Bishop Hill Greenpeace crackdown
Jun 19, 2014 Energy: coal Greens Having been declared an obstacle to economic development in India as a result of its campaigns against coal-fired power stations, Greenpeace now finds itself on the end of something of a crackdown by the Indian government.
In a letter dated 13th June, the Ministry has directed the Reserve Bank of India that all foreign contributions originating from Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation — two principal international contributors to Greenpeace India Society — must be kept on hold until individual clearances are obtained from the Ministry for each transaction.
Of course, being against most state controls, I'm not at all comfortable with the Indian government action, but you can still make a good case that the government has a right to prevent foreign interference in India's internal politics - at the end of the day, whether coal-fired power stations get built in India should be down to the Indian people alone. But if middle-class donors in the UK want to fund campaigns to keep millions of Indians in picturesque destitution then, while I think their behaviour immoral, I shy away from use of state power to stand in the way of their doing so.
But we should be pointing out, again and again, what a shameful thing it is to give money to Greenpeace.
Reader Comments (18)
Immoral to contribute to India's continued poverty???
No BH it is criminally stupid.
The Indian government have every right to curtail these Luddites.
In my opinion, the Indian government have a duty to protect their people from eco-terrorists
which is exactly what Greenpeace have become.
Lets hope that this leads to other countries looking more closely this anti democratic,Malthusian
infested organisation.
Greenpeace is rather like the character Michael Douglas plays in Falling Down, insisting he is the good guy.
"picturesque destitution"
What a wonderful phrase. But won't they be just quaint for the tourists?
"…I shy away from use of state power to stand in the way of their doing so."
What is a state for? I suppose if we accept that there is no such thing as society, perhaps we should accept the corollary that there is no such thing as the state!
Global Energy Trends - BP Statistical Review 2014
Totally off topic - sorry! But there's some stuff here to interest sceptical readers:
Another reason not to give money to Greenpeace is that they might throw it away in currency speculation.
I have no problem with governments clamping down on the finances of extremist or criminal groups.
The Green movement think nothing of breaking the law (e.g. storming power stations), imposing nonsensical bans (e.g. DDT), or invading communities (e.g. shale) in order to "save the planet".
They do not care about the millions of children who have died of malaria due to the ban on DDT, they do not care about people dying of the cold or the increase in fuel poverty due to their actions. These zealots will only be content when they drive us back to the medieval "utopia" they believe we must live in to save Gaia.
@ mike fowle - compared to Greenpeace, Michael Douglas's character WAS the good guy. He was taking on "The System" wheras Greenpeace have now become part of the system...
I think that just as war is "diplomacy by other means" foreign funding of dissent is and it is therefore the proper role of the state to oppose it. Greenpeace may, as they claim, not be funded by states (unlike all these "N"GOs that hired thugs and Fascists in Ukraine to riot for "democracy")(& Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Georgia, Belorus, Ukraine, Ireland etc etc) or again they may be, but they are certainly a foreign propagandist.
I have long been suspicious of an organisation that campaigns so heavily against fossil fuels while extensively using vehicles powered by fossil fuels. If that is not cognitive dissonance, what is?
While I agree with your idea of personal freedom, it is obvious that "Brownwar" (surely a more appropriate name?) are at odds with that – you either agree with them, or you are wrong, and have to do what they tell you, anyway. As for the state protecting the people (by evicting foreign malcontents), surely that is the purpose of the state?
The sooner that Greenpeace are defined as terrorists the better the poor of the world will become.
Neil craig
If you accept the idea that "what is sauce for the goose ..." then by their own standards Greenpeace is funded by government.
Since they and their allies insist that any tax break which assists in the development of hydrocarbon exploration is a "subsidy" then we have the right to insist that any tax break which Greenpeace receives as a charity is also a "subsidy".
Simples!
Perhaps India (and the rest of the world) needs to have a look at Greenpeace's charitable status.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10724605
Was this ever appealed?
At last, a country has realized how anti-human the environmentalists really are. There is a much neglected word; subversion to describe how a bunch of activists with very minority public support have gained undue / disproportionate influence over governments, including our own.
Immediately to the right of the "header" of this thread is this:
"Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable power-plant cancelled"
ToC
It's not just Greenpeace interfering in what should be a countries internal democratic process and unfortunately we have it writ large across the socio-political landscape in Canada.
The Tides foundation in the USA creates an anonymous pool of money that is being used to fund anti-fossil fuel campaigns in Canada. The funded organizations frequently "USE", in the worst sense of that word, the First Nations as a cover to "legitimize" their campaigns which are designed to manipulate or circumvent the democratic process, to the extent of civil disobedience. This is nothing short of "financial terrorism".
(Vivian Krause has exposed the external funding of multiple Canadian and International NGO's that are opposing the development of oil pipelines from Alberta to alternative markets).
Greenpeace, and other NGO's, have either had their charitable tax free status rescinded or they are being watched closely for political interference that would result in such an action by Revenue Canada.
Apologies for the rant but these nefarious, rent seeking, self serving, no good b*****ds are drawing focus from substantive societal issues that need attention and, due to the need to defend against their actions, they are depleting the public purse and other resources that could and should be used to help and support the less fortunate members of society.
Greenpeace is just the tip of the iceberg. There are other deep-pocketed NGOs who are on a similar mission because their religion says you must stop the burning of fossil fuels. Someone should tell them that carbon dioxide from burning does not cause global warming. More specifically, there is no greenhouse warming now and there has been none for the last 17 years. But Arrhenius greenhouse theory that they use tells them to expect warming now because atmospheric carbon dioxide is steadily rising. If you are following the scientific method, however, you should know that if a hteory predicts warming and nothing happens for 17 years that theory is wrong and belongs in the waste basket of history. The only greenhouse theory that correctly predicts the present cessation of warming is the Miskolczi greenhouse rheory (MGT). That is because it can handle the special situation when more than one greenhouse gas is simultaneously absorbing in the IR. Arrhenius can't do that. In such a case the GHGs present will establish a joint optimum absorption window which they control. In the earth atmosphere the gases that must be accounted for are carbon dioxide and water vapor. The optical thickness of their joint optimal absorption window in the IR is 1.87, determined by Miskolczi from first principles. If you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will start to absorb, just as Arrhenius says. But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as this happens water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. As a result, no warming takes place despite an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide that just occurred. This is the situation we have now - warming has ceased despite a constantly increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide content. This is just the way laws of nature control the absorption of radiation by gases. They have always done that and any reports of previous greenhouse warming are nothing more than misidentification of natural warming by eager-beaver "climate" scientists wishing to prove the existence of their magical :greenhouse warming. There is none, and with that it becomes clear that there can be no such thing as anthropogenic global warming. Belief in the existence of AGW is therefore an illusion, a pseudo-scientific fantasy of scientific illiterates
Well, Narendra Modi the new prime minister climbed on to the 'green' climate change bandwagon so we'll see how this all goes.
My prediction: issue gets lost in the byzantine power corridors of New Delhi.