Greenpeace, without global warming

I know it is hard to imagine, but think of what Greenpeace would be like minus the cause of global warming to take over their policies. As they were set up long before such a thing was thought of, that was their original position, and their major aim at the time, on paper at least, was protecting the environment.

There is an element of politics involved here, but only to stop the legal and illegal abuse of the environment worldwide, rather than wider left wing economic policies of general wealth redistribution, which besides being outside their remit and not charitable, are already covered by specialised political groups. So sticking to their original aims, what can we see from day one onwards?

Bear in mind the saving the whales and anti nuclear policies are their foundation, and neither connected with either politics or economics directly, only on the margin when vested interests become involved such as the huge national trade in whales and nuclear arms. So they were not attacking capitalist industry per se, only its unregulated results which threatened the species and humanity itself. Nothing wrong with that. As they developed, to cut a long story short, in the words of its own founder "They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986."

He then goes on, as a scientist, to explain how all the other directors were only political activists and followed one after another campaign against issues which ignored known science and attempted to ban various products causing no known harm. His scientific knowledge was dismissed by alarmist activists more interested in fear than reality. This means, directly from its source, by 1986 at the very latest, they had changed from an environmental group using politics as a defence, to a political group using the environment to attack. Looking at their own policies today, one comes across as particularly significant. "No new nukes". Remembering events like the Rainbow Warrior, where the French government murdered a member and blew up their ship campaigning against nuclear testing in New Zealand, where they were prepared to challenge entire governments and do all they could to prevent nuclear weapons, they have now passively accepted the world's entire nuclear arsenal, as long as they don't add any more. That's a bit of a difference isn't it, one hardly even possible to implement as if you accept them in principle you can hardly expect them to stop dead in their tracks if in principle you accept their existence?

Coming to the present, it is actually very hard to pick apart many of their current policies from the global warming, as it appears to be the most important issue to them now, but will do my best. On their website it is the first policy on their list (little surprise there), and the next two issues, forest and ocean are not much different as now the emphasis is not saving them for their own sakes (there's plenty of sewage and waste in the ocean which someone needs to deal with for a start) but connected with (see above, climate change). It is getting harder but will plough on. Agriculture, nope, move on. Eliminate toxic pollution and nuclear power. Well they need something from their roots, and some supporters still need the old causes to bring them in. Except the caveat I mentioned earlier, "No new nukes", which tends to water down their plan severely. Those are their major policies, but although I promised to avoid the global warming entirely, it forms such a large area of their list I must now go through it eliminating the global warming parts which point to stand alone policies, which may require global warming as a reason to carry out, but which many people even including those who believe in it (as it's not yet happened to an extent to be concerned about) would not want as a response to them. In fact they are far more like the extreme left/Green movement of the 60s and 70s who promoted these policies on their own (and were marginalised as a result), without any cause requiring them as the solution. Context makes all the difference:

1) Zero carbon. Guarantee that emissions from the UK power sector will be near zero by 2030, as recommended by the UK government's Committee on Climate Change.

This means no fossil fuel, the very means of world industrialisation and economic development. Surely this is only to avoid what they believe as a far worse alternative though? In practice they are campaigning to stop drilling for the new finds of oil in Africa. Surely they would benefit more from the wealth they desperately need there now, rather than lose everything for a cause only supposition says may be a problem at a far later point when technology may well have sorted it out anyway?

2)  Properly fund reseach and development, develop new training programmes and support the manufacturing supply chain to help Britain compete in the global low carbon economy.

Oh dear, economic policies now, because 'they've got a reason to'.

3) Bank on green. Set up a green infrastructure bank that would lend to major low carbon projects and harness the expertise of the financial sector.

And what does this have to do with the environment exactly?

4) Issue green bonds. Give investors and savers a secure new way to help fund green projects through government backed bonds.

5) Reform taxation. Refocus taxation onto pollution so that it can support new green industries and drive down emissions while strengthening the UK’s finances.
 
See what they've done with the last two? They've taken an ostensibly environmental issue, and seamlessly shifted to major economic policies. I cannot see any organisation supporting these policies even if they are scared of global warming unless they see some merits in them per se. Otherwise most moderate groups would consider the costs and benefits in the present as well, for example the immediate losses to the African economies in relation to an unknown future in a century or so ahead they may be preventing but can never prove it.

In fact these policies are being carried out by most western governments already, while CO2 rises regardless, but they simply work for even more of the same and no stragglers. But where do they cross the line from the environment (their reason for existence, however many scientific errors they have been accused of basing their work on), into politics and economics? To strip out the global warming element again two thirds of their current policies would either vanish altogether, or be returned to their original aims. They also want to ban expansion of airlines (why would they want to do that again?), protect the Arctic (from oil drilling), but every time I look deeper into the remainder of their policies they return to global warming. They are making it very hard. I am not alone, Canada and New Zealand have removed their charitable status, one as far back as 1989, as they were considered a political organisation so not worthy of it.

Following the money, it's always relevant to see who pays for any organisation, as it indicates the likely interests of its supporters who clearly agree the organisation must share them in common.   £1.4 MILLION DONATED BY ROCKEFELLER ALONE 1997-2005
The Rockefeller Foundation runs the Club of Rome, Bilderberg Group and the various other cabals of world leaders who insure world policies are homogenous regardless of where you live or how you vote (quantitative easing and carbon tax for example). And of course Rockefeller became rich through oil. Then the co-campaigner, the one who bought and sold hundreds of millions of stock in the Brazilian oil company Petrobras last year, George Soros, who funds at least three environmental groups himself, including MoveOn.org and Environmental Media Services.  Funding details

They have also joined forces with Soros and the ultra-left Sierra Club in the Democracy Initiative, totally divorced from the environment and created to limit donations to political parties. That cannot in any way be part of their official aims but still one of their campaigns. George Soros donated $32 million to the campaign alone. $250,000 from the far left Tides Foundation, who in turn received $7 million from Soros. One of the Officers for Tide Soaps is Tod Hill, Who is the Senior Strategic Advisor providing strategic consulting to Greenpeace. Then to officially blur the line between science, environment and politics they made the statement by a project of the Tides Center is the Apollo Alliance, a group “designed to bring together the elements of organized labor with the community organizers with the green groups, the environmental groups, and to access all of the big foundation money that’s been supportive of those causes in the past,” according to Phil Kerpen, director of policy for Americans for Prosperity. Apollo Alliance leaders claim to have written both the stimulus bill and the Cap and Trade bill.
Wheels within wheels indeed.
 Funders of green policies worldwide

On balance, had they been the pure Greenpeace, even the scientifically ignorant but possibly well meaning group Patrick Moore left in 1986, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt as whatever they were about protecting the environment should stand or fall on its own merits. But read their website and less than half the issues, quite a lot less, are now free of global warming/climate change, meaning they are no longer who they were, but just another political group pushing policies guaranteed to destroy both the industrial and third world economies alike. Believe it's worth it or not, the cost is phenomenal both financially and physically, and the benefits? What are the benefits?

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace