Environmentalism for the Twenty-first Century

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Patrick Moore

Many social movements evolve from early periods of polarization and confrontation during which a minority struggles to convince society that its cause is true and just. The struggle evolves to a time of reconciliation when a majority of the population accepts the values of the new movement. For the environmental movement, this transition began in the mid-1980s. The term "sustainable development" was adopted to describe the challenge of taking new environmental values and incorporating them into the traditional social and economic values that have always governed public policy and people's daily behaviour.

Since each day 6 billion people wake up with real needs for food, energy, and materials, we cannot base all our actions on purely environmental values. The challenge is to provide for those needs in ways that reduce the negative impact on the environment. But it is not always easy to balance environmental, social, and economic priorities; compromise and co-operation between government, industry, academia, and the environmental movement is required to achieve sustainability.

But not all of my former colleagues in the environmental movement accept this idea. They reject consensus politics and sustainable development in favour of continued confrontation and ever-increasing extremism. Some of the characteristics of environmental extremists are:

• They are anti-human. They see humans as a cancer on the Earth. To quote eco-extremist Herb Hammond, "of all the components of the ecosystem, humans are the only ones we know to be completely optional."
• They are anti-science and technology. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and unnatural. Unfounded opinion is accepted over demonstrated fact.
• They are anti-trade. The original "Whole Earth" vision of one world family is lost in a hysterical campaign against globalization and free trade.
• They are anti-business. All large corporations are depicted as inherently driven by greed and corruption. Profits are not politically correct. The liberal democratic, market-based model is rejected, even though they can propose no viable alternative to provide for the material needs of 6 billion people. As expressed by the Native Forest Network, "it is necessary to adopt a global phase-out strategy of consumer based industrial capitalism." I think they mean civilization.

Eco-extremists project a naive vision of returning to the supposedly utopian existence in the garden of Eden, conveniently forgetting that in the old days people lived to an average age of 35, and there were no dentists. In their Brave New World there will be no more chemicals, no more airplanes, and certainly no more polyester suits.

The environmental movement has accomplished its initial goal of raising environmental awareness and now has a tendency to abandon science and logic in favour of sensationalism and misinformation. As a result, its priorities are completely mixed up. Following are some specific examples that highlight these tendencies.

The Brent Spar oil rig

In 1995, Shell Oil was granted permission by the British Environment Ministry to dispose of the North Sea oil rig Brent Spar in deep water in the North Atlantic Ocean. Greenpeace immediately accused Shell of using the sea as a "dustbin." Greenpeace campaigners maintained that there were hundreds of tonnes of petroleum wastes on board the Brent Spar and that some of these wastes were radioactive. They organized a consumer boycott of Shell and service stations were fire-bombed in Germany. The boycott cost the company millions in sales. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl denounced the British government's decision to allow the dumping. Caught completely off guard, Shell ordered the tug that was towing the rig to its burial site to turn back. The company then announced that it had abandoned the plan for deep-sea disposal.

Independent investigation revealed that the rig had been properly cleaned and did not contain the toxic and radioactive waste claimed by Greenpeace. Greenpeace apologized to Shell for the factual error, but did not change its position on deep-sea disposal despite the fact that on-land disposal would cause far greater environmental impact.

During all the public outrage directed against Shell for daring to sink a large piece of steel and concrete, it was never noted that Greenpeace had purposely sunk its own ship off the coast of New Zealand in 1986. When the French government bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985, the vessel was permanently disabled. It was then patched up, cleaned, and towed to a marine park where it was sunk in shallow water as a dive site. Greenpeace said the ship would be an artificial reef and would support increased marine life.

The Brent Spar and the Rainbow Warrior are not fundamentally different from one another. The sinking of the Brent Spar could also be rationalized as providing habitat for marine creatures. After spending tens of millions of dollars on studies, Shell recently announced that it had abandoned any plan for deep-sea disposal, and will support a proposal to re-use the rig as pylons in a dock extension project in Norway. Tens of millions of dollars and much precious time were wasted over an issue that had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with misinformation, hysteria, and an opportunity for Greenpeace to use the issue to conduct a high-profile fund-raising campaign.

In 1998, Greenpeace successfully campaigned for a ban on all marine disposal of disused oil installations. This ban will result in hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars in unnecessary costs. An alternative solution would have been to designate an area in the North Sea for the creation of a large artificial reef, and to sink oil rigs there after cleaning them. This would have provided a breeding area for fish and other marine life, enhancing the biological and economic productivity of the sea. But Greenpeace isn't looking for solutions, only conflicts and bad guys.

