Palm Oil and the Misguided Views of Greenpeace and FOE

William Scoresby was a British seafaring explorer who developed an interest in the workings of navigational compasses. His research led to the discovery that all newly built iron ships had their own magnetic influence on compasses. This influence would change at sea for various reasons - leading crews to read the compasses incorrectly. Often this led to disaster.

There is a striking parallel between the misread compass and the misguided actions of green groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) against palm oil.

How on earth can Greenpeace and FOE accuse the most inherently sustainable edible oil crop of massive deforestation and threatening the extinction of exotic wildlife such as the orang utan?

It is crystal clear that palm oil occupies only 0.22% of the world's agricultural land, and yet is the largest producer of edible oil in the world. What this fact alone translates to is that palm oil has clearly the highest yield of all the oilseed crops, a yield that is close to 10 times that of its competitors such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower oil.

If we extrapolate the small carbon footprint of palm oil against the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of global agriculture which is 17 per cent, this makes the Greenpeace and FOE argument untenable.

To recap, the carbon footprint of oil palm cultivation globally is, therefore, 0.22 per cent times 17 per cent of the total or 0.0374 per cent of global GHG emissions. Such a small carbon footprint when compared with the burning of fossil fuel, which contributes 57 per cent of GHG emission, demolishes Greenpeace and FOE's case against palm oil.

Recently, the green groups have taken to accusing palm oil of planting oil palm on peat and thus destroying peat swamp forests.

In the view of Palmhugger.org, even if all palm oil cultivation takes place on converted peat-lands and rain-forest (which it definitely does not), it still occupies only 0.22% of the world's agricultural land, making it morally wrong and pure hyperbole to blame oil palm as a significant contributor to global warming.

The question crying out to be answered by Greenpeace and FOE is why other competing oilseeds like soy, rapeseed and sunflower which are inherently far less sustainable than palm oil are spared the scrutiny that they have been subjecting palm oil to for the past half a decade?

Further, why do Greenpeace and FOE, which both hail from the UK remain silent over the 33 millions tons of carbon emitted during the annual process of coal mining in the UK?

The question therefore arises: Why are Greenpeace and FOE trying so hard to stop the growth of palm oil?

Perhaps an incriminating and well researched report entitled "Friends of the EU" (see: http://www.policynetwork.net/accountability/publication/friends-eu) by researchers Caroline Boin and Andrea Marchesetti can provide an answer.

The report alleges that the EU, through its environmental ministries and commissions is involved in funding up to 70% of the operating budgets of environmental NGOs such as FOE Europe is a dead giveaway that the real reasons for these baffling attacks is to protect oilseed crops like rapeseed and sunflower which are indigenous to the EU. It is inarguable that these EU oilseeds would find it difficult to compete on a level playing field, with "the cheapest oilseed crop in the world" especially in the production of biofuel, the use of which the EU has committed itself to promoting!

It has often been said that the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. In Palmhugger.org's view, the time is nigh for some conscientious news editor to assign investigative reporters to probe this matter in depth and examine the dealings and bank accounts of Greenpeace and FOE! THE END.

About the Author

Palm Hugger is a palm oil advocacy site that makes no apologies for exposing the lies, untruths and equivocations on palm oil spewed by a coterie of environmental morons against the world's most sustainable edible oil and biofuel feedstock. We are part of a collective group of palm oil sympathizers that have grown tired of the blatant untruths, spin, lies and unfair trade bloc promoting activities of green NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) against palm oil.

Author (Palm Hugger). Submitted on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 Time: 10:29 PM

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