Reddit mentions of Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist

one of the founders. sometimes organizations take some time to solidify their foundation and focus their vision.


http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Greenpeace-Dropout-Sensible-Environmentalist-ebook/dp/B004X2I6ZM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411851975&sr=8-1&keywords=patrick+moore

> Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist is Dr. Patrick Moore’s engaging firsthand account of his many years spent as the ultimate Greenpeace insider, a co-founder and leader in the organization’s top committee.

> Moore explains why, 15 years after co-founding it, he left Greenpeace to establish a more sensible, science-based approach to environmentalism.

http://ecosense.me/index.php/about

> Dr. Patrick Moore has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 30 years. He is a founding member of Greenpeace and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. As the leader of many campaigns Dr. Moore was a driving force shaping policy and direction while Greenpeace became the world's largest environmental activist organization.

>
>Anyway, can you say what in particular you found derisive?

Sure. Let's start here:

>> They may be inherently mistrustful of scientific advances, and tend to believe they are lies designed to frighten them. This leads them to think liberal concerns about Climate Change are misplaced.

There is a distrust of the environmental movement, but it doesn't originate from some sort of anti-science bias. It comes from the historical migration of many left-wing radicals from campus and social radical movements into radical environmental movements. Patrick Moore - one of the original founders of Greenpeace, writes about this in Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. As this started to happen in earnest in the early 70s, environmentalism became less about stewardship and preservation and more about the control of people...in many cases simply to pursue thinly veiled left-wing goals in the name of environmentalism (abrogation of rural property rights, unilateral nuclear disarmament at the height of the cold war, elimination of nuclear power ostensibly for the environment, etc). The left became so synonymous with the environmental movement - and still controls it to such a degree today, that conservatives rightly question the motivation behind environmental "science".

For example, AGW proponents have been making dire predictions around global warming for decades - more deadly hurricanes, more deadly tornadoes. Some even tried to foist the Tsunami (caused by an undersea earthquake) on global warming. The political motivation behind making these predictions (which invariable have turned out to be wrong - ice caps are still around, we haven't had more tornadoes and hurricanes) is social control, so the average middle class lifestyle can be downgraded into a peasant class lifestyle in terms of resource and energy utilization, and another massive diversion of wealth from the middle and lower classes of the developed world to the developing world and...ironically, the oil companies (who stand in the best position to profit from any cap and trade scheme - see Enron's plans before they went tit's up and BP's current investment initiatives).

That's the source of the current conservative position on the environmental movement. It's not a natural distrust of "that them there science stuff", it's a natural distrust of the environmental movement because of it's political pedigree and pushing of objectives and the search for scientific consensus to justify the objectives.

>I think part of this is because many people on here have literally no experience reading/talking with intelligent and reasonable conservatives.

Liberals on here don't have any experience because they don't seek it out, it's much more comforting to sit in your echo chamber and nod your head as another liberal says "those dumb hick conservatives sure are racist."

I was probably a little unfair to Torgo on second reading...but #4 spun me up a little bit, because it's the story liberals tell themselves about conservatives.

Now, that's not to say there aren't some ultra-religious conservatives out there that don't believe in evolution and think praying is a valid medical technique for serious illnesses, but they are a slim minority. They get national attention when they manage to seize control of some backwater school board in Kansas because it fits the narrative that liberals like to push about conservatives. It's a man bites dog story, but liberals take it and run with it every chance they get to reinforce the idea that it's really a dog bites man story. Likewise, they do this with minority involvement in conservative politics as well (which is partially why Torgo's point of "They feel that the Republican party does not fairly address minority issues, and to a certain extent have an inherently racist worldview" is true - Democrats desperately need for this perception to hold fast, because they simply cannot win elections without capturing 90-95% of the black vote, and 65% of the Latino vote).

I would personally characterize the party divide differently. I'll write about it separately when I get a little more time. Needless to say, both parties have their collection of dumb people, there are red team/blue team adherents without any fixed ideology, there are thoughtful and purposeful people on both sides driving agendas, and there are power hungry people seeking self-aggrandizement.