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The Environmental Spectator
Greenpeace Un-Moored
Who is Patrick Moore, and why do so many environmentalists hate him?
Moore has been denounced as an “eco-Judas” and a shill for the timber and nuclear industries by prominent Canadian green activist David Suzuki. He is “a turncoat who supports many of the things we oppose,” according to a Greenpeace spokesman. He routinely is lambasted for hiding secret ties to industries that use him like a marionette; according to the green story line, Moore is “paid by those industries to promote their products and mission.” He is not a real scientist, they claim, but a “liar” who “sold his soul” and for whom a special circle in Hell ought be reserved.
The problem for environmentalists, however, is that Patrick Moore is one of them. And his tale raises serious questions about just exactly who strayed from the orthodoxy, who the real environmentalists are, and about the direction and aims of today’s environmental movement.
The simple version goes like this: In the early 1970s, Patrick Moore helped found Greenpeace, partly to oppose nuclear weapons testing. In just a short time it developed into the planet’s largest and most effective environmental organization. Moore broke with his compatriots in the mid-1980s and has emerged now as one of the foremost proponents of nuclear power, which drives his former mates crazy.
It’s more complicated than that, of course, and the experience of Patrick Moore illustrates the peril that comes when an activist organization achieves political success. As a 24-year-old ecologist in 1971, Moore hooked up with several scruffy environmental agitators in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Vancouver was much like San Francisco at the time. Journalist Bob Hunter, one of Moore’s early colleagues, lovingly described it as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, s**t-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the- landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”
Moore, Hunter, and several others loaded into an 80-foot-long chartered halibut seiner called the Phyllis Cormack and set out from Vancouver. Referring to themselves as the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, they aimed for the Aleutian Alaskan island of Amchitka, where they hoped to disrupt the U.S. government’s upcoming underground nuclear test. The voyage was modeled after that of a solitary Quaker sailor in the 1950s who sailed from Honolulu to protest the hydrogen bomb tests at the Bikini Atoll.
As the Phyllis Cormack left Vancouver, according to legend, one of the activists on board flashed the peace sign as a farewell. “Make it a green peace,” said another. Voilà.
They didn’t get too far. Bad weather and the U.S. Navy thwarted their efforts. The explosion occurred as planned. But out of this failure came success. “That voyage,” according to Moore in a recent interview, “was the founding of Greenpeace.” A movement was born.
“We were interested in science,” says Moore. “That was our grounding, a bunch of guys from the northwest grounded in science, worried about the effects of nuclear testing in the ocean.” Moore argues that many of the early Greenpeace activists were committed—initially—to pursuing science-based environmentalism.
Moore was aboard a 1975 voyage that filmed a confrontation with a Soviet whaling fleet in the Pacific Ocean. Greenpeace footage of the Soviets harpooning a sperm whale was broadcast to national outrage in the United States, giving the organization and the “Save the Whales” campaign huge exposure. That helped spur the formation of Greenpeace chapters all over the U.S., elevating Greenpeace from a band of misfits to an influential national organization. It wasn’t long before its reach extended to other nations as well. Under the direction of Moore and allies like Bob Hunter and David McTaggart, Greenpeace became a global behemoth with ambitions to rival the United Nations.
By the mid-1980s, Greenpeace was solidly established as an international giant. But along the way, it lost founder Patrick Moore as an adherent. It had become, in his words, “an organization populated by little storm-troopers out to enforce an anti-intellectual ideology. This anti-intellectualism has become a hallmark of Greenpeace.”
Moore noticed that the organization’s focus turned away from science and toward politics. Several of his colleagues were keen to initiate a campaign to ban chlorine worldwide. “I considered that a terrible idea,” he says. “Chlorine is an element, after all, on the periodic table. They called chlorine the ‘Devil’s Element’ but I thought that adding chlorine to drinking water was one of the great advancements in the history of human civilization.”
By the mid-1980s, after a number of tussles over how Greenpeace should be run and what its goals should be, Patrick Moore walked away from the organization he helped birth. Moore pursued causes he considered to be in line with efforts to promote sustainable development, among them aquaculture and forestry.
