Poor countries should hold Big Green groups and directors liable for deaths, ravage they cause
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
Fossil fuel and insurance company executives “could face personal liability for funding climate denialism and opposing policies to fight climate change,” Greenpeace recently warned several corporations. In a letter co-signed by WWF International and the Center for International Environmental Law, the Rainbow Warriors ($155 million in 2013 global income) suggested that legal action might be possible.
Meanwhile, the WWF ($927 million in 2013 global income) filed a formal complaint against Peabody Energy for “misleading readers” in advertisements that say coal-based electricity can improve lives in developing countries. The ads are not “decent, honest and veracious,” as required by Belgian law, the World Wildlife ethicists sniffed. Other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) make similar demands.
These are novel tactics. But the entire exercise might be little more than a clever attempt to distract people from developments that could create problems for thus far unaccountable Big Green organizations.
I don’t mean Greenpeace International’s $5.2 million loss a couple weeks ago, when a rogue employee (since fired) used company cash to conduct unauthorized trades on global currency markets. Other recent events portend far rougher legal and political waters ahead for radical eco-imperialists, especially if countries and companies take a few more pages out of the Big Green playbook.
India’s Intelligence Bureau recently identified Greenpeace as “a threat to national economic security,” noting that these and other groups have been “spawning” and funding internal protest movements and campaigns that have delayed or blocked numerous mines, electricity projects and other infrastructure programs vitally needed to create jobs and lift people out of poverty and disease. The anti-development NGOs are costing India’s economy 2-3% in lost GDP every year, the Bureau estimates.
The Indian government has now banned direct foreign funding of local campaign groups by foreign NGOs like Greenpeace, the WWF and US-based Center for Media and Democracy. India and other nations could do much more. Simply holding these über-wealthy nonprofit environmentalist corporations to the same ethical standards they demand of for-profit corporations could be a fascinating start.
Greenpeace, WWF and other Big Green campaigners constantly demand environmental and climate justice for poor families. They insist that for-profit corporations be socially responsible, honest, transparent, accountable, and liable for damages and injustices that the NGOs allege the companies have committed, by supposedly altering Earth’s climate and weather, for example.
Meanwhile, more than 300 million Indians (equal to the US population) still have no access to electricity, or only sporadic access. 700 million Africans likewise have no or only occasional access. Worldwide, almost 2.5 billion people (nearly a third of our Earth’s population) still lack electricity or must rely on little solar panels on their huts, a single wind turbine in their village or terribly unreliable networks, to charge a cell phone and power a few light bulbs or a tiny refrigerator.
These energy-deprived people do not merely suffer abject poverty. They must burn wood and dung for heating and cooking, which results in debilitating lung diseases that kill a million people every year. They lack refrigeration, safe water and decent hospitals, resulting in virulent intestinal diseases that send almost two million people to their graves annually. The vast majority of these victims are women and children.
The energy deprivation is due in large part to unrelenting, aggressive, deceitful eco-activist campaigns against coal-fired power plants, natural gas-fueled turbines, and nuclear and hydroelectric facilities in India, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and elsewhere. The Obama Administration joined Big Greeen in refusing to support loans for these critically needed projects, citing climate change and other claims.
As American University adjunct professor Caleb Rossiter asked in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Where is the justice when the U.S. discourages World Bank funding for electricity-generation projects in Africa that involve fossil fuels, and when the European Union places a ‘global warming’ tax on cargo flights importing perishable African goods?”
Where is the justice in Obama advisor John Holdren saying ultra-green elites in rich countries should define and dictate “ecologically feasible development” for poor countries? As the Indian government said in banning foreign NGO funding of anti-development groups, poor nations have “a right to grow.”
Imagine your life without abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and transportation fuels. Imagine living under conditions endured by impoverished, malnourished, diseased Indians and Africans whose life expectancy is 49 to 59 years. And then dare to object to their pleas and aspirations, especially on the basis of “dangerous manmade global warming” speculation and GIGO computer models. Real pollution from modern coal-fired power plants (particulates, sulfates, nitrates and so on) is a tiny fraction of what they emitted 40 years ago – and far less harmful than pollutants from zero-electricity wood fires.
