Dr Patrick Moore, the cofounder of Greenpeace, left the organisation after 15 years.
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"We have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 50%. And this is one of the best things that have happened in the history of life", he said.
"And humans did it inadvertently, just like the shellfish inadvertently caused the CO2 to decline so drastically over half a billion years. We have come back and saved life from a certain demise. No other species could do this; could find the fossil fuels.
"We started out with a fairly strong humanitarian orientation to save civilisation from nuclear war.
"That must mean you care about people at least a little bit. And it came to the point where the environmental movement, including Greenpeace, was basically characterising humans as the enemies of nature.
"We are the enemies of the earth. It was sort of like, “human beings are the only evil species on the planet, and even cockroaches are better than we are†type thing. So this is the high philosophical level, this judgmental idea that human beings are the enemies of nature.
"And then came a campaign proposal from people who had no science education. I was the only one who had a formal science education on the International Board of Greenpeace for the whole of those 15 years.
"My fellow directors, none of whom had any formal science education, decided that Greenpeace should start a campaign to ban chlorine worldwide. That was the slogan."
Dr Moore obtained his Bachelor of Science in Forestry and Biology, followed by a PhD in Ecology.
"I said to them, 'You guys, you got to be a little more nuanced than that because chlorine happens to be one of the most important elements for human life that there is.'
"In the final analysis, Greenpeace was hijacked by the political left because they were smarter at politics than we were because we weren’t really politicians. We were campaigners. And we knew how to do that, how to get people’s attention, and what the real issues were. And all of a sudden, these guys are saying that chlorine should be banned. And it was just a fundraising program based on incorrect information.
"If you’re a professor in a university and you don’t go along with the climate thing, you’re not getting any money. Period. With few exceptions, very few exceptions. And this is the consensus. It’s bought and paid for.
"And that’s what’s going on. And so then all the noise comes from the scientists, from the media, from the Greens.
And they’re all in cahoots together, making a whole pile of money out of this. There have always been climate doomsday scenarios. And yet, for some reason, doom has never occurred. I mean, like the end of the earth. It just never seems to come about, no matter how often you predict it." ■