 |
| View across to the Leuser National Park, North Sumartra on a stunning day in February 2011. |
A few weeks ago I wrote to Dr Patrick Moore, an ex-Greenpeace activist in the 70-80, who 'left' Greenpeace to start an 'environmental strategy' company called 'Greenspirit' (spot any similarity in the names?).
The whole ethos of Greenspirit is 'trees are the answer' and that planting more trees will help such problems as soil degradation, erosion, global warming..and so on.
Take a guess at what type of trees they promote the planting of..you probably guessed right, yes it's palm oil trees, rubber trees and trees to be used for paper pulp.
Essentially, Greenspirit work for APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) and Smart Tbk among others who are subsidiaries of Sinar Mas in Indonesia, the company that Nestle', Unilever, HSBC, Burger King and Carrefour have stopped buying from in the past few years because of their perceived 'unsound environmental practices'. Greenspirit write 'scientific' papers, extremely well-written rhetoric expounding the expansion of plantations throughout Indonesia ('trees are the answer', don't forget!), a country whose natural rain forests and some of the most spectacular flora and fauna in the World are under threat from complete destruction both by these plantations and by locals.
Who has more of a right to the land?, I ask..Greenspirit will say that illegal logging is caused by poverty and 'poverty alleviation' is one of their clever heart and mind winning projects. But the locals see it as their land and their forest and we can easily suppose that these villagers cause substantially less damage than a major planting and logging operation.
One thing that is certain is that the land of Indonesia does not belong to foreign companies like Greenspirit or by foreign investors but they are the ones making the profit in an ever expanding industry.
I'll admit my email to Dr Moore was somewhat emotive;
Greenspirit/Mr Patrick Moore,
I see. So, the Patrick Moore/Sinar Mas philosophy is 'let's cut down those old trees so we can plant nice new trees, because new trees are surely better than those horrible old ones'.
It is complete nonsense and unfortunately the kind of misinformation people can be made to believe, particularly SE Asians who often only see the monetary value of things not their intrinsic worth.
All Moore is, is a environmental consultant being paid to write eco-propaganda that suits the needs of APP/Sinar Mas and probably more than a few politicians (in more than a few countries). He is, indeed, quite contrary on almost all issues, which puts him in a fair few pockets in Canada and the US as well.
The destruction of old growth forests and peat lands releases many times more carbon into the atmosphere than any plantation forest can hope to capture over many years. Depletion of old growth forest leads to lack of food which leads to extinction of species and slowly puts an end to diversity. Roads and logging tracks cut up territory into smaller and smaller sections which many animals, birds and insects will not choose to leave.
Perhaps Mr. Moore will suggest cutting down the rest of Leuser National Park in Sumatra, relocating the remaining +/- 7000 Sumatran Orangutan to a plantation near him and seeing if he can live with watching them all die.
It’s all just dollar signs. I have seen plenty of plantations first hand and they are almost completely lacking in any biodiversity, due to the very nature of the plantation forest being a single species of tree or plant, not to mention the amount of daily human activity inside the forests (in the case of rubber and palm), it is not somewhere where animals choose to live, especially not for the short period before the trees are harvested, usually 5-15 years in the case of fast-wood fibre farms.
Patrick Moore is a businessman, getting rich from offering ‘advice’ to people who don’t know any better. Please check out his website www.greenspirit.com where you will see all of his brilliant money-making policies in the making. There is also a link to ‘Paradise with an Ocean View’ vacations in Cabo Pulmo, on the Sea of Cortez, Baja, Mexico.
Yes, it must be lovely Patrick. Will you be inviting all of your Indonesian peasant plantation workers for a vacation, too? Then you can show them just how many American dollars their labour has created for you.
I believe you once did great work with Greenpeace in the 1970's and 1980's, the kind of work people of my generation respect and praise men like you for.
However, whatever the motives for your change of perspective may be, you are making no friends in our neighbourhood today, sir.
Yours Faithfully,
AES, a concerned British resident in Sumatra
To which Dr Moore managed to answer;
Hello Andrew,
Here is the report we prepared for APP.
Please communicate in a civil manner and I may engage in conversation with you.
Cheers, Patrick Moore
There's only one thing worse than sell-outs like Patrick Moore and that is people who have given up. They are intelligent, hard-working and socially adjusted members of the community who have simply given up on the idea of saving the environment. 