Big Green activists say anything other than solar panels and bird-butchering wind turbines would not be “sustainable.” Like climate change, “sustainability” is infinitely elastic and malleable, making it a perfect weapon for anti-development activists. Whatever they support is sustainable. Whatever they oppose is unsustainable. To them, apparently, the diseases and death tolls are sustainable, just, ethical and moral.
Whatever they advocate also complies with the “precautionary principle.” Whatever they disdain violates it. Worse, their perverse guideline always focuses on the risks of using technologies – but never on the risks of not using them. It spotlights risks that a technology – coal-fired power plants, biotech foods or DDT, for example – might cause, but ignores risks the technology would reduce or prevent.
Genetically engineered Golden Rice incorporates a gene from corn (maize) to make it rich in beta-carotene, which humans can convert to Vitamin A, to prevent blindness and save lives. The rice would be made available at no cost to poor farmers. Just two ounces a day would virtually end the childhood malnutrition, blindness and deaths. But Greenpeace and its “ethical” collaborators have battled Golden Rice for years, while eight million children died from Vitamin A deficiency since the rice was invented.
In Uganda malnourished people depend as heavily on Vitamin A-deficient bananas, as their Asian counterparts do on minimally nutritious rice. A new banana incorporates genes from wild bananas, to boost the fruit’s Vitamin A levels tenfold. But anti-biotechnology activists repeatedly pressure legislators not to approve biotech crops for sale. Other crops are genetically engineered to resist insects, drought and diseases, reducing the need for pesticides and allowing farmers to grow more food on less land with less water. However, Big Green opposes them too, while millions die from malnutrition and starvation.
Sprayed in tiny amounts on walls of homes, DDT repels mosquitoes for six months or more. It kills any that land on the walls and irritates those it does not kill or repel, so they leave the house without biting anyone. No other chemical – at any price – can do all that. Where DDT and other insecticides are used, malaria cases and deaths plummet – by as much as 80 percent. Used this way, the chemical is safe for humans and animals, and malaria-carrying mosquitoes are far less likely to build immunities to DDT than to other pesticides, which are still used heavily in agriculture and do pose risks to humans.
But in another crime against humanity, Greenpeace, WWF and their ilk constantly battle DDT use – while half a billion people get malaria every year, making them unable to work for weeks on end, leaving millions with permanent brain damage, and killing a million people per year, mostly women and children.
India and other countries can fight back, by terminating the NGOs’ tax-exempt status, as Canada did with Greenpeace. They could hold the pressure groups to the same standards they demand of for-profit corporations: honesty, transparency, social responsibility, accountability and personal liability. They could excoriate the Big Green groups for their crimes against humanity – and penalize them for the malnutrition, disease, economic retractions and deaths they perpetrate or perpetuate.
Actions like these would improve billions of lives and bring some accountability to Big Green(backs).
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
My guess is that if either helps mankind, it is just a coincidence. Large organizations and their executives have a high likelihood of being psychopaths. They are in it for their own good, even if they claim to work for some moral cause.
commieBob says:
July 7, 2014 at 7:30 am
“My guess is that if either helps mankind, it is just a coincidence.”
The only thing wrong with the thinking here is that by design, we do what’s best for us (as do the fishes, birds and beasts). Don’t be shocked by the unattractiveness of this state of affairs. In the corporate world, this innate selfishness is the economic engine of the world. In commie economics, businesses don’t work and that is why the system fails. Whether we think sinistras are all lovely humanists, is immaterial – it doesn’t work as a system but it keeps reforming itself because they have a better slogan. Commie ‘light’ is the halfway condition- the social folk- it only works for as long as it takes to use up the productive sectors’ money. Once disincentivized, all falls apart. Indeed, incentives to do as little as possible are too strong.
Combatting the NGOs – who are of this persuasion – is like saving the Nile crocodile – they don’t appreciate it and put up a fierce offense (the croc can be excused), but having not thought things through to the end game , NGOs don’t realize the symbiosis of the set up. Once they have succeeded in their goal to kill free enterprise and prosperity, they kill themselves, too.
“I don’t mean Greenpeace International’s $5.2 million loss a couple weeks ago, when a rogue employee (since fired) used company cash to conduct unauthorized trades on global currency markets.”
I do not believe the person went rogue.
