Greenpeace and other environmentalists are damaging the environment by prompting consumers to use non-renewable building materials instead of timber, according to the co-founder of Greenpeace and the tropical hardwood body the Association Technique Internationale de Bois Tropicaux.
Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace in the 1970s, claims environmentalists’ insistence on being the only judge of sustainable forestry is counter-productive.
‘The environmental movement’s campaign to force industry into accepting it as the only judge of sustainable forestry is pushing consumers away from renewable forest products and toward non-renewable, energy-intensive materials such as steel, concrete and plastic.’
Mr Moore added: ‘Wood is the most renewable and sustainable of the major building materials… so why isn’t the environmental movement demanding that the steel and concrete industries submit to an audit for sustainability?’
Mr Moore, whose criticism recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times, said that the world had powerful tools to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the threat of climate change. ‘Grow more trees and then use more wood as a susbstitute for materials like steel and concrete that are responsible for excessive emissions in the first place.’
Meanwhile, the Association Technique Internationale de Bois Tropicaux has slammed Greenpeace for being an ‘extremist non-governmental organisation’ and for attacking European groups that have invested in tropical African countries.
‘The attacks rest on arguments that are generally unrealistic and do not refer to the specific tropical context,’ said the ATIBT. It implored the ‘extremist NGOs’ to join it in ‘concrete and positive actions’.
In a statement to TTJ, Greenpeace defended its stance and its recent blockading of timber shipments.
John Sauven, campaign director, Greenpeace, said: ‘It is a scientific fact that wood is a completely renewable resource. But we don’t have to illegally trash the Amazon or the remaining ancient forests in Africa to obtain it. We are not saying that logging should stop, all we are saying is that protected areas should be defined and that timber should come from legal and sustainable sources.’
