Science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein once wrote, "In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the 'Naturist' reveals his hatred for his own race -- i.e., his own self-hatred." The "Naturist" religion, which today we call "environmentalism," elevates every other form of life above human life. Sad but true.

Africans are dying due to malaria and yet these environmental types oppose the use of DDT as it, wait for this, causes thinning of bird’s eggs! The fact that most environmentalists come from Europe and the U.S. where living conditions are so good that they need not fear this deadly and debilitating disease could explain their irrationality and total lack of empathy for the plight of fellow humans in Africa.

These fanatics will not only fudge data to get their way, but they will even create it if that's what it takes. John Stossel reported that in Washington State, government biologists, determined to prove that lynx lived in Washington, "nailed pieces of carpet soaked with catnip onto trees, hoping a lynx would rub up against them and leave some fur -- evidence of the lynx's existence in this particular area." Of course they found hairs on the carpet, and they sent samples to the lab which showed that they were in fact lynx hairs. This would be bad news indeed for ranchers and farmers in the area who could lose their land rights in favor of a threatened species. As it turns out, the biologists, those impartial proponents for Truth, had rigged the tests. "The regulators went to a zoo, got hair samples from captive lynx, and sent those hairs to the lab to be tested."

In many ways this propensity of environmentalists to make wild claims and to fudge data to support the claims is all too familiar to the palm oil industry.

Take the case of Greenpeace, the infamous Friends of the Earth (with the unfortunate acronym “FOE”) and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) who have all been guilty of overactive imaginations.

Dressed in bright orange orang utan suits, FOE activists picketed Tesco supermarkets in the UK loudly screeching that palm oil is responsible for massive deforestation and thus threatening the very existence of the orang utans.  Greenpeace activists, meanwhile also screeching like the primates that they are, clambered over the walls of Unilever dressed in, you’ve guessed it, bright orange orang utan suits.  RAN of course takes the cake.  Alleging in their website that due to palm oil expansion, the orang utan may become extinct as early as 2011!  Obviously, RAN has not checked and is not aware that more than 50,000 orang utans currently exists in the wild in the tropical rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia.  The recent discovery of 2,000 or more red apes in the Indonesian part of Borneo has only splattered more egg on the faces of the mathematically challenged fanatics at RAN.

In the view of Deforestation watch, we can and should take steps toward preserving the environment. In truth, we have been, and the environment is much cleaner than it was thirty years ago. That's a good thing. But when radicals for whom environmentalism is a religion, attempt to destroy the constitutional rights of citizens, the livelihood of palm oil planters and farmers in the developing world and trample the inalienable rights to life of dying and sickly Africans, they've gone too far. The fraud and the fanaticism have to stop as it, ultimately, does not aid the cause.THE END.