Who is it and has anyone actually spoken to that ‘person’?
Feeding all the poor people of the earth seems like a futile exercise, feed them and give them medicine and the next thing you know you have fat happy people on our hands…and we all know what fat happy human beings do, They breed, Next thing you know they are overpopulated skinny and sick, Then we give them more food and medicine and so on and so forth
Subdermal birth control is probably the best thing we could offer them
Reality is complicated. Ayn Rand was just as wrong/right as Karl Marx. Anyway, most thinking people will agree that most of us have trouble consistently doing what is ‘best’ for us. 🙂
We need rules (written surely but also in the form of social norms) and we need people to willingly follow the rules, otherwise, the strongest psychopath takes over and everybody else lives a miserable existence (and we get the tyrant’s rules). The USofA became great because of entrepreneurial people working hard and creating wealth, not because our ancestors cheated and stole their way to prosperity.
Like I said, it’s complicated. YMMV
John:
At July 7, 2014 at 11:59 am you write
OK. I understand that to mean you are a member of Greenpeace.
I write to explain reality to you and your fellow Greenpeace members.
The fallacy of overpopulation derives from the disproved Malthusian idea which wrongly assumes that humans are constrained like bacteria in a Petri dish: i.e. population expands until available resources are consumed when population collapses. The assumption is wrong because humans do not suffer such constraint: humans find and/or create new and alternative resources when existing resources become scarce.
The obvious example is food.
In the 1970s the Club of Rome predicted that human population would have collapsed from starvation by now. But human population has continued to rise and there are fewer starving people now than in the 1970s; n.b. there are less starving people in total and not merely fewer in in percentage.
Now, the most common Malthusian assertion is ‘peak oil’. But humans need energy supply and oil is only one source of energy supply. Adoption of natural gas displaces some requirement for oil, fracking increases available oil supply at acceptable cost; etc..
In the real world, for all practical purposes there are no “physical” limits to natural resources so every natural resource can be considered to be infinite; i.e. the human ‘Petri dish’ can be considered as being unbounded. This a matter of basic economics which I explain as follows. bold
Humans do not run out of anything although they can suffer local and/or temporary shortages of anything. The usage of a resource may “peak” then decline, but the usage does not peak because of exhaustion of the resource (e.g. flint, antler bone and bronze each “peaked” long ago but still exist in large amounts).
A resource is cheap (in time, money and effort) to obtain when it is in abundant supply. But “low-hanging fruit are picked first”, so the cost of obtaining the resource increases with time. Nobody bothers to seek an alternative to a resource when it is cheap.
But the cost of obtaining an adequate supply of a resource increases with time and, eventually, it becomes worthwhile to look for
(a) alternative sources of the resource
and
(b) alternatives to the resource.
And alternatives to the resource often prove to have advantages.
For example, both (a) and (b) apply in the case of crude oil.
Many alternative sources have been found. These include opening of new oil fields by use of new technologies (e.g. to obtain oil from beneath sea bed) and synthesising crude oil from other substances (e.g. tar sands, natural gas and coal). Indeed, since 1994 it has been possible to provide synthetic crude oil from coal at competitive cost with natural crude oil and this constrains the maximum true cost of crude.
Alternatives to oil as a transport fuel are possible. Oil was the transport fuel of military submarines for decades but uranium is now their fuel of choice.
There is sufficient coal to provide synthetic crude oil for at least the next 300 years. Hay to feed horses was the major transport fuel 300 years ago and ‘peak hay’ was feared in the nineteenth century, but availability of hay is not significant a significant consideration for transportation today. Nobody can know what – if any – demand for crude oil will exist 300 years in the future.
Indeed, coal also demonstrates an ‘expanding Petri dish’.
Spoil heaps from old coal mines contain much coal that could not be usefully extracted from the spoil when the mines were operational. Now, modern technology enables the extraction from the spoil at a cost which is economic now and would have been economic if it had been available when the spoil was dumped.
These principles not only enable growing human population: they also increase human well-being.
The ingenuity which increases availability of resources also provides additional usefulness to the resources. For example, abundant energy supply and technologies to use it have freed people from the constraints of ‘renewable’ energy and the need for the power of muscles provided by slaves and animals. Malthusians are blind to the obvious truth that human ingenuity has freed humans from the need for slaves to operate treadmills, the oars of galleys, etc..
