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Tackling the Hard Issues

Interview with Dr Patrick Moore

Sydney 2UE: John Laws, 1021 am

March 6, 1996

Interview with Dr Patrick Moore, Founding Member of Greenpeace, about the Environmental Movement in Australia, and the Forest Debate.

John Laws - Announcer:

Hello.

Dr Patrick Moore - Former Greenpeace:

Hello.

Laws:

Yep.

Moore:

Patrick Moore here John from up Lake Macquarie way.

Laws:

Good to talk to you, Patrick Moore. I have been fascinated with what you had to say about the green movement, as you were a supporter of it and a founder of Greenpeace.

Moore:

I was pleased to hear your comments this morning. It is very distressing to me that the environmental movement that I knew and helped build for fifteen years, I really do believe, has been taken over by a very extremist element and it's unfortunate that the proof is there. If you look at Bob Brown, leader of the Green Party, saying that he's going to block a billion dollar environment program just because he doesn't want to see part of Telstra privatised. I mean, what on earth has the privatisation of a telephone company got to do with saving the environment?

Laws:

Nothing, Nothing.

Moore:

Absolutely nothing, and it just shows where the agenda really is. And I charge that Bob Brown is a left wing activist masquerading as an environmentalist.

Laws:

And getting away with it, what's more.

Moore:

And not only that, hijacking the reasonable centrist political movement which is really where the environmental movement should be. It should have nothing to do with left and right. It should go right down the middle and it should work on real environmental problems.

Laws:

So you don't believe that the man in Tasmania, Bob Brown, is a legitimate environmentalist?

Moore:

Well, you know, you don't want to question a person's legitmacy in that sense, but I don't believe that what he is doing is in the best interest of the environment. Because I believe that, particularly with regard to forests, he goes on and on about the woodchip industry. Which, you know...making it look as though chips are something bad and something we shouldn't have, when if fact woodchips are...and wood, in general, is the most renewable of all material resources used in the world.

Laws:

And also you said, in your statements, that there is no good substitute. So obviously, it's environmentally the best choice.

Moore:

Well, Bob Brown wants to tear down all hydro-electric dams in the world, and then he wants to stop using wood. Now, if he's going to switch from wood to steel, cement and plastic, and also get rid of all the energy sources, I mean, I know hydro-dams cause a lot of problems, but at least they are a renewable energy source, unlike nuclear and coal.

Laws:

That's true, and we're using too many fossil fuels anyway.

Moore:

So I think his system would be to build a whole pile of nuclear power plants and coal fire power plants and revert to using steel and plastic instead of wood.

Laws:

So, what is the real agenda of Bob Brown?

Moore:

I suppose to get elected and to win political favour with people on the left.

Laws:

How many of the true, pure environmentalists have been hood-winked by this sort of talk? The majority?

Moore:

Far too many, and this drift to the ultra left and to extremism is difficult to resist by people in the movement because they don't want to break ranks or appear not to be as...you know, as supportive or as zealous and strong in their support for the movement. So it's difficult for them to remain in the centre when everything is moving over to such an extreme position. and, in addition, the social activist are quite often more adept at politics than people with a background in biology and science who have a more middle of the road political position.

Laws:

Yep, I think the problem and you could...you'd know more about it than I, but I think the problem began when it became socially acceptable to have alleged concern for the environment and swallow any pill offered by any environmentalist.

Moore:

Well, it's true. I mean, imagine, you've got The Wilderness Society, which is supposed to be a prestigious group that is working to preserve important areas of the wild, telling people that five hundred species of Australian wildlife are in danger of extinction because of logging. When, in fact, not a single species, to be best of our knowledge, has ever gone extinct because of forestry in this country or in my country of Canada. And they're telling people that the forests are disappearing at the rate of three hundred football fields every day.

