When I was asked to meet the cofounder of Greenpeace, my eyes
rolled up a bit at the thought of meeting someone I assumed was
an environmental militant.
Patrick Moore, however, turned out to be one of the sanest people
on the issue of climate change and the environment that I have
ever met. No wonder Greenpeace has removed any mention of him
from its Web site. Mr. Moore embodies the true meaning of going
green, as opposed to Greenpeace and its current disciples, who
are just plain gaga.
Mr. Moore was in New York as an adviser to the New York
Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, whose mission is
broadening New Yorkers' awareness of energy issues, which will
increasingly affect businesses and consumers in the coming years.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace is building a replica of - don't laugh -
Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat to alert the world about global
warming. According to a Greenpeace activist, Hilal Atici, climate
change will cause human misery "on a scale not experienced
in modern times. ... Leaders have a mandate from the people to
massively cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now."
Apparently, the best way to drastically cut these emissions is to
switch energy sources to nuclear power from fossil fuel.
"There are no emissions from nuclear energy," Mr. Moore
told me.
Yet the Greenpeace Web site clearly lists its opposition to
nuclear power and states that one of its missions is to
"halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the
shutdown of existing plants."
I told Mr. Moore that the first things that pop into people's
mind when nuclear energy comes up are Chernobyl and Three Mile
Island. "The first thing to remember, however, is that no
one was injured at Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl was a very
poorly restructured Soviet military installation," he said.
Unfortunately, the film "China Syndrome" opened around
that time, and the film left a very negative impression of
nuclear power plants.
I then asked Mr. Moore what he thought about drilling in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska as a way to reduce our
need for precarious foreign oil supplies. "I don't believe
that drilling would endanger the caribou or create an
environmental hazard," he said. "Once the drilling is
complete, the area can be restored to its original state.
However, what we need to do is reduce our need for fossil fuel,
which is a pollutant. In any event, why should we use up in a few
centuries a resource that should last for thousands of years?
Shouldn't we provide for the future generations? The challenge is
to provide our energy needs in ways that reduce negative impact
while also being socially acceptable and technically and
economically feasible. Compromise and cooperation among
environmentalists, government, and industry are essential."
Patrick Moore, Ph.D., served for nine years as president of
Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a director of Greenpeace
International. Of the five directors at G.I., he was the only one
with a scientific background. He says many of his colleagues were
not interested in cooperation and rejected consensus in favor of
continued confrontation, ever-increasing extremism, and left-wing
politics. "Environmentalism has become anti-globalization
and anti-industry," Mr. Moore says. "Activists have
abandoned science in favor of sensationalism.
He is highly critical of Greenpeace's campaign against
biotechnology in general and genetic engineering in particular,
which, he says, "exposes their intellectual and moral
bankruptcy." Greenpeace activists in Paris successfully
prevented him from speaking at a videoconference to the European
Seed Association on this issue.
"I would have told the assembled that, if adding a daffodil
gene to rice in order to produce a modified strain of rice that
can prevent half a million children from going blind each year,
we should move carefully to develop it," Mr. Moore says.
It is becoming clearer, however, that the environmentalists are
essentially anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human. One
group, Optimum Population Trust, advocates having fewer children
to lessen the carbon dioxide output. Environmentalists are
halting mining projects in Romania, Madagascar, and Chile that
would provide jobs and better living conditions for impoverished
people now living in substandard, unhealthy environments with
open sewers and outdoor toilets. These "greenies" spout
about returning the Earth to a Garden of Eden while the natives
die of malnutrition and disease.
Mr. Moore does not deny that the planet may be going through a
warming trend, but he joins other scientists who are becoming
more and more skeptical about humans being the principal cause.
He left Greenpeace because he saw his colleagues abandoning
science and logic and adopting zero-tolerance policies that are
environmentally negative.
I say go green with Patrick Moore - or go gaga with Greenpeace.