To his former colleagues, Moore had gone over to the dark side. After all, people who cut down trees or pull fish from the seas must be evil. Moore’s argument was that industries dependent upon replenishing their products would necessarily incorporate ideas of sustainability into their business practices. His green colleagues called that view treason. On the first Greenpeace voyage back from Amchitka, Moore recalls, his colleague Bob Hunter coined the phrase “ecofascism”—approvingly. Hunter talked about the need to create a belief system that people could adhere to with blind faith.
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David Mathews| 5.14.09 @ 6:56AM
Patrick Moore is a no-name nobody now, regardless of what he was in the past, and a shill for the nuclear industry, which makes his opinions about environmental matters irrelevant.
Nuclear power isn't the solution to humankind's problems. The nuclear industry can keep on crying as much as it wishes but it isn't going to change reality: the nuclear industry died a long time ago and it isn't going to be resurrected.
Indiana Alex| 5.14.09 @ 8:04AM
I can't wait until the ACORN money dries up and these idiots are too busy flipping burgers to post such childish nonsense on thinking people's web sites.
I Taht I Taw A Putty Tat!| 5.14.09 @ 8:13AM
Evil Hetero Trash
http://phillips.blogs.com/.a/6a00d834515c6d69e200e5538aecd78833-320wi
OR The Mathews Family
http://www.radioalgoa.com/assets/images/siegfried_roy_tiger_1_r.jpg
YOU DECIDE
John W.| 5.14.09 @ 8:47AM
Leave the little fella alone. Try think of him as the Ambassador from the DailyKos. Outside his echo chamber, parachuted in, and having a tough time dealing with reality. That can’t be easy. Remember, being a leftist means never having to say “I think.”
owyheewine| 5.14.09 @ 9:14AM
Continuing yesterday's discussion,. Out here in the wild and wooly west we consume mountain lion, bobcat and lynx. Lynx isn't particularly tasty, but it's "endangered", so it has become a delicacy.
wes| 5.14.09 @ 9:24AM
DM, you dunce. Nuclear power is thriving everywhere but in America. The left's beloved France generates nearly 80% of it's electricity from nuclear plants. I find the site of the cooling towers far less offensive than all those damn windmills that are an eyesore near Vantage, WA.
With advances that have been made, we could very quickly be generating gobs of "clean energy" very cheaply. There is no need to reinvent the wheel in this case. The biggest obstacle to nuclear power is the waste and with reprocessing, that is reduced substantially. Our navy has run safely for decades. The real problem for the "greens" who are really "reds" is that cheap energy is FREEDOM to the huddled masses.
And the elites who are better than us just can't have that.
John W.| 5.14.09 @ 1:07PM
wes,
You left out Pebble Bed Reactors, which pose even greater potential for higher efficiency power generation with less, and less dangerous, waste.
2 Guns , AZ| 5.14.09 @ 3:43PM
Typical, environazis can't distinguish between nuclear bomb testing and nuclear power generation. To them (and DM) anything nuclear is just plain bad.
John Navratil| 5.14.09 @ 4:53PM
Wes!
And the U.S. generates 80% of its electricity from the coal of which we are blessed with vast quantities. It's the economic source of power, instead of nukes, because of the man who can't find his crack pipe by candle light.
Moore is the one who would like to see coal replaced with nukes to avoid CO2 emissions. The crack-pipe guy wants simply to shut down power production. Of course, I'm wrong and he really desires to replace the remaining 98% of power that isn't produced by a reliable fuel supply with one that depends on sunny and windy days. Or maybe it's sunny days and windy nights. Don't worry, we'll know soon!
Of course, those zero air pollution vehicles will need to be charged somewhere. We could just power them with rubber bands and connect them straight to the windmill. Wait! Is it natural rubber which requires evil rubber plantations or synthetic which requires hydrocarbon stocks. My brain hurts!
Remember when MRIs were called NMRs (nuclear magnetic resonance images). It seems the Luddites couldn't distinguish between cells and atoms. Maybe we could change the name to fissile power, or radio energy reduction power, or "Keep CO2 out of America" power.
