7. The Great Carbon Emissions Fraud; The Green Movement's Oposition to Reforestation.

There are three priorities for combatting global warming. Firstly, the reduction in Carbon emissions; secondly, halting deforestation; thirdly, Reforestation. The assumption of this article is that priority should be given to Reforestation. This does not mean, however, that no action should be taken to reduce Carbon emissions or halt deforestation. What is peculiar about ‘greens’ who believe that the priority should be given to reducing Carbon emissions is that they seem to believe that this is by far the most important priority - although they often demand a halt to deforestation (they don’t want to see the Rainforests disappear) they see virtually no role for Reforestation.

i) The Focus on Reducing Carbon Emissions.

For many years now the world’s leading climatological/meteorological institutions, the inter-governmental panel on climate change, and major green organizations have demanded reductions in Carbon emissions to prevent an increase in the greenhouse effect which, if left unchecked, could eventually lead to dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate. It should be obvious, however, even to those with a minimal understanding of the greenhouse effect that the level of atmospheric Carbon is determined not simply by the amount of Carbon which is dumped into the atmosphere but by the amount of Carbon extracted through Photosynthesis. It may be surprising to learn, then, that whilst scientists and greens have made repeated demands for cuts in Carbon emissions they have made no corresponding demands for an increase in the Earth’s Forest cover. Although the general public regards greens as being almost synonymous with ‘Tree lovers’/‘Tree huggers’ and, even though most greens themselves love Trees and Forests (even its enemies such as the wise use groups in the united states depict greens as ‘faggots in the Forest’), none of the country’s leading environmental organizations regard Reforestation as an important means of combating global warming let alone as the main priority for preventing a climatic disaster. What, then, is going on amongst these green organizations especially given the popular appeal of Reforestation? Why are they forsaking the most appropriate ecological remedy to global warming? This article seeks to highlight some of the reasons for, and the consequences of, this rather astonishing fact. The following section will explore greenpeace’s stance on combating the greenhouse effect.

Can You Spot the Deliberate Mistake?

Greenpeace points out that at present, “There are 680 million vehicles on the planet, increasing at the rate of more than one every second, or a new car for every two babies born.” (Greenpeace ‘Fossil Fuels in a Changing Climate’ April 1993 p.18). It estimates that on a business-as-usual scenario the world vehicle fleet will grow to,

“1,620 million in 2030, and a massive

4,930 by 2100.” (Greenpeace ‘Fossil Fuels in a Changing Climate’ April 1993 p.44).

If, however, greenpeace’s fossil free energy scenario (ffes) is implemented the world vehicle fleet will grow only to 1,600 million. Although there will be no CO₂ emissions from these vehicles there will be nearly a billion extra vehicles on the roads, “Fuel efficiency is increased, vehicle numbers are restrained, and non-fossil fuel vehicles are phased in. The total number of road vehicles is constrained to

960 million in 2010,

1,150 million in 2030 and

1,600 million in 2100.

A mix of alternative fuels was assumed. Biofuels meets 10% of fuel use in 2010 and 30% in 2030. Solar electric and solar hydrogen systems were assumed to .. meet 30% of fuel use in 2030 and 80% in 2100. Under these conditions, CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels falls more than 40% by the year 2030, and 100% by the year 2100.” (Greenpeace ‘Fossil Fuels in a Changing Climate’ April 1993 p.44).

There may well be those reformist greens with their eyes fixed solely on the ecological dangers caused by Carbon emissions, who celebrate greenpeace’s achievement in eradicating CO₂ emissions despite tripling the world’s vehicle fleet. At first this seems like an amazing david copperfield illusion making all Carbon emissions disappear from 1,600,000,000 vehicles. But, such a dramatic change becomes all too feasible with the aid of some amazing solar technologies. The fundamental assumption of these ffes proposals is that as soon as Carbon emissions from the transport sector (as well as all other sectors) have been eradicated the Earth will once again become a safer, more environmentally friendly, place to live.

