Greenpeace—Poverty Be Damned

Greenpeace vandals have destroyed crops, wiping out millions of dollars in research to develop food plants that require fewer pesticides, are more nutritious, reduce dangerous mold toxins, withstand floods,drought

Greenpeace—Poverty Be Damned

Paul Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace has written that human overpopulation is “a virus…killing our host the planet Earth, and so the number of people living in the world should be slashed by 85 percent.” “No human community in the world should be larger than 20,000 people,” Watson writes. “We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”

He describes mankind as “the AIDS of the Earth” and calls for an end to cars, planes, and all ships save those powered by sail. (1)

Another Greenpeace co-founder, Patrick Moore, now an outspoken critic of the group he once led, looks at it this way. “I helped start the environmental movement to protect people as well as our planet,” he said. “Unfortunately, too many policies today ignore then needs of the Earth’s poorest people. That’s not just unnecessary. It’s eco-imperialism. It’s counter-productive, and morally wrong.” (2)

What environmental problem kills humans in the greatest numbers today? It isn’t Alar, ozone depletion, dioxins, nuclear waste, electromagnetic radiation, pesticide residue, PCBs, asbestos or global warming. What kills most people is dung smoke and diarrhea, which are both directly related to poverty. Poverty can therefore be described as the worst carcinogen. (3)

In the summer of 2002 when famine gripped Africa, the US sent massive amounts of corn to several countries, including about 17,000 tons to Zambia. But there it rotted. Turns out the Zambian government had been told by environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth that the food was ‘poison.’ Says Dennis Avery, “Thus Greenpeace and Friends say that starving Africans should forgo foodstuffs that most of those organizations’ American members have been eating for the past decade with no ill effects, so that Western greens can make a political point.” Never mind that this was the same pest resistant corn that had been approved for safety by three different US government agencies, and eaten daily since 1995 by millions of Americans in such forms as corn flakes, corn flour, and through livestock feed, hamburgers and ice cream. Biotech foods have undergone more testing than any foods in history, with no danger found. (4)

In Britain, France and elsewhere, Greenpeace vandals have destroyed bio-engineered crops, wiping out millions of dollars in research to develop food plants that require fewer pesticides, are more nutritious, reduce dangerous mold toxins, withstand floods and drought, and increase crop yields. The people who would benefit most form this research are the poorest, most malnourished on Earth. They could improve their lives, simply by planting different, better corn, cotton, or soybean seeds. (5)

Patrick Moore, mentioned earlier, stated that “The campaign of fear now being waged against modification is based largely on fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic.” Moore also criticized his former Greenpeace colleagues for claiming that there was a ‘zero benefit’ even from such modified plants as Golden Rice, a variety with added pro-Vitamin A. Golden Rice was developed by Swiss scientist Ingo Potrykus to help address the severe problem of micro-nutrient deficiencies in developing countries diets—a problem that results in half a million cases of childhood blindness and millions of deaths each year. “Let someone come forward and state that the possibility of saving 500,000 children from blindness is a zero benefit,” Moore challenges. (6)

American Council on Science and Health’s Dr. Josh Bloom sums this up well, “The closer you look, the more you see that a group that was supposed to help protect the planet from pollution or overfishing—both good causes—has become radical to the point where they now seem to put the environment (or other causes du jour) far ahead of the well-being of humans.” (7)

References

1,Jeff Jacoby, “A world full of good news,” boston.com/news, May 13, 2007

2,Paul Driessen, Eco-Imperialism, (Bellevue, WA,, Free Enterprise Press, 2003) 49

3,The 10/90 Report on Health Research 2001-2002, Susan Jupp, Editor, (Geneva, Switzerland, World Health Organization, 2002)

4,Dennis T. Avery, “Environmentalists turn to terrorism,” Hudson Institute, September 26, 2002

5,Paul Driessen, “Not exactly Mother Teresa, CFACT News, January 17, 2010

6,C. S. Prakash, “Greenpeace founder supports biotechnology,”http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/pr/moore.html

7,“Greenpeace gets a small taste of its own medicine,” acsh.org, July 7, 2014




Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology.  He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter. Jack can be reached at:  jdini@comcast.net