Crown Jakarta Capital Environmental Scam Management Solutions - How Environmental Organizations Are Destroying the Environment

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Crown Jakarta Capital Environmental ScamManagement Solutions - How EnvironmentalOrganizations Are Destroying The EnvironmentGuest Post by Willis Eschenbach

The Washington Postreports:

During an April visit to the San Francisco home of billionaire and environmentalactivist Tom Steyer, who created a political action committee in March to targetlawmakers supporting the Keystone pipeline, Obama noted that the issue of climatechange is near and dearto Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor.

But and I mentioned this to Tom and Kat and a few folks right before I came out herethe politics of this are tough,Obama added, according to a White House transcript.Because if you havent seen araise in a decade; if your house is still $25,000, $30,000underwater ... you may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but its

probably not rising to your number one concern. And if people think, well, thatsshortsighted, thats what happens when youre struggling to get by.

I loved Obamas description of economic trouble, characterizing it asif your housemortgage is underwater around my place, thats what is affectionately known as aFirst World Problem. But it beautifully illustrates the close relationship betweeneconomic want and lack of concern for the environment, even among people withmoney.In this post, I will discuss the link between CO2 alarmism and environmentaldestruction, and how the work of the big environmental non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) like Greenpeace and WWF is actively harming the environment.

Let me start with the two most important facts in the discussion about the globalenvironment. First, half the people on the planet live on less than $2 and change perday. Thats why I said having your house mortgage underwater is a First WorldProblem. People living on $2 per day dont have house mortgagesmost of them dontown houses, or much of anything beyond a few rags of clothing.

Second, only developed countries have ever cleaned up their own environment. Onlywhen a countrys inhabitants are adequately fed and clothed and sheltered from thestorms can they afford to think about the environment. And far from cleaning up the

environment as wealthy countries can afford to do, people in poor countries are verydestructive to the environment. Folks in poor countries will burn every tree if theyhave to, and you would too if your kids were crying. They will eat every monkey andconsume the chimpanzees as the final course, and you would too if your family werestarving. They will bemoan the necessity, they dont like doing it any more than you orI would but they will do it. Heres the border between Haiti and the DominicanRepublic:

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Figure 1. Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Guess which countrycontains eco-criminals that can afford to use fossil fuels, and which country containsnature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy

Now, given that poverty is the greatest threat to the global environment, theinescapable conclusion is that the only way the global environment stands a chance isif poor countries can develop economically.

And that is why the anti-development, pro-expensive energy stance of the largeenvironmental NGOs is one of the great environmental tragedies of our times.

Heres the chain of causality:

1. Climate alarmists, with the strong support of the major environmental NGOs likeGreenpeace and WWF, declared war on CO2.2. The method that they chose to fight CO2 was to discourage fossil fuel use bymaking energy more expensive, using a combination of taxation, legislation,international pressure, and expensive subsidies to achieve that end. Obamas War onCoal, announced today, is just one of hundreds of examples of the wealthy NGOs andthe rich governments working to increase the price of energy.3. Sinceenergy is development, expensive energy keeps poor countries in poverty.When the World Bank denies loans for coal fired plants in India, the poor suffer but

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the environment suffers more. Until they can afford to use coal and gas, theyll run thecountry on wood I refer you back to Figure 1 for how well that works out.4. Expensive energy slows a countrys economic development, and as President Obamapointed out, people worried about money dont pay attention to the environment.This ends up in a bizarre positionthe actions of the major environmental NGOs areensuring continued environmental destruction in the developing world.

I learned about the connection between poverty and environmental destruction in partthrough sad experience. I discussed my conversation with the indigent Costa Ricanfirewood seller, and how he was cutting his firewood in the National Forest, in my poston theparrotfish. Heres the story of a longer and sadder interaction with poverty andthe environment.I live surrounded by forest now, as I did when I was a child. I draw strength from it.My stepdad was a logger, as was his father, and Ive worked in the woods settingchoker. Ive seen good logging, bad logging, and downright criminal logging, and Ivealways been passionate about protecting the forest and about ethical logging practices.Heres the view of the redwood forest from my deck earlier, still rainy today

For a couple years in the late 1980s, I was the Country Director of the SolomonIslands program of a development organization, something along the lines of Save theChildren but with a more general focus. Among the projects I ran was the WalkaboutSawmill program. It was a winner. Instead of giving money for disaster relief after acyclone, we bought some portable sawmills made next door in Papua New Guinea. Wetrained some teams of guys to use the sawmills, and sent them around to the villagesto mill the trees that had been blown over by the cyclone. The villagers got wood, ourguys learned to use the sawmills. Then when the project was over, we sold thesawmills on credit to the teams of guys, so that they could use them to log their ownnative lands.

