Monday, January 28, 2008

How the Environmental Extremists Manipulate the Masses

Not the first time this has happened, and probably not the last, but worth noting because of its timing and significance within the debate of current policy options, here is an example of spin, environment style.

Back in the 1970s, environmentalists staged photographs of dolphins allegedly being caught in fishing nets as part of a campaign to ban tuna fishing. The images were false but were a significant contributing factor to the demise of the US tuna fishery.

Yesterday's dolphins are today's polar bears.
Charismatic mega fauna: hopefully they will be around for commercial and political exploitation for a long time.

Personally, I still think Larson did it best: sadly, too few people ever get the inherent contradiction of the interplay between polar bears (Arctic, north) and penguins (Antarctic, south). Happy feet indeed.