As an American, born and bred in Fresno, California, I grew up believing in the American dream, feeling so proud of a country that gives such great opportunity to individuals. America is where, with the desire and effort, one can accomplish anything that you set your mind to. To live up to your full potential and live the life of your dreams, America was "the greatest nation in the world".
Built on principles so eloquently set out by our founding fathers, America is the greatest nation in the world, or so we were told. Try going to a rock concert or a country music festival or even the national Convention of Salesmanship and the intense nationalism is so in-your-face!
America developed public diplomacy into a finely tuned art-form. With the benevolent ways in which America treated Germany and Japan after defeating them in the 2nd World War and the advent of institutions like the Peace Corps, the Student Exchange Programs, the Voice of America and the USIS Public Libraries established all over the world and the Fulbright Scholarships, America built up a surplus of goodwill globally.
So where did it all go wrong? I remember sitting on a plane in LAX with a now aged teen idol Bryan Hyland and his son, Bodi some months after 9/11 and discussing this very issue. Why is America attracting so much vitriol and hate? What accounts for the rising undercurrent of anti-Americanism that is surfacing in much of the third world? As Americans, it is difficult to understand why we have to be prepared to hide our passports and deny our citizenship in the event that the plane is hijacked.
On reflection, it is easy to see why. America's habit of frequent meddling, particularly in the well intentioned but tricky pursuit of establishing acceptable democratic regimes was difficult for peoples of that country to accept. The actions of the CIA, in propping up corrupt regimes, all in the name of foreign-policy interests have not endeared America to the people who have to live under those regimes. By the time of the Iraq invasion, on a pretext, in 2003, it was for many people just the latest in a long litany of reasons to feel angry with the USA.
Foreign policy of the kind practiced by our recent American administrations, including the Obama one, is unlikely to win friends and influence people.
In many ways, the actions of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and green groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Rainforest Action Network towards palm oil mirrors the bully tactics of the USA.
The sheer incongruity that a commodity which is so inherently heart friendly could come under such feral attack in the mid eighties by the curiously named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and led by the inscrutable Michael Jacobson, who accused palm oil of being saturated fat, and therefore deleterious to heart health, surely takes some beating.
Unfortunately, for CSPI its allegations were based on such flimsy "scientific" grounds - so simplistic it will be observed, that it'd be hard put to pass muster for a high school science project, many scientific studies on the health effects of a palm oil rich diet had been conducted AND published in peer reviewed journals! When the weight of scientific evidence was brought to bear on CSPI's claims, the organization now largely discredited, retreated to their lair in Washington DC to plan their next move against palm oil.
It took some 2 decades but CSPI worked out a new stratagem, something with stickability that was so simple and devious that it could be described as diabolical. This time CSPI published a "report" called "Cruel Oil: How palm oil harms health, rainforest and wildlife", accusing palm oil of causing massive deforestation and global warming. Using the lovable orang utan as a visible icon for their report, CSPI alleged that palm oil cultivation was threatening their existence. Of course, the report was silent on the many conservation efforts taken by both Malaysia and Indonesia to protect the orang utans and made no mention of the many orang utan conservation centers set up in both countries.
The allegations of climate change also, was not something that could be easily disproved with scientific studies published in peer reviewed journals, as the science on global warming and climate change was still largely in its infancy. A favorite and commonly used ploy of green groups with an anti-palm oil agenda is take satellite imagery of a small part of a palm oil producing country like Indonesia showing large areas of logged over areas and then try to create the impression that the entire rainforest system of Indonesia has been decimated. This was a tactic used by Greenpeace and others of their ilk to stunning effect!
Sure enough, the mass media and other green NGOs fell for it and they were soon drumming up reports on the massive deforestation caused by palm oil and the imminent demise of the orang utan.
The sheer volume of these baseless attacks against palm oil by supercilious and opaque "Environmental NGOs" such as Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth, appears to be moving the political process in the countries in which palm oil is proving to be a serious threat or making inroads against oil seed producers in those countries towards some type of policy restricting palm oil imports - but insidiously and cleverly disguised as policies to prevent deforestation and climate change.
However, the fact that palm oil cultivation occupies less than 1% of the world's agricultural area and yet the crop accounts for more than 30% of total world edible oil production proves that palm oil does not require quite as much land as its critics would want the world to believe. In fact, the crop is so productive that it has a typical yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare which is close to ten times that of its nearest competitor, such as soy, sunflower and rapeseed. That explains why Malaysia which is such a small country relatively speaking, could be the world's biggest producer of palm oil for more than a century.
Yet after cultivating the crop intensively for more than a hundred years, Malaysia still retains forest cover of 56%. That dwarfs the forest cover of 25% in Europe and 11% in the United Kingdom from where Greenpeace hails.
Malaysia had undertaken in the Rio Earth Summit to conserve 50% of its lands as forest cover whilst Indonesia has adopted the 25% forest cover of Europe as its target. If the 25% forest cover of Europe is acceptable to Greenpeace, the Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask just what is so objectionable for Indonesia to adopt the same standard when it is a developing country with hundreds of millions of mouths to feed?
The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask: Why are the green groups so vocal on palm oil which occupies LESS than 1% of the world's agricultural land and yet remain silent on the other agricultural crops which occupy 99% of the world's agricultural land. How could it even be conceivable that the other agricultural crops which occupies so much of the world's land mass not have caused deforestation and stripped their forests bare?
The sheer incongruity of that should have alerted the mass media to the uncomfortable scenario that environmental organizations like Greenpeace and CSPI are really proxies used in a cleverly planned and well coordinated trade war against palm oil.
In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, unless the green groups like CSPI, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth take stock and realize that their unjustified actions against palm oil are also, like the America of recent vintage, unlikely to win friends and influence people. In fact, if they continue in this vein, their real motives will eventually be stripped bare and they will inevitably, be exposed as environmental fraudsters who ostensibly are trying to save the earth but are probably more interested in greening their own pockets! THE END
--
Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.
The TRUTH Foundation is an international network of social conscience and cooperation among peoples in industry, government, academia and the ordinary global consuming public, strengthening the forces devoted to respect, justice and equality for a more just and sustainable world and for global peace.