Greenpeace co-founder denounces his former colleagues
by Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality Press Release
January 21, 2004

NEW YORK. The Congress of Racial Equality, one of America’s premier civil rights organizations, convened a teach-in January 20, at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. “Eco-Imperialism: The global green movement’s war on the developing world’s poor” roundly condemned the global green movement’s oppression of poor people in the Third World.

“The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity,” said Greenpeace co-founder and conference panelist Dr. Patrick Moore. “The pain and suffering it inflicts on families in developing countries can no longer be tolerated.”

Moore was one of eight experts from around the world who demonstrated from first-hand knowledge and experience how environmental extremists deny destitute nations electricity, and deepen the poverty, malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and dysentery that kill their people.

“We intend to stop this callous eco-manslaughter,” CORE national spokesman Niger Innis said. “The green movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates their most basic human rights. Today, CORE is laying down the gauntlet. Eco-imperialism may not be a household word yet, but it will become one after this conference, the first one ever to address these life-or-death issues.”

Every year, malaria makes 200 million people so sick that they cannot work, attend school, cultivate their fields or care for their families. Most of the cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, leaving that region one of the most destitute on Earth.  Two million people a year die from malaria – half of them children, and 90 percent of them in Africa.

A major reason for the malaria epidemic is that radical environmentalists and the World Health Organization have succeeded in imposing near-total ban on DDT, perhaps the most effective mosquito killer and repellant in existence. “Europeans and Americans can afford to deceive themselves about malaria and pesticides. But we can’t.” says Fiona Kobusingye, who came all the way from Kampala, Uganda to participate in the event and tell her personal story.

“I have suffered high fevers for days, vomited until I thought I had no stomach left,” she told the audience, bringing tears to many eyes. “Dehydrated, hungry and weak, sometimes I could not even tell day from night.” Ms. Kobusingye lost a son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria, and virtually her entire surviving family has been stricken by the disease over the past year.

The average European cow gets a $250-a-year subsidy. Meanwhile, a billion people struggle to survive on just $200 a year, Innis noted. More than 2 billion have neither electricity nor running water, and none of the basic necessities and conveniences Americans take for granted – all because of the greens’ ideological opposition to energy and economic development in the Third World.

“We must put humanity back into the environmental debate,” Innis emphasized. “We all want to protect our planet. But we must stop trying to protect it from bogus or illusory threats – and on the backs, and the graves, of the world’s most powerless and impoverished people.”

Eco-Imperialism exacts a devastating toll on developing nations.

Every year, 500,000 children around the world go blind, as a result of vitamin A deficiency, noted Dr. CS Prakash, professor of plant genetics at Tuskegee University and a native of India. Two million die from problems directly related to this simple lack of a common vitamin, often because they are so malnourished they cannot survive the malaria, dysentery and other diseases that also afflict them. If people could eat just 1.5 ounces of “golden rice” a day, they could eliminate these threats, Dr. Prakash pointed out. But radical greens oppose its use, because it was developed using precise genetic engineering methods.

“Environmental activists who’ve never had to worry about starvation, malaria and simple survival have no right to impose their fears, prejudices and ideologies on the world’s poor,” he said. “By orchestrating unfounded scare stories that biotech crops are unsafe or untested, they put huge road blocks on the development of plant genetic engineering that could save lives and bring economic prosperity to the rural poor in Uganda, Bangladesh and other countries.”

To a significant degree, Innis stressed, these problems have been prolonged and worsened as a direct result of eco-centric policies that oppose the use of pesticides, biotechnology and fossil fuels. This cannot be allowed to continue, he and the other panelists insisted.

“Eco-imperialism perpetuates poverty and misery. It’s hypocritical and immoral, unethical and socially irresponsible. Worst of all, it’s lethal. It simply has to end,” said panelist Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power · Black Death and a former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth. “It’s time to hold these groups accountable and compel organizations, foundations, courts and policy makers to understand the consequences of the policies they are imposing on our Earth’s poorest citizens.”

“The most recent WHO report on malaria makes virtually no mention of indoor residual spraying programs, using DDT. That is unacceptable,” said Dr. Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria and the American Enterprise Institute. “And when it is mentioned, it is done in a very negative way that ignores the great progress South Africa and other countries have had with these programs. It’s as though this success has been scientifically cleansed from the literature.”

“When I helped create Greenpeace in 1971,” Dr. Moore reflected, “I had no idea it would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. I had no idea the movement would oppose genetic engineering and other programs that could benefit mankind – and adopt zero-tolerance policies that so clearly expose its intellectual and moral bankruptcy.”

“Cute, indigenous customs – the kind environmental groups say they are trying to safeguard – mean indigenous poverty, indigenous malnutrition, indigenous disease and childhood death,” Kenyan Akinyi Arunga commented. She was on travel and unable to participate in the event, but wanted her views known to the audiencs. “I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, and I wish our so-called friends would stop imposing it on us.”

In addition to Dr. Moore, a Canadian, and Ms. Kobusingye, participants included Roger Bate, Africa Fighting Malaria, United Kingdom; Cyril Boynes, Jr., CORE, USA; Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power · Black Death, USA; Michael Fumento, Hudson Institute, USA; Niger Innis, CORE, USA; Deroy Murdock, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, USA; CS Prakash, Tuskegee University, USA and India.

Lively question-and-answer periods followed each of two panels. At the teach-in’s conclusion, journalists and other attendees discussed the issues with the experts, several of whom also conducted interviews with print, TV and radio media while they were in New York.