Greenpeace Gets Sued
Radical green groups, and their seeming obsession with maintaining a monopoly on timber certification, continually put a willingness to distort facts and conduct outright intimidation campaigns on public display.
The bullying tactics stem from their relentless support of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a timber certification metric ripe with hypocritical inconsistencies on both economic and environmental fronts. Rather than maintain a uniform code for properly certifying forest timber, FSC maintains 28 varying regional standards worldwide.
Those regional differences are sometimes vast, and directly contradict the purported goals of the environmental activist lobby that throws the kitchen sink at anyone who supports an alternate means of certification.
For instance, take clear-cutting forests, a practice long scrutinized by the environmental lobby, yet FSC's own regional standard in Russia permits forest clear-cutting. Just last year IKEA found itself under the gun for clear-cutting there, despite the fact that it fell in line with the standards.
Rather than call attention to the flaw in FSC's certification, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called on companies to solely purchase FSC-certified products, citing dangers to forests and tigers that come from using other metrics.
Environmental contradiction doesn't stop there, either. Less than a quarter of all American forests are backed by FSC certification, yet the United States Green Building Council's LEED standards mandate adherence to that one metric, despite alternate means (used by a much more substantial number of domestic providers) being in plain sight. In turn, timber certified by regionally varying standards is imported, ratcheting up the energy costs to the environment while shutting out timber jobs that could be created right here at home.
At the end of the day, the tandem of FSC's radical ties and LEED inefficiency has left the rest of us saddled with a monopoly more concerned with covering its own interests than responsible policy that protects the environment and helps the economy. It amounts to the height of hypocrisy when it comes to the radical environmental lobby's continual push for an FSC monopoly, but it all becomes clear when the ties that bind are exposed.
Noted fringe group Dogwood Alliance has repeatedly launched campaigns of public intimidation against private sector entities that utilize alternate means of certification, such as the Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI). Their targets have included Staples and Kentucky Fried Chicken, with smear tactics including ridiculous "Occupy KFC" protests.
Thing is, Dogwood Executive Director Danna Smith sits on FSC's Board of Directors as well as the more exclusive Environmental Chamber within the board.
The most recent example of these bullying tactics (greenmail) come from another fringe set, ForestEthics.
Just this week that group launched a smear effort targeting SFI, filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming the alternate means of certification is "substantially governed and financed by the timber industry" while praising the Forest Stewardship Council as "more independent."
Those tactics come in spite of FSC's apparent profit-fueled ties to the more radical sect of the environmental lobby.
Fortunately, state governments and businesses are starting to take a stand against the monopoly and greenmail smear tactics. Multiple governors have issued executive orders prohibiting FSC's usage on future state green building projects, opening competition's doors and enabling job creators within their borders.
More pushback has come from our northern border, with Greenpeace's smear machine getting pushback to the tune of a $7 million lawsuit. Montreal's Resolute Forest Products was subjected to a brutal smear effort from Canada's Greenpeace chapter last year, which assailed the business for supposedly logging off-limits forest land.
Those claims were proven false in December of last year, yet the radicals persisted until February when they issued an apology, a rare occurrence from a known agitator. Resolute hasn't stopped there, though, and has launched a lawsuit claiming $5 million for "damages in defamation, malicious falsehood and intentional interference with economic relations," along with punitive damages totaling an additional $2 million.
This pushback should serve as a textbook example for what it's going to take to break this ring of monopoly and intimidation confronting the timber industry at large. FSC has been continually propped up by these tactics stemming from self-interested motivations, and seemingly not those of consumers, producers, or the environmental conservation radicals claim to stand for.
