Alan Emerson is offended by the fact that Greenpeace Aotearoa – currently ‘ranting’ about the use of palm kernel expeller in animal feed – enjoys tax-free status in New Zealand.
Reading Friday Flash from Federated Farmers was enlightening. Feds want Greenpeace’s charity status removed and I agree with them 100%.
Greenpeace is a business and should be treated as such. It doesn’t debate on facts and exists, in my view, to generate donations from the naive and gullible.
I was able to see a copy of a 2016 analysis of Greenpeace entitled An Analysis of Greenpeace Business Model and Philosophy. It was written by five PhDs, from Ireland, the United States and Canada.
As you’d expect, it makes interesting reading.
The first is to invent an environmental problem that sounds somewhat plausible. Provide anecdotal evidence to support your claims.
Then invent a simple solution for the problem.
The next step is to pick an enemy.
Finally, they dismiss any alternative solutions as inadequate.
At each of the four stages they campaign to raise awareness and donations.
It all sounds familiar yet we give them tax-free status!
Further, it works, as back in 2000 their income internationally was US$140 million. In 2016 that swelled to US$380m. Their asset value was over US$270m.
Forbes magazine described them as “a skillfully managed business” with full command of “the tools of direct mail and image manipulation – and tactics that would bring instant condemnation if practised by a for profit organisation”.
Former Greenpeace strategist Dr Chris Rose provides simple steps for winning campaigns.
First you choose an issue you can label as catastrophic and urgent.
Then you choose a villain who can’t put up much of a defence.
As the good guy you establish a plausible solution.
Issue a call to action (donations).
Choose media outlets where you can control the narrative.
It all sounds depressingly familiar and is an indictment on much of our New Zealand media.
Consider the current rant against the use of palm kernel expeller (PKE), where they maintain NZ dairy farmers are solely responsible for the removal of rain forests so that cows can be fed.
Nothing is further from the truth and I’d expect nothing less from what I’d describe as a lunatic fringe group in the form of Greenpeace.
Unlike Greenpeace I like to consider arguments based on fact and the facts are these.
Forests are harvested not for stock feed but for palm oil. The World Wildlife Fund tells me it is “the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet”.
Palm oil is in 50% of packaged products in the supermarket, from pizza and chocolate to shampoo and lipstick.
Maybe Greenpeace can show me photos of cows eating pizza or wearing lipstick!
PKE is a byproduct of the palm kernel industry and if we don’t use it the waste is burned, creating an environmental hazard.
Yet despite all those facts we have Greenpeace Aotearoa supremo Russel Norman telling me that “rainforest (is) fed into the chipper to feed dairy cows on palm kernel”.
It’s not true and the fact that Greenpeace enjoys tax-free charitable status offends me.
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