Written by Publisher
Friday, 06 February 2009
By Rose Sanchez
Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace best known for its radical environmental activism, now has a different view of the organization and considers himself a “sensible environmentalist.” After his presentation, he received a standing ovation from a crowd of 500 agricultural service board members from around Alberta who were gathered in Medicine Hat for the 2009 Provincial ASB Conference
Jan. 26-29.
Dr. Moore became interested in ecology at a young age, but by the late 1960s had soon become a radical environmental activist. He and others with a similar mindset met in the basements of their homes and by 1971 Greenpeace was born. Dr. Moore spent 15 years on the frontline of the movement, travelling around the world to fight atomic bombs and nuclear testing as well as the protection of whales and seals.
By the mid 1980s Greenpeace had grown to include 100 million people and had offices around the world, as people began to agree the environment needed to be taken into account when making decisions.
“I had been against three or four things every day of my life for 15 years,” said Dr. Moore. “I decided to find things to be in favour of.”
He said the next logical step was to start fighting for sustainability.
“It is possible through changes in our behaviours and practises to get what we need to survive everyday while reducing our environmental impacts,” he added.
Dr. Moore used some examples such as turning lights off when leaving rooms, using energy-efficient light bulbs, and making better decisions about what type of vehicles to purchase, as well as how to make a home more environmentally-friendly.
The mid-1980s ushered in an era of environmental extremism, said Dr. Moore — something with which he doesn’t agree. He said environmental extremists are easy to spot as they are anti-human, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade, anti-globalization, anti-business, anti-capitalism and just plain anti-civilization.
Dr. Moore said activists are good at creating invisible poisons and raising concerns about issues in the hopes of scaring people. As an example he pointed to a scientific study which has proven there is no link between pesticide use on fruits and vegetables and cancer. He finds it ironic cancer is caused in 30 per cent of cases by using tobacco and in 35 per cent of cases a poor diet. People who listen to scare campaigns about pesticide use causing cancer, end up not eating the fresh fruits and vegetables they need which contain antioxidants, helping reduce the risk of cancer.
Dr. Moore left Greenpeace when he realized he was one of the few directors who had a science education and the group wanted to call for global ban on the use of chlorine. He asked them if they were aware chlorine is part of the periodic table of elements and chlorine has contributed to the biggest advancement to public health because antibiotics are based on chlorine chemistry. “It’s their policy to this day (to ban chlorine) and I had to leave,” he said. “Chlorine is the most important element to human health ... it’s toxic to bacteria and other things that want to kill us.”
Greenpeace’s most recent “invisible poison” is the genetically-modified food crop. “It’s a completely fabricated campaign based on nothing. If it wasn’t so serious it would be laughable,” said Dr. Moore about Greenpeace’s goal to ban genetically-modified food crops.
He pointed to the fact numerous poor people around the world consume rice and thus have a deficiency in Vitamin A causing children to go blind in adulthood. Scientists created a genetically-modified rice, known as golden rice, which contains beta carotene and Vitamin A. Greenpeace has successfully blocked the campaign to introduce golden rice into developing countries where farmers can receive the seeds for free.
Dr. Moore said they have not been successful in blocking all genetically-modified crops because farmers are smart and they are demanding the seeds for these crops.
He also addressed climate change and said Antarctica is the one place in the world not warming up.
“Antarctica ice is not melting — if anything it’s growing,” he added.
He said while society knows its industries release greenhouse gases into the air and that temperatures have been warmer in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s not clear that human activity is the cause for those temperature increases.
He showed charts representing a billion of years of climate change, noting warm periods known as the greenhouse stage and cold periods called ice ages. Dr. Moore added CO2 levels have also fluctuated greatly through time. “The trick of this is you have to pick your time period,” he said. “In fact, CO2 is lower today than almost any other time in the history of life. The average is seven and a half times higher than today and life survived.”
Touching on oilsands development in northern Alberta, Dr. Moore said, “We have to think of other
ways of heating water for the oilsands rather than burning up the last of our natural gas.” He added Alberta produces 67 tonnes of CO2 per person every year and Saskatchewan 55 tonnes compared to a low of 13 in Quebec which relies on hydro.
He believes carbon capture technology isn’t a viable option because it will make coal plants less efficient since they are still releasing CO2 into the air.
“I think it’s 99 per cent marketing and one per cent science and I don’t think plants can be retrofitted
to (use the technology). I think it makes a lot more sense to go with proven technologies like hydro and nuclear ...”
Dr. Moore claims Greenpeace made a serious mistake in the 1970s in fighting nuclear power. “We lumped nuclear energy in with weapons and we were afraid of it, but making electricity in nuclear reactors is a beneficial use of nuclear energy,” he said adding, they don’t emit air pollutants, release little CO2, leave a small footprint on the ground, and are one of the safest technologies invented.
“It is ironic that is it the environmental movement that is a major obstacle to CO2 reductions around the world.”
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