Why was I glad to assist them in logging the forest? Because I knew that it was farpreferable to the only other option, which was the rapacious Asian logging companiescoming in and clear-cutting huge swaths of land. Because of their poverty, theSolomons were selling their patrimony, their incredibly valuable tropical hardwoods,for pennies.And how did their poverty lead to the loss of their forests? I can give you the answer.When a country is poor, you can buy anything.For several years in the late 1980s I lived on a coral atoll near a large volcanic islandwith the most euphonious name of Vella Lavella, in the Western Province of the

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Solomon Islands. At that time the Solomons had extensive tropical forests full of veryvaluable hardwood. Overseas logging companies were coming in, paying pennies to thevillagers for their logs, paying off the customs inspectors, and shipping away bargeafter barge of the treasure and the patrimony of the islands, their tropical trees. So Iwas happy to be able to offer the people the alternative of harvesting and tending theirown forest.

So at that time, a Malaysian company made a move to get the rights to log all of VellaLavella island. Some people said no, but there were some that wanted it. Theres akind of local island council, with about five Big Men, local leaders, who make thedecisions. People were passionate about the logging issue, as you might imagine.There was a meeting of the island council, and the logging company made theirpresentation. The big men, to their credit, voted the logging down.

So the company pulled out their wallets, and bought them off right there on the spot.After the folks had left, they declared the Council back in session, and voted thelogging rights to the company. The only problem was, the results of the first meetinghad already been entered in the official record.

Of course, its the Solomons, and these were local guys untutored in the criminal arts.So they just took some whiteout, and whited out where they had said No logging,and wrote the revised vote right over the old one.

When I heard that, I was both amused and outraged. So some of us got the PublicSolicitor to take on the case, he was enthusiastic back then, it was before his illness.He ended up catching the disease that a lot of white guys catch in the tropics, it comesin a bottle and makes you feel terrible, but this was before he got sick. So he arguedthe case brilliantly and got the decision thrown out of court, we all cheered him onand felt like wed won.

When the court decision was announced, the logging company did the obvious thingthis time they cheated according to the rules. They paid the island councilors off, butthis time they paid them before the council meeting, so there was no need to changethe official record I was mondo bummed, as were my local friends.

So that inexpensive purchase of the island councilors, I heard it was ten grand US$per man, gave the logging company the right to negotiate a contract with the locals ifthey wanted to sign. One afternoon, some of the young Vella Lavella guys made thetrip over to the island where I lived to ask if I would help them. I bought the beers, andwe talked about the logging company. They said that theyd been agitating to convincethe people to keep the company out and take care of their own forests. But the

sentiment among the people was against them. They wanted the easy money, just sitback and let the company do the work.

So they asked me, would I look at the contract and tell them what it was that loggingcompany wanted them to sign. I said sure, and they gave me a copy of the accurseddocument.My friends, Ive seen some sly, crafty ways to cheat and cozen someone with a pen anda piece of paper, but this one fair reeked of sulfur. Inside it, black was white and white

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black. Outrageous things were proposed as though it would be of benefit to the localfolks.And the logging regulations themselves in the contract were abysmal. A 100-metresetback from streams and watercourses is considered the minimum to protect thewaterways from sedimentation. They proposed a 10-metre setback and claimed theywere doing it out of concern for the environment. Nor was there any limit to the

gradient which they could log. Usually, steep slopes are protected from loggingbecause the erosion and landslides are so damaging they had no protection forthem at all.

Then there were the penalties for felling a tree outside the designated area tendollars US per tree. At that time the Solomons hardwood, when milled and dried, wasworth about US$1,400 per cubic meter, and some of the trees had three or more cubicmetres. That meant if the loggers spied a valuable tree that was not on the land theywere allowed to log, they could fell it, pay the locals $10 for it, and sell it forfivethousand dollars

But were nowhere near done. Then there was the little matter of the price. This, thecompany said, was the best part of the deal. Elsewhere in the Solomons people wereonly getting three dollars a cubic metre, but this company, from the goodness of theirhearts, was offering no less that $10 per cubic metre

Then there were the roads. On huge benefit of a properly managed logging operation isthat the local people end up with roads connecting the coastal villages with theinterior lands.Or it can be a huge curse, because if the roads are not properly designed andconstructed, then they wash out in the tropical rains and the roadways erode intoopen cuts and the land takes years to recover.

Well, this document pointed all of that out. It talked about the various quality ofroads, from the logging roads in the interior all the way up to paved roads along thecoast. There were pages of road specifications, and lovely black-and-white pictures ofasphalt highways running by tropical beaches, with only one small problem.

The document described the roads, and the places that they planned to use them, andhow well made they would be but nowhere in the whole document did they actuallyagree to build one single metre of road, paved or not. It was all just a smoke screen,they promised nothing.So I went over the whole document and marked it up. Then I met up with the guysagain, and we went over the whole thing, clause by clause. Id re-written about two-thirds of the clauses, and Idworked with my friend the Public Solicitor, and wed put

together a document that would be a good deal for the locals. The loggers would stillmake out, but like businessmen, not like highway robbers.