The invisible poisons

Beginning with the Natural Resources Defense Council's scare tactics about the use of the pesticide Alar on apples, the environmental movement has been very clever at inventing campaigns that make us afraid of our food. They conjure up invisible poisons that will cause cancer, birth defects, mutations, and otherwise kill us in our sleep.

Meanwhile, the National Cancer Institute of Canada conducted a joint study with its US counterparts beginning in 1994 to investigate the possible relationship between pesticide residues in food and cancer in humans. The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer in 1997, concluded that the study could not find "any definitive evidence to suggest that synthetic pesticides contribute significantly to overall cancer mortality," a careful way of saying they found no connection. And yet, the article pointed out, over 30 percent of cancers in humans are caused by tobacco, a natural substance. Another 35 percent are caused by poor diet— mainly too much fat and cholesterol, and not enough fresh fruit and vegetables. The main effect of the environmental campaign against pesticides is to scare parents into avoiding fresh fruit and vegetables for themselves and their children.

The same kind of scare tactics are now being employed in the campaign against biotechnology and genetically-modified foods. Even though there is no evidence that biotechnology or genetically-modified foods cause negative human health effects, great fear has been whipped up in the public. Environmental concerns are being blown completely out of proportion. Large corporations are in retreat, and governments are scrambling to control the issue. Unfortunately, some biotechnology companies and associations continue to belittle public concerns and resist disclosing food ingredients. There is no escaping the fact that this is a new technology, and it must be introduced carefully and sometimes slowly.

In response to the fact that there is no evidence of negative effects, environmentalists invariably resort to the so-called "Precautionary Principal," which is actually not a principal at all. But according to this so-called principle, we should make no changes or advances because we can never know all of the possible future outcomes of actions taken today. While it is perfectly legitimate to be cautious, we cannot allow caution to freeze us in our tracks.

Biodiversity and forests

In March 1996, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) held a media conference in Geneva during the first meeting of the UN Panel on Forests. The WWF stated that there are now 50,000 species going extinct every year due to human activity, more than at any time since the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Most significantly, the WWF stated that the main cause of these extinctions is "commercial logging." This was largely due, according to WWF director-general Claude Martin, to "massive deforestation in industrialized countries." The statements made at the media conference were broadcast and printed around the world, giving millions of people the impression that forestry was the main cause of species extinction.

I have tried to determine the basis for this allegation, openly challenging the WWF to provide details of species extinctions caused by logging. To date it appears that there is no scientific evidence on which to base such a claim. The WWF has provided no list of species that have become extinct due to logging, and the claim of "massive deforestation" in industrialized countries runs counter to information provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to the FAO, the area of forest in the industrialized world is actually growing by about 0.2 percent per year, due to the reforestation of land that was previously cleared for farming.

In May 1996, I wrote to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in his capacity as President of the WWF. I stated, in part:

I and many colleagues who specialize in forest science are distressed at recent statements made by WWF regarding the environmental impact of forestry. These statements indicate a break with WWF's strong tradition of basing their policies on science and reason. To the best of our knowledge, not a single species has become extinct in North America due to forestry.

Prince Philip replied:

I have to admit I did not see the draft of the statement that [WWF spokesperson] Jean-Paul JeanRenaud was to make at the meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forestry in Geneva. The first two of his comments [50,000 species per year and the dinosaur comparison] are open to question, but they are not seriously relevant to the issue. However, I quite agree that his third statement [logging being the main cause of extinction] is certainly contentious and the points that you make are all good ones. All I can say is that he was probably thinking of tropical forests when he made the comment.

Since this exchange, the WWF has changed the way it characterizes the impact of forestry on species extinction. At their "Forests for Life" conference in San Francisco in May 1997, there was no mention of forestry being the main cause of species extinction. Instead, the WWF unveiled a report stating that "three quarters of the continent's forest ecoregions are threatened with extinction, showing for the first time that it is not just individual species but entire ecosystems that are at risk in North America." The word "extinction" is normally used to mean that something has been completely eliminated. It is entirely beyond reason to suggest that three quarters of the forested areas of North America will become "extinct," yet this is what the WWF is proclaiming to the public.

Future environmentalism

It is easy to see that the mainstream of the environmental movement has fallen prey to misguided priorities, misinformation, dogmatism, and self-interest. Soon after I left Greenpeace in 1986, I found out that it had initiated a pension plan. I knew I had got out just in time. In the early days, many of us realized that our job was to work ourselves out of the job, not to give ourselves jobs for life. I feel the same way about my efforts to promote sustainability in general, sustainable forestry in particular, and the application of science and logic to environmental issues. I am sometimes amazed that this seems more difficult than my original work to promote awareness of ecology and the environment. Perhaps this time I do have a job for life.

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