Greenpeace Co-Founder Declares Himself a Climate Change Skeptic

New submitter PensacolaSlick writes that [Patrick Moore a], co-founder of Greenpeace, and seven-year director of Greenpeace International, with other very pro-environmental credentials, has come out with a brief rationale for why he is "skeptical that humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future." He argues instead that in a historical context, human activity has saved the planet, declaring that "at 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide." (Consider the source, which according to the New York Times is "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism.") Moore breaks with what might be expected of a Greenpeace founder as well in that he is currently chair of Allow Golden Rice.

Comments

Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985

[Jane Q. Public]

That's hilarious. Calhoun wasn't a member of the "political right". The fact that you associate some of those things with the right today, does not mean he was a "right winger" in his own day.

How easily people forget. Forget, for example, that Southern segregationists (and even the KKK) were overwhelmingly Democrat over the last century.

And who would you choose for a role model instead of Calhoun? Maybe Abraham Lincoln? What about what he said during the Douglas debate?

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]â"that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.

Lincoln did not like negroes. His stated reason for wanting to free them was so that he could ship them back to Africa. He actually sent one ship full of them to the Caribbean as a trial run. Most of those on board died from smallpox. He was preparing a second expedition when the Civil War broke out.

You are blaming people for living in the day they lived, and for the society in which they were raised. Granted, it might have been rough and bigoted by our standards, but those were the best standards those people knew at the time.