It was a long meeting, the guys had lots of questions, and we discussed each andevery clause so they knew why Id made the changes, and what the changes meant tothem. After previous discussions with a couple of the guys, wed also added a sectionsetting up a trust for the majority of the money, so it wouldnt all get spent on beerand outboards and be gone in six months. They were very much in favor of that, theydseen money pissed away before.

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Then they were ready to meet with the representatives of the loggers. They asked me ifId come with them to the meeting. I said I couldnt another expatriate that I knewhad gone mano-a-mano with the loggers a few months before, and within a week hiswork permit had been pulled, and he had to leave the country. I couldnt risk losingmy work permit, but I said I knew they could do it, they understood the issues.They asked, could they meet in one of the guest houses that I rented out on the

island? I said sure, no problem They could have the meeting, and spend the night, goback to Vella the next day.

So the big night came for the meeting. Everyone showed up, loggers and islanders. Iplayed the genial host, and left them to discuss the fate of the forest.And in the morning? They all came out, shamefaced. I took one look, and my heartsank. I asked one of the old guys, one of the big men, what had happened. Oh, thelogger men were very nice! Can you imagine, they gave us a whole case of Black Labelwhiskey. They explained the contract, and it sounded wonderful, so we signed it oh, man, my blood was angrified mightily and I was in grave danger of waxing wroth but I knew the old man, and he wasnt a bad guy, just weak. So I curbed my tongueand shook my head, and I said that his sons might approve, but his grand childrenwould wonder why he sold their birthright for pennies then I went and talked to theyoung guys. They said they couldnt stop it, once the big men were drunk they gotcombative and wouldnt listen to anyone and they would have signed anything.And at the end of the day, I realized that I was on a fools errand. Oh, Id fight the fightagain, in a minute, but Id lose again. Its what happens when big money hits a poorcountrythe environment gets screwed, whether its logging, fishing, or mining. Untilthe country is wealthy enough to feed its citizens and to protect itself, its resources arealways on sale to the lowest bidder by which I mean the bidder with the lowestmorals.

Now, I started this sad tale for a reason, to give substance to the damage that poverty

does to the environment. When you can buy an island council for ten grand a manand there are literally millions of dollars at stake, that council will get bought nomatter how hard I fight against it. Per capita GDP in the Solomons is about $600annually, its classed as an LDC, a Least Developed Country and in a countrywhere ten thousand dollars is almost twenty years wages, you can buy many peoplefor ten large That is one of the main reasons that Ive spent a reasonable amount of time workingoverseas trying to alleviate global poverty. I do it for the people first, but I do it for theenvironment second.

And that is why I feel so personally betrayed by the current mindless push forexpensive energy, a push led by the very organizations Ive supported because back in

the day, they actually used to be for the environment, not against it. Raising energyprices is the most regressive taxation I know of. The poorer you are, the harder you arehit by rising energy costs, and the more the poor suffer, the more the environmentbears the brunt.

So this is where I came in, explaining about how people fighting against CO2 hurt theenvironment. Let me repeat the links in the chain:1. Led in part by the environmental NGOs, many people and governments havedeclared war on CO2.

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2. Their preferred method of warfare is to raise energy prices, through subsidies, bans,taxes, renewable energy requirements, pipeline refusals, and the like.3. The rise in energy prices both impoverishes the poor and prevents the developmentof poor countries.4. As Obama pointed out, even wealthy people with economic worries tend to ignorethe environment so stomping on the development possibilities of poor countries by

raising energy prices is a guarantee of years of environmental damage anddestruction.I say that history will not look kindly on those people and organizations who arecurrently impoverishing the poor and damaging the environment in a futile fightagainst CO2, even if the perpetrators are wealthy and melanin-deficient and justrunning over with oodles of good intentions My regards to each of you, keep fighting the good fight. Ive had a rat-free day, and soalls well with the world,w.[UPDATE: For those who would like a bit more information on the connectionsbetween poverty and the environment that have lead to the photo shown in Figure 1,in 1960 Haiti and the Dominican Republic had the same per-capita real grossdomestic product (GDP), They also had very similar physical conditions, as they sharethe same island.By 2012, however, the per-capita GDP in the DR had about grown to about $9,600 peryear (PPP) ... and the per-capita GDP in Haiti had shrunk to about $1,200, less than itwas in 1960. And as a result of the Haitians having almost no money at all, only aneighth of the GDP of the DR, both the people and the environment of Haiti havesuffered badly.As a benchmark for comparison, Norway has a per-capita GDP (PPP) of about $60,000,and the US, about $49,000. At the other end of the scale, the Solomon Islands,classed as one of the "Least Developed Countries" in the UN rankings, is also quitepoor. It has a per-capita GDP about twice that of Haiti (and a quarter of that of the

DR), at around $2,500. -w.]UPDATE2: I wanted independent confirmation of the photo in Figure 1, because thatcould have been just one local patch given the small scale of the photo. So, I decidedto check it out on Google Earth. While the entire border between Haiti and theDominican Republic is not like Figure 1, there are large swaths in the northern partwhich are, for example:

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