John Navratil| 5.14.09 @ 5:07PM
Oops! I meant to say that the U.S. generates 50% of electricity by coal. The 80% was in my fingertips from reading the previous post.
spongebob| 5.14.09 @ 5:08PM
DM
I don't think you misplaced your crack pipe,check your left hand. Judging by your comments your just so geeked out from smoking it you forgot.
Nick| 5.14.09 @ 10:10PM
Mr. Navratil,
Excellent post!
Barak Goodman| 5.14.09 @ 10:36PM
Moore was never a "founder" of Greenpeace. He's just paid lap-dancer for nukes and anyone else who has deep pockets (usually filled by screwing this country over by skipping on paying their fair share). http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/history/founders
Curious Jorge| 5.14.09 @ 11:37PM
Well if Greenpeace put it on the Interwebs it must be true after all.
Richard Baker| 5.15.09 @ 12:00AM
The day will come when these eco-religious fools will either destroy everything around themselves or they will awaken from their deep REM sleep with it's attendant dreaming and realize that the Earth is to be lived on and not turned into a "Tree Museum" as the '60s song sang about. Yes , I know the song was about "pave paradise and put up a parking lot". Funny how the tables turn. But even '60s denizens will eventually regain consciousness. The eco-fools will too. It will be interesting to view when they wake up.
Nick| 5.15.09 @ 3:17AM
When will France sink one of their ships again?
John Navratil| 5.15.09 @ 6:36PM
Moore was a founder of Greenpeace before he was not a founder of Greenpeace; that is if an anarchically organized group is every really founded. Certainly, Moore was involved with the legalisms of founding. His split made him an apostate. Good thing for Moore, the fatwah only called for scrubbing him from the Greenpeace web site and engaging in revisionist history.
From the link provided by Barak (above) one can find in the opening paragraph a statement to the fact that Greenpeace wasn't really founded, but rather evolved. It is stated "there was no single founder, and the name, idea, spirit, tactics, and internationalism of the organisation all can be said to have separate lineages". Fair enough, but then the claim is made that "The [Don't Make A Wave] committee's founders were Dorothy and Irving Stowe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe, and Bob Hunter." Further on, the origin of the name "Greenpeace" is discussed and the statement is made "Jim Bohlen's son Paul, having trouble making the two words fit on a button, linked them together into the committee's new name: Greenpeace.". That is, Greenpeace was the new name for a committee founded by a group which did not include Moore.
So was it founded, or did it morph from a group of high-minded anti-nuke activist? Even the founders page acknowledges that Moore was on board the "Phyllis Cormack" for the groups first direct action... a sail to Amchtka.
So there you have a complete example of wanting to have it both ways.
Old Texican| 5.16.09 @ 10:22AM
Hi Richard Baker
The eco-nuts as a group will never wake up. Ain't gonna' happen.
Fortunately, they are a very small fringe group that has acquired power totally beyond their numbers for one simple reason:
The reasoning adults in our country have been content until now to let the "nasty children" get away with their follies.
All of this is now coming to a head, with the wheels coming off the Obamamobile faster than anyone could have forseen.
The groundswell of liberty and rationality has been intiated, and will grow exponentially as fuel prices go through the roof along with tax burdens.
When a dad can no longer afford to drive to work downtown, the inner cities will either collapse or erupt.
It is already happening in New York City and LA. Both of those cities are in a downward spiral that is going to be very difficult to reverse.
Please carry the logic to its conclusion. If the urbanites begin to starve.............
Tailgunner| 5.19.09 @ 4:53PM
To all you who smear Moore as bought and paid for by the nuclear industry:
How much is Al Gore poised to make on the passage of crap-and-trade legislation, since he's personally heavily invested in carbon trading entities?
And don't give me that crap about 'putting his profits into nonprofits'.
You know damn well that Gore still controls those nonprofits and knows how to launder that money and move it where and when he wants.
Once again, liberals have been exposed as lying, hypocritical Stalinist thugs who attack, demonize and destroy anyone who dares to disagree with them.
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