But is this true? Isn’t there something missing from greenpeace’s calculations about the environmentally friendly nature of a green world with 1,600,000,000 vehicles? How would the Earth feel about another 1,600,000,000 vehicles? It then becomes obvious that what greenpeace has provided here is, after all, a david copperfield illusion because it has failed to take into account the destruction of the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity caused by a correspondingly massive increase in the construction of roads; off-road parking for the hundreds of millions of extra car owners; motorway cafeterias; car parks outside shopping centres, leisure centres, hospital facilities, motorway cafeterias; the new car factories, car component factories; the super dams needed to provide massive quantities of aluminium to increase vehicle fuel efficiencies; the new mines to provide the raw materials, etc, etc, etc. Greenpeace has not calculated the amount of land that will be suffocated by the vehicle infrastructure as a result of the dramatic increase in car numbers which it believes is environmentally safe. But does anyone really believe that it is possible to suffocate such vast areas of the Earth’s life support system and not cause an ecological crisis? What the car owning environmentalists in greenpeace are pedalling here is not just a Carbon emissions illusion but a grand green fraud.

As if to maintain the illusion that it has carefully costed its ffes, greenpeace then slags off the fossil fuel industries for not ecologically costing their policies,“Selling energy is a multi-billion dollar industry, involving some of the biggest and most powerful transnational corporations in the world. Little or no account of the environmental implications of using such fuels is taken by the companies who sell them and the governments who base their economies on them.” (Greenpeace ‘Fossil Fuels in a Changing Climate’ April 1993 p.45). Just who is kidding whom? Greenpeace is just as bad as the fossil fuel industries because it has taken no account of the damage its policies would inflict on the Earth’s life support system.

ii) Greenpeace.

Greenpeace’s priority for combating the greenhouse effect is the reduction of Carbon emissions. It intends to achieve this through the abolition of fossil fuels, “Greenpeace International decided to assess the feasibility of a Fossil Free Energy Scenario ... Using mainly conventional assumptions for economic growth, industrialization and population, the results are encouraging. A combination of efficiency improvements, renewable energy technologies, and fuel switching, could achieve long-term reductions in CO2 emissions.”[1] The Fossil Free Energy Scenario (ffes), however, is not quite as radical as it seems, “Forecasts (about the transition to a fossil free future) show annual CO₂ emissions peaking around the year 2000, declining to 48% and 29% of current global levels by 2030 and 2075, respectively, before reaching the fossil-fuel target of zero net CO₂ emissions by 2100.” (p.1). In other words, the abolition of fossil fuels won’t happen for another 110 years - which is quite a big assumption believing the human race is going to be around for another 110 years. As for meeting the ipcc’s 1990 target of immediate 60-80% reductions in CO₂ emissions, all that greenpeace offers is a rather dismal cut of 50% of 1990 levels by 2030. It will reach the ipcc’s target only by 2075.

Greenpeace states that its ffes is based on “conventional assumptions for economic growth, industrialization and population” and does not regard the ffes as its ideal, “The FFES is not Greenpeace’s vision of the future.”[2] What greenpeace seems to be doing is showing just how much growth can be accommodated over the next century or so whilst still abolishing Carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Greenpeace admits that the ffes will boost global average temperatures in the short to medium term but believes that this warming will not lead to irreparable ecological damage. Looking back from an imaginary position in 2030 greenpeace surveys the climatic consequences of its fossil fuel free policies, “Despite record temperatures, an increased level of damaging storms and hurricanes, disrupted rainfall patterns and sea level rise - in the past few decades - outright climate disaster appears to have been averted.” (p.1).

What greenpeace has ignored in this model is the current rate of deforestation. To believe that its forecast of global average temperatures will remain unaffected by almost total deforestation across large parts of the Earth is utter fantasy. Norman myers contends, “The rate of destruction of tropical forests means that by the end of the century and given current trends, nearly all forests will be gone in India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Madagascar, east Africa, west Africa, central America, and virtually all primary forest will be eliminated in Burma and Ecuador.[3] If this is the case then, far from having to cope with the tolerable rise in the greenhouse effect which greenpeace envisage in the ffes, the world could be confronted by a much less tolerable degree of global warming.

