Stunts

They were there supposedly to raise public awareness about the need to protect the Tubbataha Reefs in Palawan. They ended up damaging that precarious natural resource.

The activists of Greenpeace, an international environmentalist group, ran their ship Rainbow Warrior II into the protected reef, damaging an area 32 by 3 meters long. The Tubbataha Reef Marine Park authorities fined the group P384,000.

Greenpeace activists blamed faulty charts for the incident. Reports indicated that their ship should have been 2.4 kilometers away from where it ran aground. How wrong could the charts be?

Had they simply stayed away, the damage to the reef should have been averted. But the activists were there for photo ops galore, diving into the waters of the reef to unfurl a banner that ironically read: Save our Reefs.

This was the sort of accident that was bound to happen, considering the kind of in-your-face tactics Greenpeace employs. They love to stick the issues up people’s noses, make a nuisance of themselves for the sake of engineering media events. They have chained themselves to the gates of factories they disapprove of, ran interference with ships carrying nuclear wastes and by doing so raising the risk of a horrible maritime accident.

Once, the French government decided to deal Greenpeace the sort of action directe that the group prefers to employ. In 1985, French agents sunk the original Rainbow Warrior at the Auckland harbor in order to prevent it from sailing right into the Muroroa Atoll where France was conducting its nuclear weapons tests.

There might be a certain romance to the reckless tactics of Greenpeace. These tactics definitely win great media attention precisely because of their recklessness. But this last accident, which fortunately caused no casualties but inflicted damage to a protected reef, backfired on this environmentalist group that seems to be driven more by the lust for adventure of its members than by a desire to do something concrete for the earth.

I recall a discussion many years ago, shortly after the Auckland incident, with a UP scientist whose love for environment through his unfortunately abbreviated life is well established. He surprised me by disagreeing with Greenpeace and its activities. He said this group discredits the environmentalist movement with its reliance of pure gimmickry and its reluctance to do anything remotely productive to help the environment recover.

I respected this scientist extremely. In the best tradition of the UP, he looked at every modern orthodoxy with a brilliantly irreverent eye. He constantly warned us that the Age of Reason was presently threatened by two newfangled dogmatic movements he loved to refer to as the "eco-Fascists" and the "femi-Nazis."

Greenpeace he put in the first category. Over the years, I found little reason to disagree with his assessment.

Greenpeace is disposed to screaming into our ears things we already know, telling the rest of us to do things that are already being done.

I remember that about two weeks ago, Greenpeace held a press conference here demanding that our government reduce reliance on the use of fossil fuels over the next ten years by some specified amount I do not now recall. They did not offer any specific viable program to do so. They just arrogantly demanded that their targets be met.

What I do recall was that, while reading the news item on that press conference, I thought that these guys did not do their homework. If they did enough research into present Philippine efforts to harness geothermal energy, build mini hydroelectric facilities, deploy more windmills such as we have done in Ilocos Norte, bring on stream biomass generating plants now on the drawing board, roll out our buses using compressed natural gas, construct natural gas generators, expand the use of methyl ester and ethanol, reuse oil using zero-waste recycling technology developed by a Filipino scientist and perhaps apply the patented work of another Filipino inventor proposing to generate power using tidal movements, we will meet those targets in a much shorter period than Greenpeace set.

I know we will meet those fossil fuel reduction targets because my own work at the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) brings me familiarity with many of those projects and technologies. We do not need Greenpeace’s antics to know that the age of fossil fuels is about to end and that rapidly reducing dependence on costly imported fuels is a good thing.

I much better appreciate the quiet work of NGOs like Bantay Kalikasan that managed to mobilize private sector resources to reforest the La Mesa watershed as well as the work of the Foundation for the Philippines Environment that recruited the volunteered talent of financial executives to bring invaluable support to the rehabilitation of ancestral domains. NGOs like these are able to muster real skills on a voluntary basis to apply real solutions to problems that distress our environment.

Unlike Greenpeace, these other NGOs get some positive work done.

Then there are the public sector initiatives.

The DBP Forest program, for instance, put together an innovative financial engine that will make reforestation a profitable activity for all. If we could replicate this program on a wider basis, we can reforest without relying on public funds that are often frittered away by inefficiency, waste and corruption.

We are looking forward to substantial reductions in the volume of oil we import as consumers and oil companies accept ethanol as a desirable additive. The prevailing price of oil products has, of course, it own effects in dampening demand.

As we are able to plan our energy usage farther ahead, and as we liberalize investments in the energy sector, we should be able to produce more facilities that use renewable sources. While we do that, it will be worthwhile conducting a public information campaign regarding newly available lighting and cooling technologies that will rely on less power. We lack an adequate private sector effort to encourage less energy consumption similar to the public sector effort currently in place.

Greenpeace might be more helpful devising productive campaigns offering incremental but lasting changes in the way we treat our environment.

But in the meantime, they should stay away from our reefs.