Greenpeace gets away with vandalism
September 10th, 2008 Posted in Climate Change, General, PoliticsThe news tonight is that five members of Greenpeace have been acquitted of charges of criminal damage after breaking into a coal power station and dropping a banner from the top saying “Gordon”; presumably aimed at the Prime Minister. The full story is available at the Guardian here, if you prefer to read rather than watch.
Now, my position on climate change is pretty open – I’ve written about it before. But my position on “environmental activists” can quite easily be discovered by removing the letters “environ” and “activ” from the phrase. The most vocal environmental activists often seem to be almost exclusively motivated by political reasons first and foremost, and that doesn’t sit right with me. For a start, it’s obvious that no amount of activism will ever change anything unless you can alter the underlying economic landscape of incentive and reward linked to the problem at hand. Ultimately, the capitalism that they so fundamentally oppose is actually the only method through which any major change will ever occur in any of the areas that they consider so important.
My biggest worry here is the precedent that this judgement sets. It says that it’s ok for activists to wilfully damage other peoples’ property if they think it’s the right thing to do. This was most obvious a few years ago with environmental wackjobs destroying fields of genetically modified crops. Now, anyone who tells you that GM crops are dangerous is either a moron or a liar – but, strangely, the activists accused of criminal damage in vandalising fields of GM crops were also acquitted, on the grounds that the crops might have posed a hazard to the environment. Despite the fact that they don’t.
Now that’s retarded. I’m wondering how much more they can get away with along the same line. Would, it, for example, be legally defensible to destroy a family’s livelihood because they insist on growing GM crops? Would it be acceptable to destroy laboratories and research facilities?
This is beginning to make me wonder exactly what the crazies will do to prevent the LHC from smashing beams of protons into each other? What will they consider acceptable? It all boils down to the same old situation – people refuse to accept what science tells them to be true and become so emotionally attached to their beliefs that they refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. The deepest question is to ask ‘why do people have such a hatred against science, and what can we do to fix it?’ I wish I had answers.
