Review: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout, Patrick Moore, 2010, Beatty Street, Vancouver. 376pp plus index.

This will appear to some as an idiosyncratic rant, but in fact there is little of that in it. The book is a fascinating history of a major part of the environmental movement in the latter part of the 20th century, and a powerful rationale for what the author calls "sensible environmentalism" which actually does some good, and is more widely known as sustainable development. Patrick Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace in 1971 and harnessing a mixture of passion and science he rose to senior positions over 15 years as it became international. But after campaigns against nuclear weapons tests, whaling and seal slaughter the organization was taken over by radicals opposed to forestry, aquaculture and chlorine, all on the basis of junk science, and Patrick - as the only one with an ecology PhD - departed from it. He considered that having made confrontation "an art form", Greenpeace policies had become "extreme and irrational". "We were great at telling people what they should stop doing, but almost useless at helping people figure out what they should be doing instead." (p4) The degeneration of the organization in the late 1980s was exacerbated by an influx of anti -Western activists from the now redundant peace movements. His reflections and experience in all this are instructive. His move was encouraged by an introduction in the early 1980s to the thinking behind sustainable development, which sought viable solutions to real problems affecting people based on wide and thorough consensus. It avoided the implicit misanthropism of opposing things basic to human wellbeing. He describes how delegates to the 1982 UN environment conference in Nairobi from poor developing countries made it clear that they simply could not sensibly echo the western antipathy to development, for there was no other priority for them than adequate food. This was exactly the same as rent the 1971 UN Youth Conference on the Human Environment in Hamilton, Ontario, which I attended as an Australian delegate. A step beyond environmental activism was required, whereby environmental values are woven "into the social and economic fabric of our culture." The author's own main interests of forestry (from his family and youth) and aquaculture are expounded well. Wood is set forth as "far and away the most important renewable resource on Earth" for both materials and fuel (p197) - so why is its use often opposed by those espousing the rhetoric of renewables? His indignation at Greenpeace campaigning against chlorine - "the devil's element" - is well justified in another chapter. The rise and demise of a British Columbia initiative to harness consensus in the cause of sustainable development over 1989-92 is salutary. It seems that the politicians could not handle a fact-based case on any major issue because it cut across their own populist platforms. He reflects: "in retrospect the anti-forestry campaign (in BC) was the beginning of a trend in the environmental movement that targets the people who produce the material, food, and energy for all of us. This pits the vast number of people who live in the urban environments against the very people who work hard in the country to provide the essentials for civilized life." (p184) This is a dilemma in all developed countries, and to which no answer is yet evident. Policies driven by urban environmentalists detached from practical realities will increasingly do real harm. The longest chapter (62pp) is devoted to energy, a more recent focus of the author's interest and energies, which in turn are motivated by his indignation that the environmental movement, with its anti-war roots, is obsessed with opposition to nuclear power. The author describes his meeting with James Lovelock of Gaia fame in 2002 and being reassured about nuclear power's environmental credentials, though unconvinced by Lovelock's alarm at that stage about climate change. In recent years Patrick has

been a high-profile spokesman for the US-based Clean & Safe Energy Coalition, an advocacy group for nuclear power. The energy chapter as a whole is a sensible survey of a broad and important topic, picking up on a few points of popular misunderstanding and affirming the need for a balanced portfolio of energy sources while prudently reducing fossil fuel use. The chapter leans heavily on Wikipedia, which detracts from its authority, but is generally very informative and credible. A glitch on page 205 confuses power (capacity) and energy unhelpfully. Later chapters cover topics such as chemicals, food & nutrition (including pesticides), genetic science, biodiversity, and climate change very well, and the book is worth reading just for these. On global warming and climate change the author is a moderate sceptic, and avoids both extremes in the debate in an informative chapter - the book's second longest. However, he is unimpressed with the IPCC and feels too many longer-term trends are unexplained by their consensus. He quotes the Royal Society in May 2010: "Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect - there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements." He welcomes the shift this signals to "balanced dialogue" on the matter, and opines that "developments in the climate change debate are changing faster than the climate itself." In relation to genetic engineering: "The campaign against GM science is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. If it were not such a serious issue, one that means life or death for millions of people, the opposition to genetic engineering would be laughable. In reality it is enough to make one weep." Addressing the question of Golden Rice enhanced with vitamin A and the two billion people who eat rice as their main carbohydrate staple, he notes a WHO estimate that 1-2 million people die each year and up to half a million suffer permanent blindness due to vitamin A deficiency, yet the solution is blocked by activists with Greenpeace in the vanguard. "But there is hope that by 2012 it will be possible to begin cultivating Golden Rice for public consumption." At the end of this chapter he comments: "There is also a growing trend among environmental activists to take on campaigns they will never win in the foreseeable future. They will never stop the growth of GM technology; they will never stop nuclear energy or fossil fuel energy; they will never stop the sustainable management of forests for timber production; and they will never stop salmon aquaculture. This creates an opportunity for an endless campaign of propaganda supporting an endless fundraising campaign to support even more propaganda. .. We will have to put up with these campaigns for a long, long time." In relation to population issues he lends his weight to the view that mechanization and improvements in agricultural productivity allow or promote a strong trend to urbanization which sharply reduces birthrates and improves quality of life for all concerned. Some 65% of China's workforce and 70% of India's is engaged in food production, compared with 2-3% in the USA (it was 70% or more in 1870). However, the urbanisation trend is in full flight in China, and expected in India, though Africa lags. In China 300 million people are expected to move to cities in the next decade as mechanization of agriculture increases and more intensive farming practices are established. The author has evidently had more connection with Quaker than Christian worldviews, and his declared religious interest goes no further than profound respect for nature coupled with a sensible utilitarian approach to using its bounty to benefit people. "Perhaps the greatest flaw in the more extreme environmental rhetoric is the tendency to characterize humans as a disease on the Earth. This, in conjunction with doomsday predictions, causes people, especially young people, to give up hope for the future. Nothing could undermine more our prospects for finding solutions to environmental problems." We need people "who can reject policies based on faulty logic and bad science." The book is an excellent exposition of that aspiration.

Ian Hore-Lacy March 2011