Patrick Moore (environmentalist)

Patrick Moore ( born in 1947 in Winter Harbour, British Columbia, Canada ) is a Canadian journalist and environmental activist. He was a founding member of Greenpeace and by 1986 President of Greenpeace Canada. In 1991 he founded the PR company Green Spirit, which he chaired. Serving Moore was next to, among other things for the timber companies, Asia Pulp & Paper. He is now one of the most famous critics of the environmental organization Greenpeace.

Youth and time as a Greenpeace activist

Moore was born in 1947 in Winter Harbour, a village in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He started at the University of British Columbia to study biology, forestry and genetics. From 1969 to 1972 he received a grant from the Ford Foundation. In the late 1960s he became a radical environmental activist and founded in 1971 with like-minded people, the environmental group Greenpeace to protest against hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska. In 1974 he obtained the title of Doctor of Philosophy in Ecology. In 1977, Moore President of the Greenpeace Foundation. There were disputes during this time, which organizations may call themselves Greenpeace and which are not. 1979 then Greenpeace International was founded. Moore remained president until 1986 by Greenpeace Canada (successor of Greenpeace Foundation) and was by then director of Greenpeace International. During this time he became one of the most noticeable Greenpeace advocates and led several well-known campaigns.

Distancing from Greenpeace

In its cooperation with the policy to perform his ideas of environmental protection, he came increasingly into conflict with Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. In 1986, he left the organization. The reason he later stated that in the 1980s the organization extremists had taken over. According to Tamara Stark of Greenpeace his leaving was not necessarily his own decision. While he was accused of treason on the part of environmentalists, Moore criticized the ideological conceptions of the Greenpeace members who were prepared due to its protest to compromise. After his departure in 1986, the organization had degenerated into a group of scientific illiteracy.

Moore has since further understood as an environmentalist and reiterated the criticism in later writings, for example, in his book Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. He sees the evolution of the environmental movement a turn to political and social activism that has more to do with capitalism and globalization criticism than with science or ecology. They reject, for example, forestry, green genetic engineering to aquaculture, despite obvious advantages for environmental protection and the fight against hunger from. Also, they idealize poverty as a noble way of life and is anti-progressive.

Subsequent activities and views

According to the Greenpeace time he founded the aquaculture companies Quatsino Seafarms, which he gave up after declining salmon prices in 1991. In 1991, Moore, Green Spirit, a public relations companies relating to environmental protection, which he chaired. Since 2006 he has served as chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition of energy companies along with Christine Todd Whitman, an organization 's commitment to nuclear energy. In 2010 he was hired as a representative of the Indonesian logging company Asia Pulp & Paper. He is also a director of Next Energy Solutions, a company that sells equipment for the use of geothermal energy.

Moore has in addition to the Green Spirit publications for several media written articles and given interviews. He is in favor of an expanding forestry and the increased insertion of wood as a building material. He also recommends an increased insertion of geothermal energy. In the rejection of genetic engineering he sees no advantage for man and the environment, and argues for the use of nuclear energy. In an interview with the magazine Focus Moore Germany recommended to run nuclear power plants longer and to build more. The CO2 target is the only way could be achieved.

Books (selection)

• Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. Beatty Street Publishing, Vancouver, 2010. ISBN 0986480827 (excerpt).