Book Review “Environmental Fraud: How palm oil turned the tables on the green groups and their shadowy funders!”

It is not often that I would select an environmental book as a great read. It is also not often that a used book selling on Amazon.com should be selling for almost the same price as a new book! It speaks volumes about the value placed on the explosive content in the book!

The fact is that I find this book a compelling read. “Environmental Fraud: How Palm Oil turned the Tables on the Green Groups and their Shadowy Funders” must rank as a classic of investigative journalism with its embarrassing expose︠ of the green groups role as paid assassins to stop the growth of palm oil at all costs. What was most intriguing was the way the author peeled away, layer by layer, and exposed the sinister agenda and the identities of the organisations providing the funding and their reasons for doing so. In the final analysis it was just plain old trade war with green groups used as proxies in the battle for public opinion!

What was most interesting about the book was the way the author, Linda Everett, recounted how the palm oil industry discovered that the adages and PR responses recommended by PR Gurus of old were not only flat out wrong but were hapless against a motivated adversary! In this sense, this book can serve as a playbook for a political model of crisis management for industries, corporations or organisations that have been similarly attacked without justification.

The book was written in a no holds barred style and focuses on the dubious methods used by these green groups against palm oil. The internet and social media has levelled the playing field and democratised the fight, so despite the disposal of more than $1 billion in collective funds at the disposal of these green groups, palm oil was able with an under-resourced and under-funded outfit with a modest budget to fight against the networked might of these green groups and their massive global organisational and financial resources. The coup de︠ grace came in the final chapters as the author lifted the veil and exposed the identities of the masterminds and the shadowy organisations providing the funding to these green groups and their motives! Learning the identity of these shadowy organisations funding these dubious campaigns against palm oil alone is worth the price of the book!

When we juxtapose the contents of this book with the equally explosive expose︠ of the now notorious intercepted emails documenting how leading scientists conspired to squelch global-warming sceptics by falsifying data, a pattern emerges of intrinsically dishonest and dubious agendas and campaigns being pursued by the environmental community. In “Climategate: A veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam” Brian Sussman the author points out that the mighty God that these environmental types really worship is money – cold red blooded cash which they euphemistically term as “funding” or “grants” dished out by either gullible governments or governmental agencies or worse, by organisations with a vested interest to foil the market growth of commodities like palm oil which pose a market threat to their own supported crops!

Similarly, The Deniers is also an interesting book written by Lawrence Solomon, a Canadian environmentalist and writer. Subtitled “The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud,” the book draws attention to a number of scientists and others who, according to Solomon, have advanced arguments against what he calls the “alarmist” view of global warming, as presented by Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the mainstream media, and others. The book is based on a series of columns Solomon wrote for Canada’s National Post. Solomon states that, as an environmentalist and active member of the Canadian environmental, anti-nuclear, activist organization Energy Probe, he did not originally question the mainstream opinion on global warming or views that sceptics of the climate change consensus were paid shills of the Energy Lobby. However, to his surprise, he found reputable scientists who Solomon believed disputed conclusions contained in the IPCC’s reports on climate change or media reports on global warming issues. Solomon began profiling these scientists in a series of columns for the National Post under the title, “The Deniers.”

What these 3 books show is that there is more than meets the eye in the world of environmentalism. The fact that a veneer of official authority and respectability is provided to these campaigns by UN agencies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not make them true or right! That is the single most important point to emerge from my reading of this highly illuminating book! THE END

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John D. Zane, is a contributor to many national book review sections, including the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Barnes and Noble Review. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the proud father of 3 lovely kids.”

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