Greenpeace co-founder says organisation has lost its way

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, says that he left the mainstream green movement in 1986 because it abandoned science and logic in favour of an anti-corporate, anti-globalisation agenda.

Moore, a Ph.D. in ecology, says instead of using science to solve problems such as whaling, nuclear testing and toxic waste, Greenpeace became more concerned about maintaining problems to further a leftist political agenda. For example, Greenpeace:

Effectively demanded that nuclear waste never be buried; but this meant more individuals would be exposed to risk as waste is shuffled from one location to another.

Opposed aquaculture and insisted society catch only a sustainable level of fish from the wild; but this would drive up the price of fish to the point where only the wealthy could afford it.

Insisted that all farming be organic; but this would make millions around the world go unfed without the availability of cost-saving agricultural technologies.

Moore suggests Greenpeace's final remnants of a science-based agenda were destroyed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 due to the influx of peace activists and Marxist ideologues into the green movement.

Source: Roger Bate, Moore Wisdom Needed, Economic Affairs, Vol. 24, Institute of Economic Affairs, June 2004; and Techcentralstation.com, February 10, 2004.

For Techcentralstation.com text http://www.techcentralstation.com/021004C.html

For more on Environmental Educationhttp://eteam.ncpa.org/policy/Environmental_Education/

FMF Policy Bulletin/6 December 2004