About the Green Freedom Campaign
In the last decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented reduction of poverty and an increase of wealth, developments made possible, in part, by giving more countries and their people access to the global marketplace. This is put increasingly at risk by those who wish to stifle growth, limit opportunity and promote policies which are harmful to the accumulation of wealth and an increase in living standards for people globally. While there are many contributors to this misguided cause, the ‘Green Freedom’ campaign focuses on the main culprit – the Green Movement – a movement that has achieved stunning success in the last two decades.
The Green Movement, during this time, has focused on promoting their worldview, one that claims environmental conservation should trump all other economic, social and political concerns. To realize this objective, the movement has endeavored to: target leading corporations that do not adhere to its agenda; pressure Western governments to erect trade barriers against emerging markets; and produce research and analysis to shape the international environmental debate in favor of its policy goals. Although successfully deploying its trademark scare tactics time and again, the Green Movement’s accomplishments have not only done little to help the environment, but also, at a time of great economic opportunity, have succeeded in keeping many people in the developing world poor.
This particular brand of environmentalism is a threat to our globalizing world, and the ‘Green Freedom’ campaign aims to stem the tide of harmful environmental policies and trends by promoting, producing and publicizing reliable research and commentary in the environmental and economic fields. We believe that taking action to counter misguided environmental policy and activism is not only a demand of science and economics, an enterprise that depends on concrete evidence and transparency, but also an ethical demand. Despite tremendous improvements in environmental technology used to increase the quality of air, water and food, claims for unwarranted and harmful environmental action are on the rise. While the need for a healthy earth and a clean environment is undisputed, we should be careful to group all environmental endeavors under one affirmative banner. Unfounded claims must be challenged, and questionable solutions that deter rather than promote wealth creation must be investigated.
The Green Movement should be about freedom; freedom to question claims put forth by NGOs, to counter dominant NGOs, to offer advice about how to approach global issues and to counter prevailing claims in the field. Being green is about being free to question, to create, to fix, to grow and to innovate.
The ‘Green Freedom’ campaign is guided by two principles:
1. Support for Free Trade, Free Enterprise and Competitiveness – Barriers to free trade will hinder economic development in the developing world. Unfortunately, green NGOs recognize the strength of their position in advocating for the restriction of free trade, as companies in the EU and US struggle with faltering competitiveness amidst the global economic crisis and the rise in economic strength of emerging economies. Free trade of goods and services should instead be encouraged to provide the most cost-effective and optimal benefits to developed and developing countries.
2. Support for Ethical Corporate Social Responsibility – Green NGOs’ pressuring of major corporations to cave to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) demands undermines the core business activities of these companies, losing sight of the fact that it is corporations, not ‘green’ activists, that provide the jobs and prosperity that enable the poor in developing countries to achieve higher standards of living.
One example of the Green Movement campaign, promoted under the guise of environmental stewardship, is the debate on climate change, agriculture and forestry. In the name of “saving nature”, it has exerted immense pressure on political actors and businesses. The effects of this dubious lobbying have spilled beyond the EU’s borders, now dictating development policies in emerging economies. If they have their way, these policies would raise serious economic development questions for millions living in tropical nations, and sentence them to a life of destitution and despair. Our ‘Green Freedom’ campaign seeks to counter the baseless claims made by the well-funded Green Movement, to point out the damage done by these policies to people at home and around the world, and to promote a balanced approach to environmental issues based on sound research and science rather than propaganda.
