This exchange, on a sad and silly story about Lego ending its partnership with Shell in response to a Greenpeace campaign, made me smile. Someone complained about Greenpeace. Someone else replied: “Oh you mean like protecting our children’s future then eh? Bastards!” RoomSixteen pointed out:
“Greenpeace is one of the greatest threats to your children’s future. If not for Greenpeace, we’d have rolled out nuclear long ago, not to mention GMO like Golden Rice.
Greenpeace is against fusion, for heaven sake! How evil can you be?
“Greenpeace a bigger threat to my kids future than the corporate machine eh?”, came the reply.
Yes. The ‘corporate machine’ has afforded you a lifestyle that allows even your useless progeny a chance at a dignified life and not, as is Greenpeace’s most fervent ambition for them, a life of hard, manual labour 24/7 as subsistence farmers.
Later, and I am editing a bit:
Their campaign against Golden Rice has cost more lives than the invasion of Iraq.
[…]
Vitamin A deficiency kills half a million children each year. Times ten, that’s five million third world children, for starters – say a fifth of those would have survived if Golden Rice had been marketed in their countries, that’s a million children. Plus a million those who’ve gone blind.
But that’s only half of it. GMO R&D is proceeding at a snail’s pace, because investors know the great, noisy unwashed will camp outside their windows if they do. That’s one of the main reasons we don’t have drought/salt/flood resistant crops in the fields yet. And strawberries the size of baseballs, of course, but that’s a first world problem.
Much the same could be said about nuclear (although the causation is not quite as straightforward) because thanks to Greenpeace, we’re only doing now what should have been done 20 years ago, namely designing better and cheaper reactors to replace coal plants and provide cheap and plentiful energy. And energy is the lifeblood of welfare: the more you have, the better your life.
This guy is a real trooper; he is probably saving a good few naive young Guardian comments readers from believing in the toxic worldview there.. And it is good strategy, too. I have long noticed that the appeal of the left comes from their portrayal as the Nice Ones. Pointing out that they are Killing Poor Children is exactly what is needed to fight them.
He is also educating people about economics: “And yes, Monsanto makes money on bt corn, but so does the farmer, otherwise it wouldn’t sell.”
Very good post.
I am hesitant to blame Greenpeace and the like for their ideology, I’d rather blame them for using the power of governments to enforce it. Absent such power of enforcement, the assorted Luddites do have their place in society, IMO – as scientific and technological progress carries a price (like all good things in this world), and so such organizations could be useful in highlighting that price and helping the rest of us better inform our choices.
Sadly, for too many of the deep greens including many in Greenpeace, the death of a million children a year is classed as a ‘good start’. Rather than something to be decried, death on that scale is only a fraction of the amount needed to produce their ridiculous dream of a ‘sustainable’ planet.
Of all the crazy Ebola conspiracy theories, I would believe that the deep greens produced the virus rather than the CIA or the Bilderbergers.
(Though of course Mother Gaia is perfectly capable of producing such horrors on her benificent own.)
This article has some pertinent insights into why people believe the things they do:
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want-to-be-right
As Rob points out in the post “Pointing out that they are Killing Poor Children is exactly what is needed to fight them.”
As I say maybe too often, things done ‘for the children’ are also done ‘to the adults’ those children will spend their lives as.
One way to get big bucks for GMO research would be to propose a study proving the effect of GMO food on autism.
Good for “Our Man In Havana”, as it were.
I see what you mean Alisa but I don’t think these are good people and regardless of the format of government they will do their best to make everybody else’s lives as miserable as possible. At some point good intentions simply is not enough for redemption.
Peter, I don’t think that these are good people, either – quite the contrary, for the most part. But the thing is that power not only corrupts, it also attracts the already corrupted (i.e. those seeking power). IOW, these organizations would necessarily attract a somewhat different sort of people if the did not have the power to influence policy.
Farmers work in a free market and own the food they make, which they then sell. Monsanto, who do not own it, should kindly fuck off and stop sponging off the taxpayer.
So when that windless night comes with 3″ of snowfall, I guess we can all break out our whale “slut” oil lamps to study the latest Greenpeace “initiative”.
Why aren’t the nice folks “working” for Greenpeace “protesting”…say…Nevada?
When it comes to who are the “Nice Ones” I always find it useful to remind people that they not us are the ones supporting government violence. They don’t like hearing that.
Alisa, Greenpeace (and its ilk) is certainly using the power of government to force its agenda, and in a better world governments would have much less power than they do. However, in the end power is merely a tool, and it’s important not to blame the tool but rather its wielder when it is misused. Greenpeace is objectively evil; I wish whalers in their huge ships would simply run over the Greenpeace vessel and leave them all behind to drown. No evidence and no witnesses. (That’s the same way I’d treat pirates, but then they’re basically the same thing.)
As to the central point of this post, I agree completely. I’ve long argued that Rachael Carson was the largest mass murderer of the 20th century; she is responsible for more human deaths than Stalin, Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot. And still her evil legacy endures.
Alisa:
With respect, I think you’re blaming a compass for pointing north. Greenpeace (and other such organizations) can no more be expected not to try to use the power of governments to achieve their goals than can a corporation. The only way to have governments not use their power in the service of such interest groups is for governments themselves to resist. And the only way for that to happen is for voters to object. That would require a degree of understanding well beyond the typical voter today. But, as someone recently pointed out in another comment section, you have to have a culture that supports liberty to have sustained liberty.
Also, what Laird said. I have to admit, though, it was pretty cool when a Greenpeace activist base-jumped off a smoke stack and opened a chute with a huge Greenpeace logo on it. Fantastic guerrilla marketing, for its day. Except that I don’t remember what calamity they were supposedly protesting. Acid rain, probably.
Sorry guys, but you are reading into my comments things that I have not said, and attacking strawmen…
Well that’s how many people seem to get through the day.
I realize that I may have failed to make my point clearly enough, so I’ll give it another go. For one thing, the specific organization currently known as Greenpeace is far from being what I have in mind. As I have speculated here earlier, absent government involvement in relevant issues (such as environment, energy sources and use, etc.), individuals, movements and organizations seeking to put checks and balances on technological progress would not assume the militant and coercive characteristics they in fact have, and would not attract the sort of people they have been attracting in reality as their activists. Rather, such organizations would act to inform and influence the public, allowing it to make decisions and choices on a better-informed, more-rational basis.
So in that context, Greenpeace, as we know it and as evil as it is, is totally beside my point – that being the real need to check and balance human technological progress against the real prices we as humans may be paying for it (and we are necessarily paying for it, as there ain’t such thing as free progress).
A little late, as this thread has disappeared off the main SI screen, but I couldn’t resist. Here is a video posted by Greenpeace showing one* of its submarines being attacked by a giant squid! Unfortunately the squid’s attack seems to have been ineffectual. Too bad. But still, it’s nice to see that one of Gaia’s creatures feels the same way about Greenpeace that I do.
* One? One? They have more? What more evidence could anyone need that this group has far too much money.
LOL
Alisa, agreed. :>)
Alisa–on your point, I mean. I’m on limited bandwidth at the moment, so I can’t see Laird’s giant squid. 🙁