I challenge The Wilderness Society to give me the Latin name of a species that has gone extinct because of forestry, and to show me where these disappeared forests are because I've spoken to the people in the State forest. They have kept all those forests forested. And it's got to such a ridiculous point now, the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of wilderness preservation...which I support, wilderness preservation...

Laws:

Well, I think we all do.

Moore:

...that now you've got four hundred thousand hectares of public forest land in the south-east of New South Wales, and only ten per cent of it is available for forestry, and ninety per cent of it has been locked up and is not available for cutting trees.

Laws:

Well, what is the hidden agenda then, of the people who want to stop the wood industry?

Moore:

They have this extremely romantic idea that if you just leave the forest alone, everything will be wonderful and all species will thrive. They don't understand the natural processes of forest destruction and renewal. They don't understand, for example, that koalas prefer young forests because they like the young shoots.

Laws:

They do.

Moore:

And they like smaller trees. They can't get their arms around great big old-growth eucalyptus trees. So, you find that the koala is in higher population numbers...and this is a proven fact...in the younger forests than in the old-growth forest. I'm not saying we shouldn't have old growth forests. They're good for other things, like hollows for various animals to live in, et cetera. But you've gone completely overboard in this country.

Coming from Canada, where we have had this same very, very polarised confrontation about old-growth versus logging, at least I believe there we have reached something that is a more reasonable compromise. We've increased our wilderness, and we needed to increase our wilderness in light of a new understanding about biodiveristy, et cetera, and the concern for the environment. But we still have an extremely healthy and thriving forest industry, which is the largest export forest industry in the world.

And here you are in Australia, with a few numbers of people and all this forest and you're importing a net two billion dollars in forest products each year from New Zealand, of all places.

Laws:

Yeah, it's crazy. But, you try and get a government to reverse what's being done.

Moore:

You see, it's just that the balance needs to be struck between the preservation of nature and the provision of the most renewable material resource in the civilisation, which is wood. Otherwise, if you go completely on the pendulum towards preservation, you will do more damage to the environment because you'll need to build more energy facilities, and more non-renewable sources of materials in order to substitute for the wood.

Laws:

Yeah, I've written lots about it and talked lots about it, but in a very simplistic way. But how do you encourage people, particularly people who are doomboosters...you see the headline, the world's going to last forever, isn't really and attention-getting headline. The headline, the world's going to end Thursday week would certainly get attention.

Moore:

That's the problem. We have this fellow, David Suzuki, who I respect in many ways, but he keeps saying things...like, he was quoted the other day as saying, that an apocalypse of biblical proportions is about to be visited on the human race.

Laws:

Well, remember back in the 1970's, we had environmentalists telling us that the ice age was on the way.

Moore:

Well, I wasn't one of them, I've never believed in that kind of doom and gloom stuff. I'm actually quite an optimist at a personal level. And as you mentioned, I see a lot of trends in the air quality and the water quality. You know, the extent of forestry is increasing in temperate regions around the world, whether it's in Sweden or in Germany, in New Zealand, in the United States, and even in Australia. The records indicate that the forests are expanding in Australia right now as formerly agricultural lands are either abandoned or planted. And those forests which have been protected in State forests and in national parks are not disappearing. They are still there.

So, you know...yet, you've got the environmentalists that have convinced the vast majority of urban dwellers in your country that the forests are disappearing. And that's a lie.

Laws:

Well, it is a lie, but it's not difficult to convince the people in the metropolitan areas because they want to be convinced in that direction. People seem to be fond of the idea that the world is going to end tomorrow. And they, too, are taken over...have been hijacked by the radical activists, too. But, tell me, if the Green movement's been hijacked, as you put it...I think they were the words you used...what's the real agenda of Greenpeace now?

Moore:

Well, Greenpeace isn't monolithic inside any more than any other environmental group. There's a lot of very good campaigns in Greenpeace, for example, trying to stop the French nuclear test.

Laws:

Was that political or environmental?