And these benefits also act to prevent overpopulation because population growth declines with affluence.
There are several reasons for this. Of most importance is that poor people need large families as ‘insurance’ to care for them at times of illness and old age. Affluent people can pay for that ‘insurance’ so do not need the costs of large families.
The result is that the indigenous populations of rich countries decline. But rich countries need to sustain population growth for economic growth so they need to import – and are importing – people from poor countries. Increased affluence in poor countries can be expected to reduce their population growth with resulting lack of people for import by rich countries.
Hence, the real foreseeable problem is population decrease; n.b. not population increase.
All projections and predictions indicate that human population will peak around the middle of this century and decline after that. So, we are confronted by the probability of ‘peak population’ resulting from growth of affluence around the world.
The Malthusian idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans.
So, every aspect of your post is wrong.
Richard
“” tz2026 says:
July 6, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Golden Rice is a patent license trap. “”
Any Hollywood film maker or Western musician would tell you how difficult it is to enforce a copyright (patent) in the Non-Occidental world.
If you want a knock-off, look to the East.
If Monsanto gives it free,
They’ll have a tough time collecting money later, One can’t get blood from a storm.
If you feel corporations incapable of altruism, then Monsanto’s monetary incentive to give would be tax write-offs.
Monsanto is not evil. Profit seeking is not evil, Capitalism is not evil.
To Let human beings starve over ideology, now that’s evil.
Storm = stone.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney
First never assume, I hate Greenpeace as much as anyone that hangs around here ;0)
Second anyone that would say resources are unlimited on a rock floating through space probably doesn’t have both oars in the water, that’s just a silly statement, kind of like global warming will cause global cooling.
Also you might notice I said we should OFFER them birth control not insist they use it, The intelligent members of the group will except that offer and with any luck will find a better path
A little help is good, unlimited help just creates a group of lazy people
John:
In your post at July 7, 2014 at 1:28 pm you reply to my having written
You reply to those truths by saying
Nobody has suggested that “resources are unlimited on a rock floating through space”. Indeed, that “rock” is not “unlimited” because it will be consumed by the expanding Red Giant Sun in some billions of years time. But so what?
The reality is that for all practical purposes all resources can be considered to be “unlimited” because of the economic facts I stated and have again stated in this post.
I explained how and why you are mistaken about population. And it is your failure to understand which results in your desire for people other than you to be forced to continue in poverty. Your suggestion that your eugenic solution should be voluntary is beneath contemptible.
Richard
Richard
“humans find and/or create new and alternative resources when existing resources become scarce.”
If this statement does not say that resources are unlimited I don’t know what does, you are saying that when we run out of one resource we will find another and another and another….unlimited
Birth control is voluntary pretty much in all societies why is it contemptible? eugenics does not apply here, offering choice allows people to exercise free will, since the beginning of time humans that make good choices survive and those that don’t die
John:
I replied to your first post and you misread that reply so (at July 7, 2014 at 1:49 pm) I clarified what I wrote.
You have come back with your post at July 7, 2014 at 2:48 pm that again fails to understand my clear statements.
I wrote
You reply
NO! Please try to understand the meaning of “for all practical purposes”. I explained it in some detail with examples of food and fuels in my first reply to you (at July 7, 2014 at 12:20 pm).
As I said
We are going to run out of the Earth, so should we panic? Think for yourself.
And please try to read what I wrote.
Richard
Richard
What are you saying? either you are saying that population control isn’t necessary because we have unlimited resources, or you agree with me in that there is a limited amount of resources and population control/cap is a good idea, which is it?
space is a resource, and it is not unlimited, the population can only continue to grow until we run out of arable land to grow food, you say the population will level out on its own? interesting I have never met someone that could see the future ;0)
I am happy to read and consider anything you post, For that matter I have been reading and considering everything this site has to offer since 2007, However you won’t change my mind on a few topics, and two of them are conserving resources and population control, I feel much better about 7 billion people living on this planet comfortably, Than 15 billion living in squalor and surviving on dwindling resources, waiting for the next resource to be developed, its simple math for me, We can put money in the bank for a rainy day, or we can burn through everything we have and HOPE that there is just one more resource to sustain us, placing the future of humanity in the hands of someone that claims clairvoyance, In that there will always be one more resource that can be developed is just foolish on so many levels
RobRoy:
“Blood from a storm” ain’t bad.