Greenpeace’s fossil fuel free future is heavily dependent upon energy efficiency and the introduction of solar power. As regards energy conservation, many environmentalists have pointed out that its environmental benefits tend be overwhelmed by economic and population growth and thus, “energy conservation can never be more than a short term palliative.”[4] Even its supporters admit that, “As powerful a strategy as it is, energy efficiency by itself will not solve the global warming problem.”[5] Even worse, however, is that energy conservation is self defeating because any money saved by using less energy is spent on other ecologically disasterous goods/services. Energy conservation does not reduce pollution. It may even exacerbate global warming. It has to be suggested that energy efficiency is a green con; it is simply a tactic for enabling Earth rapists to become more efficient at destroying the Earth. From an ecological point of view, energy conservation is a complete waste of time.

Greenpeace’s fossil fuel free future reveals the link between the priority given to reducing Carbon emissions to combat the greenhouse effect and the creation of a solar economy. In greenpeace’s fossil free society, “Renewable energy supplies more than half the energy needs in most countries. Wind parks, both onshore and offshore, biofuel plantations [using little or no fertilisers or pesticides], small scale hydro power schemes, and banks of solar cells on roofs and derelict land (sic), are an accepted part of the scenery.” (p.1).

The greenpeace future also ensures the survival of the favourite love-object of these highly mobile, car-owning, jet setting, environmentalists, “Vehicles achieve around 100 mpg and are based heavily on solar/wind electric systems and liquid biofuels.” After all, neither greenpeace nor stephen schneider nor most other supergreens, with the honourable exception of jonathon porritt, want to abandon their cars.

Unfortunately for greenpeace, whilst solar power might reduce Carbon emissions it will boost ecological devastation and thus global warming and thus prove to be every bit as destructive as fossil fuelled societies.

* Vast areas of land will have to be covered in crops to provide biofuels for consumers, and perhaps even supergreens, to drive to out of town hypermarkets. Every unexpropriated bit of land around the world could end up being covered in monocultural biofuel crops to meet the ever-growing demands for this ‘environmentally-friendly’ fuel. This is already happening in brazil where sugar beet is grown to produce ethanol for cars and is starting to happen in europe where rape seed is an increasingly common sight in many countries and is being used to produce bio-diesel.

* Deserts will be covered in solar power stations.

* Wind-swept beauty spots will be blotted by wind pharms and their soul-mates electricity pylons.

* Small scale hydro-electric dams will be built on all small rivers.

* Manure produced by factory pharming could be used to produce biomass energy. The greater the number of factory pharmed Animals, the greater the Manure they produce, the greater the energy that can be created, and the greater the profits. Manure could easily be turned into biofuels so that consumers driving out for a beefburger could congratulate themselves for the fact that by eating meat they were also increasing the supply of ‘ecologically friendly’ biofuels in a world of increasingly scarce fossil fuels.[6]

In conclusion, not only has greenpeace ignored, in its fossil fuel free future, the global ecological devastation of the world’s Forests, it has not ecologically costed its proposals for a solar economy. In greenpeace’s solar future, it is possible that the reduction in the greenhouse effect brought about by reducing Carbon emissions may be less than the increase in global warming resulting from the ecological devastation caused by the introduction of solar power. But since greenpeace’s model does not measure the impact of ecological destruction on the greenhouse effect, such a possibility is not regarded as being scientifically feasible!!

There is no indication that greenpeace (which, it ought to be reiterated, is supposed to be an environmental organizaton) believes that the greenhouse effect is an ecological problem requiring an ecological solution such as Reforestation. On the contrary, it believes, “Reafforestation cannot solve the greenhouse effect.”[7] Greenpeace points out that, “An ambitious afforestation programme aimed at making a significant difference to climate change would be useless if the destruction of tropical forests were to continue at its present accelerating rate.”[8] This is quite correct. But this does not imply that Reforestation is not important. After all, the destruction of tropical Rainforests will mean that energy conservation, no matter how successful, would also be useless. It is quite bewildering why environmentalists insist on pretending they are technologists (or just as bad, pretending they are economists).

