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
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