John says:
July 7, 2014 at 3:53 pm
“… agree with me in that there is a limited amount of resources and population control/cap is a good idea, ..”
________________
I’ll recommend to you the same course of action that I give to all of those who think that too many humans exist and must be reduced. You find a high building and show us the way. Be sure and pin a note on your shirt. What’s that? It’s some other life that you mean to eliminate?
There is no anecdotal evidence which you can offer that proves any sort of overpopulation of humanity, nor end of resources.
@ur momisugly Alan Robertson
why do so many people that post here believe that population control requires that some people need to die before they have lived out a full life, you should feel silly for jumping to that conclusion
John says:
July 7, 2014 at 6:28 pm
@ur momisugly Alan Robertson
why do so many people that post here believe that population control requires that some people need to die before they have lived out a full life, you should feel silly for jumping to that conclusion
___________________
Why do you think that current methods of “population control” do not involve the premature deaths of human beings? You should feel ashamed for pretending otherwise.
I think we are talking about birth control here not killing people, try to stay on track please
John says:
July 7, 2014 at 6:51 pm
“I, think we are talking about birth control here not killing people, try to stay on track please”
________________
You stay on track and quit trying to change the subject, but since we’re there…
Do you think abortion isn’t advocated and practiced by the “population control” crowd?
Almost every single tenet of modern green advocacy leads to the deaths of human beings. You have aligned your thinking with those whose implemented policies are causing the deaths of others.
Well, technically, we should be talking only about YOUR permanent mandated birth control: Of yourself first obviously. But also of every one of your brothers and sisters (if any), your extended family, your parents, and your children.
Surely, YOU would not want any of these to contribute to the world’s future problems……
After YOUR entire family is sterilized, I will listen to any of YOUR discussions of future population growth of others.
“” inMAGICn says:
July 7, 2014 at 4:50 pm
RobRoy:
“Blood from a storm” ain’t bad.””
I know, a two letter typo?
I wish it meant something profound, but no.
It was raining outside when I typed it.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
😉
@ur momisugly Alan Robertson
I haven’t aligned my thinking with anyone, This is simply my idea of what might work to keep this planet in good shape for future generations, limit couples to two children, stabilize the population at 7 billion, require birth control, no unwanted pregnancies and no abortions
How sad you are, That you jump to the worst possible conclusion
@ur momisugly RACookPE1978
You also are jumping to the worst possible conclusion, stabilizing the population means that all couples will continue to be able to have two children, no one needs to be sterilized unless they want to, my wife decided that two was enough and got her tubes tied,
I think that you may be confused about the difference between population control and population reduction, perhaps you should look it up ;0)
John says:
July 7, 2014 at 7:23 pm
“How sad you are, That you jump to the worst possible conclusion”
___________________________
That’s the third time you’ve tried to lay a trip on me.
I see you’re doing it to RC also. That’s all you’ve got, You certainly haven’t come up with a defensible idea and in typical anonymous troll fashion, you aren’t being honest with your answers, either. You claim that you haven’t aligned your thinking with anyone, yet you are openly advocating well- known statist utopian goals. You are advocating the use of force against individuals to make them comply with your ideas, which aren’t originally your ideas in the first place. You’ve let others do your thinking for you and either you aren’t smart enough to realize it or honest enough with yourself to admit it.
Go ahead and lay some more trips- your anonymity doesn’t give you cover- you betray yourself with your own words.
You aren’t worth talking to.
I stopped donating to Greenpeace and WWT years ago. I do contribute to IFAW though. Not RSPCA who put on chickens ‘Accepted by the RSPCA approval’ Read the small print. Chickens have enough space to flap their wings’ (They are in bigger cages?) Gee a bit far from free range eh? However, during the Copenhagen climate change conference, Tivula residents cried out our island is being inundated by the sea because of climate change. However, they never applied for the UNCCF because the island governors thought it was too complex. Yeah. But good on India.
Now get rid of Pachauri, who said to save the planet we should give up eating meat.