The conspiracy of the green movement

This may seem at first highly counter intuitive. Surely, the political movement at the heart of environmental protection and campaigns against big business, corporate greed, genetically modified crops and other staples of the conspiracy genre couldn't possibly be at the heart of its own conspiracy, yet this article might suggest something far darker. Something that strikes at the heart of the alternative lifestyle movement and calls into question everything we think we know about the way the World operates. Since the 1960's there has been an understanding that the way we live in the developed World is unsustainable and that the level of consumption that we enjoy is at the expense of the natural world. We are, by our actions, rapidly damaging our own environment beyond repair. It makes sense, therefore that there should be a movement of people who believe that this is something that has to be addressed, and a variety of “green” organisations have sprung up, from political movements to direct action groups. There are green members of the European parliament, and most major corporations have “green” PR firms operating to ensure that they appear at least moderately environmentally sensitive.

So far it all looks reasonably straightforward, so where is the conspiracy? Well, lets look at the way in which the green movement operates. Take a group like Friends of the Earth, a political lobbying movement that purports to operate at the heart of government and communities to create a more sustainable world. Now, if you go into a local Friends of the Earth branch you will find that the staff and volunteers are committed environmentalists who belief in the principles of their organisation as they are laid out to the public. They function well at the local level, monitoring local businesses, and campaigning on local issues, but there is another level of operation beyond the local branch. If you ask local members they will tell you that this is not the case, but as anyone familiar with the structure of groups at the heart of conspiracies knows, the general membership is not always aware of what is really going on. So what is it that makes me say this? The organisation operates as a charity, existing primarily on the contributions of members and voluntary donations, yet charitable status has an advantage to those who wish to use it. Contributions are not covered under freedom of information (FoI) legislation, so it is relatively easy to hide where some of those donations come from. In these straightened times may charities are struggling to gather donations, yet several green charities are doing remarkably well.

The reason for this lies in the source of a significant proportion of their revenue. As an established and respected lobbying community the green movement has value in the access it has at governmental level. It also has value to corporations in terms of establishing green credentials, and what the local operatives don't know is that at a national level, well hidden behind a network of accounting vehicles is that those credentials and that access can be bought for the right price. It doesn't end there either. The upper echelons of several high profile green movements has been infiltrated by intelligence operatives from government agencies and these infiltrators exert a tremendous influence in policy decisions. A statement like this needs some credible evidence so I offer the former co-chair of Greenpeace, now organiser of the Sea Shepherds, and a man who has been attacked by the very green movement that he was intrinsic in establishing, Paul Watson. Watson left Greenpeace ostensibly because Greenpeace moved away from direct action, but this begs two questions. Is that the real reason, given the efforts made to discredit Watson, and why did Greenpeace forgo direct action in the first place? You have to wonder what it is all about....