May 05, 2005

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Hemlock on Greenpeace

Hemlock perfectly sums up that multinational corporation called Greenpeace:

A good couple of decades after the death of environmentalism, Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter passes away. Silent Spring was published in 1962 and written by someone born in 1907. (How many more people have died of malaria since the ban on DDT boosted mosquito numbers? Never mind.) By the time the Cuyahoga River last caught fire in 1969, it was already being cleaned up, with fish returning for the first time in decades. Greenpeace was formed just as the bandwagon was slowing down in the early 1970s. Thanks to impressive publicity stunts, it became the darling of the vegetarian-Tibet-organic-pacifist- whales-feminist-alternative scene of the 70s and 80s, attracting millions in donations. Hunter had left the organization by the time of its finest moment, in 1985, when the mighty and heroic French secret service saw fit to blow up the Rainbow Warrior.

In 1995 Greenpeace falsely claimed that Shell was going to sink the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea without draining it of pollutants. A gullible press publicized this lie, leading to a consumer boycott that cost the company – a core holding for many retirees – millions. The activists mumbled an apology. In 1999 Canada refused the group charitable status on the grounds that its activities served ‘no public interest’. Since then, Greenpeace has petrified Europeans by suggesting that genetically modified foods endanger their health. Seven thousand years ago, when the Incas first started cultivating crops, a cob of corn was an inch long. With no valiant environmentalists to stop them, greedy Incan corporatist biotech interests subjected the plant to selective and cross-breeding, leaving us with the unnatural foot-long monsters we now eat. Today’s technology can produce food of higher nutritious value in greater abundance with less pesticide and fertilizer – much to the benefit of the Third World. But Greenpeace fights it, putting its militant anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-science agenda first.

In Hong Kong, the city where trendy fads crawl to die, Greenpeace activists dress up in gas masks, protective suits and thick gloves, march into supermarkets, and emerge holding a packet of crackers in tongs – displaying it to dim-witted TV reporters as if it’s a lump of plutonium. How many of these people are evil, and how many cretins? Judging by their looks, I would say the ratio is probably ten to one. Bob Hunter was neither, but the world would surely be a better place if he had been a PR executive for Monsanto.

posted by Simon on 05.05.05 at 12:35 PM in the




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Comments:

There was nothing heroic about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. And who cares if Shell is a "core holding of many retirees"? That has never, nor should ever be a reason for not taking a stand against a corporation. Besides, Shell's behaviour in Nigeria has been far from exemplary.

But on the point of the genetically modified food, I do agree.

posted by: Fabian on 05.05.05 at 06:57 PM [permalink]

It's clear he's joking about the Rainbow Warrior. As for Shell, he is right that Shell's sinking of the Brent Spar rig was in fact the best environmental outcome but that Greenpeace and others used it to whip hostility based on irrational fears but not the facts. His point on shareholders is to demonstrate that attacks on companies like Shell impact on the shareholders, many of whom are retirees - it's not just a faceless multinational (although Greenpeace is).

Point taken on Shell in Nigeria. But most of Hemlock's points here are right on the money.

posted by: Simon on 05.05.05 at 07:04 PM [permalink]




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