Everybody’s (least) favorite environmental zealot group Greenpeace turns 40 this month. The organization, which started out as a bunch of hippies protesting nuclear weapons testing, has expanded its scope (and budget) in the decades since, starting scare campaign after scare campaign in pursuit of its radical philosophy.
In honor of this moment, we’d like to take a chance to remind readers of a few facts about Greenpeace they may not know:
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore left the group years ago, recognizing what’s all too apparent these days: that Greenpeace has run off the rails. Moore has called the group “anti[-]technology and anti-science”; “pro-anarchy”; “anti-trade”; and even “basically anti-civilization.” He later wrote, “My former Greenpeace colleagues are either not reading the morning paper or simply don’t care about the truth.”
Greenpeace blindly opposes genetically modifying crops to improve their nutrient content or resistance to drought, crying wolf over and over again about alleged health risks that haven’t come to be in the many years these foods have been on the market.
This ridiculousness reached new heights this summer when Australian authorities raided Greenpeace offices after its activists recorded themselves destroying a crop experiment featuring genetically modified wheat.
Tanzania’s Dr. Michael Mbwille (of the non-profit Food Security Network) has written, “By Greenpeace’s scientifically illiterate standards, all foods should now be banned.”
Norman Borlaug, the late father of the Green Revolution, slammed the elitism of Greenpeace and other radical environmentalists, saying, “Our elites live in big cities and are far removed from the fields. Whether it’s … the head of the Sierra Club or the head of Greenpeace, they’ve never been hungry.”
Greenpeace’s alarmism doesn’t just stand to harm impoverished Third World countries, but also the poor here at home. Greenpeace scaremongers about the hypothetical risks of mercury in fish, such as tuna. Canned tuna is one of the cheapest sources of omega-3s (which boost brain development in kids), but about 4.4 million low-income households stopped buying canned tuna between 2000 and 2006, in the midst of many activists’ fish-fear campaigns.
What do the next 40 years stand to bring? Hopefully, Greenpeace going bankrupt. But if not, we’ll be sure these zealots will provide plenty of future examples of “anti-human,” “anti-science” campaigns.