Here's a useful antidote to the conventional wisdom: how "rich-world" environmentalists are in fact responsible for massive suffering and death in the underdeveloped world. Well-known civil rights group the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is helping to raise awareness.
"We must put humanity back into the environmental debate," said CORE national spokesman Niger Innis. "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.Posted by Alan at February 14, 2004 12:44 PM"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," he said.
Paul Driessen is the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (and a former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth). "Eco-imperialism perpetuates poverty and misery," he said. "It's hypocritical and immoral, unethical and socially irresponsible. Worst of all, it's lethal. It simply has to end"
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore said that when he helped create Greenpeace in 1971, "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."
"The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity," Moore said at the CORE teach-in. "The pain and suffering it inflicts on families in developing countries can no longer be tolerated."
Via the Rocky Mountain News
Related site: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death