Moore:

Well, no, it's pretty environmental. And it's going right back to the roots of the organisation. When we began in Vancouver in 1971, it was nuclear testing that was our target.

Laws:

I remember.

Moore:

Because we believed that nuclear war was the ultimate destruction of the environment, as well as the ultimate destruction of peace and humanity. So, we linked the peace movement with the ecology movement, and through the use of electronic communications, we won the hearts of the world. And we did it with good cause. And then we went on to save the whales, and to save the seals, and stop toxic waste dumping and nuclear dumping.

Laws:

And they were good things, but then it got out of hand.

Moore:

Well, unfortunately, groups like Greenpeace and confrontation environmental groups...the kind of campaign that lends itself deaf to them is very simplistic slogan-type campaigns in which you have an abolition as your aim. And forestry is not the kind of thing that should be abolished. It has to be broadly reformed, but it doesn't lend itself to a campaign like ban clearcutting worldwide. It raises funds well to have these catchy little slogans.

Laws:

That's right.

Moore:

And indeed, many things like whaling that should have been banned worldwide. So should nuclear dumping.

Laws:

That's right. And no argument from anybody on that issue. But somebody has got to encourage the environmental movement to realise that a balance has got to be found between the economic value and the environmental value.

Moore:

Well, you see, they're starting to tackle...now that they've dealt with all the tips of the iceberg, abolition-type problems, they're starting to tackle issues which are at the very guts of our relationship with the rest of living creation. And that is the fisheries, agriculture and forestry. None of these things can be dealt with in a banning sort of way, except for specific activities such as the driftnet fishery, which was a good thing to ban.

But overall, we can't ban fishing even though it, unfortunately, of all the renewable resources in this world, it is the sea's resources that are the most badly managed right now and that are the least sustainable of all.

Laws:

There are certain things that you simply can't ban out of hand, and shouldn't ban out of hand. And obviously, the timber industry is one.

Moore:

Well, the Greens want to ban logging of all trees in native forests in Australia, which is absolutely ridiculous because you have the most wonderful native forests here. Your eucalypt trees are a wonderful species of tree. Instead of going over to pine plantations like they have in New Zealand, where there are not suitable native species for forestry, Australia should recognise this god-given resource that it has, which is it is able to provide the substance wood to build everything with. And, you know, the Brazilians and Chileans know more about growing eucalyptus trees than people here in Australia do?

Laws:

And they do it very successfully.

Moore:

Very, very successfully. But you've taken it for granted here, 'cause it's all around you. I've driven from the very south-east up to as far as Port Macquarie here, and I cannot believe that Australians are being duped into thinking that their forests are disappearing. All you can see from horizon to horizon is...

Laws:

...is forest.

Moore:

Yes.

Laws:

Absolutely.

Moore:

And beautiful forests.

Laws:

And, you see, the unfortunate thing is there are many environmentalists who are honest, forthright, sensible, intelligent, well balanced environmentalists, but now if you hear of an environmental group, you immediately go looking for a hidden agenda, and quite often there is one.

Moore:

That's a fact.

Laws:

And it's a sad fact.

Moore:

Well, I'm just on my way up to Coffs Harbour. I'm speaking there at one o'clock today, And then I'm going to Lismore to the university to speak this evening, and then again tomorrow morning. So, I've had public meetings all the way up the coast. I'm getting a great reception. I'm getting lots of attention. So I'm hoping I'm going to be able to help educate the public here a little bit more about their forests.

Laws:

Yes. Well, I do hope that they pay attention to you, and I hope the people who listen to this program Australia-wide have paid attention to what you've said. And I hope they also understand that you, in fact, were a founder of Greenpeace and wouldn't be anxious or overly-ready to be critical of it. So, obviously you believe what you're saying.

Moore:

Thank you very much, John.

Laws:

It was nice to talk with you.

Moore:

Good morning to you.

Laws:

Bye. Dr Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace telling the truth about the environment.


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