VICTORY: Welcome Baby Steps by Greenpeace and FSC on Ending Old-Growth Forest Logging

Come together to end old-growth forest logging

Reflections upon having taken on Greenpeace and other lesser FSC old-growth logging apologists over their greenwash of old-growth forest logging and winning, and why 66% is the next 350.

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

“All we ever wanted was for the good-guys Greenpeace and FSC to stop logging old-growth forests.” ― Dr. Glen Barry

Greenpeace does many things well, such as photogenic posing with celebrities and pithy slogans on banners. But this does not include admitting error or treating critics with dignity and respect. For the past decade my small organization EcoInternet has alerted the world to the fact that Greenpeace founded and for years directed the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – an organization that promotes industrially logging Earth’s last large old-growth forests – and spearheaded a global campaign to get them to stop. After years of stonewalling, turned slowing to embracing our policies, this week they promised to stop logging intact forest landscapes, potentially a substantial victory for the real forest movement.

After tens of thousands of people around the world have over the years protested NGO involvement in FSC old-growth logging, we have successfully pressured Greenpeace and FSC into taking the first step and admitting they have a problem. After twenty years of gorging themselves upon logging old-growth forests – by our measure destroying an area two times the size of Texas for consumer products such as toilet paper and lawn furniture – all while accepting money for forest protection (gotta admit they have chutzpah); this past Friday Greenpeace and FSC made vague promises at FSC’s general assembly to stop logging old-growth forests.

After years of ridicule and contempt directed at their critics, FSC and Greenpeace did exactly what we have demanded (without admitting to having done wrong) and pledged to someday really soon stop logging old-growth rich intact forest landscapes. Gandhi was oh so right on how crazy ideas – like forest protectors shouldn’t log old-growth – eventually, after much disparagement, end up becoming self-evident truths that can’t be denied.

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