People who know me, have on occasions found out that whenever Greenpeace makes some kind of statement in the main media, I'll get really critical about everthing Greenpeace wil state in their press releases. People don't get what kind of grudge I could possibly have about an environmental organisation. I'll try to explain what it is that's bothering me about Greenpeace.

To do this, I'll give some examples of why I don't trust them. Because I really don't.

glacier
The first example is a recent one, photographer Spencer Tunick was hired by Greenpeace to photograph 600 naked people on the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland. I find this by itself a noble idea, since global warming is real, and the human species most probably has an influence on it right now.

By not telling the whole truth, I feel like Greenpeace is lying to me, and I don't like being lied to.

Nothing fishy so far, but I'm getting there. In their press releases regarding this protest action Greenpeace stated that the Aletsch glacier "fell by 115 meters on 2005 and 2006". What they didn't tell, was that the clacier in fact has been shrinking since aproximately the year 1870, and that there heave been previous years in wich the glacier fell by a rather large amount (I consider anything above 50 meters a large amount). It is shrinking more rapidly for the last couple of years, but the way Greenpeace put it, it seems like the glacier suddenly out of the blue started melting. By not telling the whole truth, I feel like Greenpeace is lying to me, and I don't like being lied to.

plasticizers
Another example is one wich made people's lips curl in the Netherlands last year. Greenpeace was concerned with public health, specifically with the use of plasticizers ( phthalates to be precise). In 2004 plasticizers where in the news because of their appliance in childrens toys (scoubidou). It was found there where indications these phthalates aren't healthy, but the amounts used in scoubidou weren't high enough to do damage to the health. I can understand though why you wouldn't want your kid playing with this stuff, I wouldn't want them anyway.

Well, what about adult toys? (here enter the curling lips)

With the scoubidou-hype gone (and I think the use of phthalates was banned from children's toys but am not sure), Greenpeace decided te see where else those nasty phthalates where applied. Well, what about adult toys? (here enter the curling lips) Greenpeace had a total number of 8 sex toys tested for phthalates, and found that 7 of these toys contained phthalates. Now, I'm not a statistician (?), but I have learned one thing about them in math: you can't say that 7 out of 8 sex toys contain phthalates based on such limited research. This is not even lying by telling half the truth, it's just plain lying using some kind of psuedo-science. But it's exactly what Greenpeace did.

Brent-Spar
Now, where does my critical approach towards Greenpeace come from? I guess it started with the Brent-Spar thing, look it up if you want to know how Greenpeace behaved in that matter. Since then I feel like Greenpeace is just another corporation who will bend the truth and manipulate the media to get their message spread. And that's why I don't like Greenpeace.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 4:38 pm and is tagged beer, Greenpeace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.