They don’t call themselves Green because of their concern for the environment.
Certainly everyone must be aware of the so-called Green movement which has swept the planet in the last decade or two. Various political parties, nonprofit organizations, and other groups of people have organized under the “Save the Planet” banner.
No doubt some of these people are actually sincere. Probably many don’t realize where their donated dollars go.
Sadly, all too often, green refers not to the environment, but to money, and the unslakable thirst many of these organizations have for it.
In their quest to keep donations high, they have been known to resort to selective presentation of the facts, exaggeration of minor problems into cataclysmic, earth threatening scenarios, and outright lies.
Acts of vandalism, property destruction and personal injury are not unknown. This “don’t confuse me with the facts, I have made up my mind” mentality has been used to justify a violent campaign of domestic terrorism.
A few examples follow. The list could never be exhaustive. It is far easier to scare an unknowing public than to educate it.
Greenpeace claims to be a nonviolent organization, but apparently defines the word in the loosest possible way. The organization has made its reputation on its willingness to trespass and engage in piracy on the open seas. Greenpeace readily admits they spend far more money training its soldiers in the tactics of political activism than in scientific literacy. Currently, it is waging a huge disinformation campaign against chlorine and chlorine compounds. The blood of thousands of Peruvians is already on the hands of the “nonviolent” folks at Greenpeace.
Ralph Nader, a nondriver, started his career as an environmental terrorist when he wrote “Unsafe at Any Speed.” He still takes credit for removing the Corvair from the nation’s highways, even though those ideas have been long discredited and GM stopped production when already flagging sales numbers made it silly to continue the fight. Since then, Ralph claims victories in banning cyclamates and creating the Superfund program. He won’t tell you that the results collected in the outlandish feeding study that resulted in the cyclamate ban could not be repeated in a follow up study. He also won’t tell you that the Superfund program is a bureaucratic nightmare that has accomplished very little.
The Environmental Defense Fund took on McDonald’s (one of the most socially responsible companies on the planet). The EDF forced McDonald’s to stop using polystyrene food wrappings, despite the fact that McDonald’s knew all along that the environmental impact of these products was much less than the impact of the paper wrappings that took their place. The environment lost again as the EDF gained money and prestige.
The Natural Resources Defense Council waxes eloquent about the water pollution which will surely be the deaths of us all. Despite all the research done in the area of water quality in the last three decades, the NRDC cites only one study. . . done by. . . the NRDC. They still take credit for banning Alar, a growth regulator used on apples, even though the study which provides their only information has been widely discredited.
The Sierra Club would have you believe that they are working on any number of environmental issues. You would be hard pressed to find any science among the myriad documents it has generated. What you will find is the typical posturing found in bitter partisan politics.
The average American education is woefully inadequate in the area of scientific literacy. These organizations, and countless others, take advantage of this deficiency and invent their own “science” which conveniently meshes with their own political and monetary interests. We desperately need to reverse this dangerous trend.