawsuit in the United States, alleging that Greenpeace and its allies had engaged in defamatory and fraudulent behaviour in order to enrich themselves from donations. The company accused it of faking photos, and fabricating evidence of Resolute’s misdeeds.
Greenpeace has now admitted that it engaged in “rhetorical hyperbole.” It said in a court motion that its words about forest destruction “can be describing figurative, rather than literal destruction.”
It also admitted that its claims “do not hew to strict literalisms or scientific precision” and are “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion.” It is not, however, apologetic. Greenpeace is using the lawsuit to market itself as a victim – in online notifications they include a visual of a gagged woman and the tagline “Clearcutting free speech.” It’s calling on the world’s biggest book publishers to boycott Resolute’s book paper – on moral grounds – and has signed up a bunch of authors in its support. (Margaret Atwood is among them.)
The region’s mayors, union leaders, mill workers, and Indigenous leaders are fed up with Greenpeace. They’re angry at being portrayed by outsiders as forest destroyers.
“Greenpeace, in our view, is a group that goes to the extreme, that doesn’t seek a balance between conservation and forest management,” Jack Picard, a band council member of the Innu Nation of Pessamit in Quebec, says in a video. He adds: “We don’t accept anyone else speaking for us. We are fully capable of speaking for ourselves.”
Greenpeace’s fearmongering gives environmental activism a bad name. Last year more than 100 Nobel laureates signed a letter urging them to drop their campaign against genetically modified foods and golden rice, which increase crop yields and provide crucial nutrients that prevent disease and death. Greenpeace is a menace to the world, and especially to the world’s most vulnerable. It is also enormously powerful.
“I used to respect Greenpeace, but they are not aware of the reality of the forest industry,” Mr. Potvin told me. “Young people believe them. Students believe them. They spread a lot of falsehoods, and they do a lot of damage.”
So there you have it. Greenpeace admits to being non-scientific and exaggerating to outright lying. Nobel laureates (the 97% scientists that “climate change” like to misquote and lie about when they say “science is incontrovertible”) say Greenpeace is full of shit and they should stop lobbying against GMOs that help to feed to world’s starving and poor. And yet somehow millions of idiot liberals and hipsters still support this group through millions and millions of donations annually. Not satisfied? Here’s another bit of mainstream media (this time the fully left-leaning Canadian Brainwashing Corporation) attacking Greenpeace saying they should compensate the Inuit $1m apiece for their harm to native culture and the seal hunt. “In 2014, Greenpeace Canada’s executive director Joanna Kerr wrote a blog post outlining the organization’s regret for their 1976 anti-sealing campaign and its cultural and financial impact on Inuit. In that post Kerr committed her organization to “go further” and back up their words with actions”. As I wrote previously, the current left-wing liberalism with its focus on identity politics is a fragile and unnatural coalition. This is a prime example of this phenomenon. How do you square the circle of logic when two contradictory causes collide (of which there are a lot). You want to stop the seal hunt but in doing so you wipe out the livelihood of the natives who counted on the annual seal hunt to feed and clothe their families. You want to fight Islamophobia and protect LGBTQ rights but these two groups are quite natural enemies, not allies. And if you’re donating money to Greenpeace, you’re not really saving the planet, you’re just lining the pockets of a bunch of radical eco-zealots who are not motivated by science or objectivity but by dogma and ideology. That makes you one of the idiots.