The greenpeace ‘realists’ are petrified about promoting Reforestation as a means of combating global warming because it would mean that many of the over-industrialized nations would have to cover 70% of their land in Forests. Support for Reforestation would also mean demanding the abolition of the Animal exploitation industry which is the prime cause of global warming and having to confront the exponential growth in the economy and the human population. Global warming is not going to be solved through greenpeace’s piffling technological devices. In order to combat global warming, wholesale structural changes are required.

iii) A Solar Economy or a Wood economy?

The priority of reducing Carbon emissions to combat global warming entails a reliance upon technological solutions and leads to the adoption of solar power and the creation of a solar economy/society which will increase ecological destruction. Even worse is that a solar economy condones, and in some cases reinforces, all the most ecologically destructive elements of a fossil fuelled economy i.e. the global inequalities between the rich and the poor countries; the Animal exploitation industry; continued population growth; continued economic growth; and the car, and car related, industries. In essence, a solar economy is simply a fossil fuelled economy without fossil fuels.

Conversely, the priority given to reducing Carbon emissions is a way of avoiding global Reforestation; it is a way of avoiding the wholesale Reforestation of the over-industrialized nations; it is a way of avoiding the necessity for challenging the global inequalities between rich and poor nations; it is a way of ignoring the need to abandon the ecological devastation caused by the Animal exploitation industry; it is a way of evading any action to stop population growth, economic growth, and the growth of the car, and car related, industries; and, finally, it is a way of avoiding the creation of Wood economies which are the basis of a sustainable Planet. Only the creation of Wood economies necessitates the abolition of the inequalities between rich and poor, the Animal exploitation industry, and curbs on the growth in the numbers of cars, kids and capital.

iv) A Gigantic Fraud.

Superficially, support for the priority of reducing Carbon emissions may seem just a common sense means of combating the greenhouse effect. But, the country’s leading green organizations are using this priority to perpetrate a gigantic fraud on the green movement which:-

* refuses to measure global deforestation and the general destruction of the Planet’s Photosynthetic capacity such as Coral Reefs, Phytoplankton, Mangrove Forests and Savannah Grasslands;

* distracts attention from the need for global Reforestation especially in the over-industrialized nations;

* allows green organizations to promote further acts of ecological devastation under the pretext of reducing Carbon emissions - see the green party’s supposedly ecologically sound transport policies in ‘Roads to the Future’;

* hastens the creation of an ecologically uncosted, solar powered, society which will eventually destroy the Planet’s life support system; and,

* leads greens, and the public, into believing that the creation of a sustainable Planet can be achieved without the need for massive structural changes such as the abolition of global injustice, capitalism, and the Animal exploitation industries.

Whilst green groups downplay the need for Reforestation whether because they believe that atmospheric emissions are a bigger contributor to global warming or a more immediate danger to the Earth’s life support system; or because they fear that the need for more Forests will be used as an excuse to create monocultural Tree plantations; or because they fear the over-industrialized nations will try to off-set their Carbon emissions by cajoling disintegrating/industrializing countries into planting more Forests; or because new Forests are suspected of exacerbating global warming, etc., the net effect is the same - as deforestation increases, greens’ demands for Reforestation decreases, and the Planet becomes more and more uninhabitable. Greens have not merely reacted against the difficulties entailed by Reforestation but have over-reacted by denying Reforestation virtually any validity. The belief that Reforestation can be ignored is utterly absurd and horrifying. The fact is that, at the very least, the Earth is one continent short of the Forests it needs to maintain climatic stability. Green organizations in the over-industrialized nations are petrified of confronting this issue because most of them know that these Forests are going to have to be planted in the over-industrialized nations and they don’t want to lose their over-paid jobs by confronting their governments over this issue. And yet the longer the issue is ignored, the bigger the problem becomes, until, eventually, it will become insoluble.