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Tsk, listen to what we say, don’t watch what we do

One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 250 miles to work by plane, despite the environmental group’s campaign to curb air travel, it has emerged.

For we are the international elite telling you all what to do, not mere peasantry who have to do it ourselves.

28 thoughts on “Tsk, listen to what we say, don’t watch what we do”

  1. My favourite bit…

    “I think there is a line there. Honesty and integrity to the values that are at the heart of the good you’re trying to do in the world cannot be allowed to slip away. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve crossed that line here at Green peace. ”

    Far not, Our great judgement has determined we remain brimming with honesty and integrity.

  2. Nothing’s too good for the workers .. ummm, I mean, environmental warriors!

    The well-paid senior members of these so-called ‘charities’ are fast becoming the modern equivalent of the fat cat union bosses of old. We already know their politics are around the same area on the spectrum.

  3. “currently made the round trip about twice a month”. Shame there wasn’t enough space in your post for that info; because about twice a month isn’t the normal meaning of the word “commuting”. Still, if you need a word to have a different meaning to its usual one, you can just twist it and not worry, no?

  4. Shame there wasn’t enough space in your post for that info; because about twice a month isn’t the normal meaning of the word “commuting”.

    That would make it worse. Asking somebody to do a 4-5 hour drive or 5-6 hour train ride 3-4 times per week is a bit much. Asking them to do it twice per month is quite different, and in the initial reports of this Greenpeace tried to make out his trips were more frequent for precisely this reason.

  5. Incidentally, when I was in Australia I met a guy who was a marine systems engineer and joined up with Greenpeace to work on one of their vessels for ideological reasons. He discovered an organisation beset with ignorance, incompetence, and wastage – mainly because they employ people with the right ideological convictions but no other discernible talents, who care not one jot about pissing other peoples’ money away. He didn’t stay there long.

  6. Hey come on, how about they send the person on a bus journey. After all they tell us to use public transport rather than a car….

  7. Yes, Magnusw that was my favouirite bit as well.

    Honesty and integrity are important to Greenpeace and so it is not possible for them to be without these virtues. Even when they are being dishonest and their integrity has disappeared down the plughole, they are still, in their own minds, being virtuous.

    This is why it is not possible to argue with these people. Black is white when it suits them.

    All one can do is prosecute them to the full extent of the law when they commit their usual crimes.

    Unless, of course, you get the judge who said their criminal acts were lawful because they were committed on “ideological grounds”, which is as good as anything Himmler came up with.

  8. From the Mail:

    “In a statement online John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: ‘As for Pascal’s air travel. Well it’s a really tough one. Was it the right decision to allow him to use air travel to try to balance his job with the needs of his family for a while?

    ‘What kind of compromises do you make in your efforts to try to make the world a better place?

    ‘I think there is a line there. Honesty and integrity to the values that are at the heart of the good you’re trying to do in the world cannot be allowed to slip away. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve crossed that line here at Greenpeace.’

    And how does that same criteria not apply to someone trying to sell software in America or car parts to the Italians or anything else?

    The biggest problem with the green movement is that very few of its advocates will walk the walk, probably because what they advocate would actually look pretty terrible compared to modern living.

  9. @William C ‘Shame there wasn’t enough space in your post for that info’

    I suppose he could have reproduced the whole of the story, Will, but luckily there’s a link.

    Surprised you have the balls to show your face, what with the whole edifice crumbling around you. How much are they paying you?

    🙂

  10. The biggest problem with the green movement is that very few of its advocates will walk the walk, probably because what they advocate would actually look pretty terrible compared to modern living.

    That was/is ultimately the problem with the socialist movement: they all assumed they’d be Politburo members telling everyone else what to do instead of the peasants working in the fields.

  11. @William Connolley

    “Still, if you need a word to have a different meaning to its usual one, you can just twist it and not worry, no?”

    Don’t understand this: the paragraph was a quote from the Telegraph article, so if there was any twisting, it was by them? I understand you’re not averse to a degree of twisting of materials yourself by the way?

  12. “It must be the good thing to do, because it’s us doing it and we’re good, you mean?” Asked Granny Weatherwax, sarcastically.

  13. @HallowedBe, The tax in Lux is 43.6% vs 52% in Netherlands, so yes, Pascal Husting is a tax avoider.

  14. So, twice a month is fine. That’s the threshold everyone – if you take 24 flights or fewer a year you aren’t “destroying the Earth”.

  15. @Rob: 48 flights a year, actually, round trip and all. That’s lucky, anyway, ‘cos I need to balance my job with the needs of my family by having holidays abroad. I can probably manage fewer than two a month.

  16. William Connolley,

    > because about twice a month isn’t the normal meaning of the word “commuting”.

    Two things. Firstly, the only reason that the word “commuting” doesn’t usually imply “twice a month” is that most actual commutes don’t occur twice a month — but the word “commute” does simply mean “travel to and from work” and I hear people use it all the time to describe journeys they take at some non-standard frequency. I myself and a lot of my colleagues commute by plane weekly. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that that’s not really commuting.

    Secondly, so what? Greenpeace are campaigning to stop us plebs using air travel more than once or twice a year.

  17. Dennis The Peasant

    And yet Greenpeace would be baffled if I told them that even if I believed “climate change” (as that the term they’re using this week?) to be a fact, which I don’t, I really couldn’t give a fuck.

    The surest way to determine whether a crisis exists is to watch the behavior of those declaring the crisis. If it is business as usual with them, then what you have is a con game, not a crisis.

  18. At least after this, I can add Greenpeace to the long list of charities to which I decline to make any contributions without feeling any conscience pangs whatsoever.

  19. bloke (not) in spain

    Couple of points.
    Lux to Dam comes up at a bit over 5 hours, doing the trip by train or car. (Seems a lot for 400km by mostly autoroute. I regularly do the 450 to the Algarve in just over 4. Maybe an indication of the piece-of-shit is the Bruxelles rocade)
    Given time spent to & from airports, security & loading, flight time, the saving can’t be much more than an hour.

    Aircraft are very economical at cruise altitude & speed. A very large proportion of the fuel load is consumed in t/o, climb to altitude & descent to land. Very short haul ‘bus stop’ flights are probably the least fuel efficient & therefore “environmentally damaging” services airlines provide.

  20. Bloke in Costa Rica

    It’s like one of those irregular verb conjugations:
    I commute to work so I can spend more time with my family
    You have an excessive carbon footprint
    He is raping the planet with his frivolous carbon emission

  21. @BniS

    “Lux to Dam comes up at a bit over 5 hours”

    Assuming you don’t hit the Brussels and Antwerp ring around peak, it’s a lot less than that – unless (as an employee of Greenpeace) you are in a “racing green” smart car…;)

    “Given time spent to & from airports, security & loading”

    Yep, nails it for me…

  22. So Much for Subtlety

    bloke (not) in spain – “Lux to Dam comes up at a bit over 5 hours, doing the trip by train or car. (Seems a lot for 400km by mostly autoroute. I regularly do the 450 to the Algarve in just over 4. Maybe an indication of the piece-of-shit is the Bruxelles rocade)”

    NASA did a study a long time ago which showed that cars or trains were quicker for a lot of short haul routes once you take the commute to and from the airport into account. They said the distance was about 750 kilometres – more than that and it is sensible to fly. If this guy has to be at the airport two hours ahead, and has an hour to get to and another hour to get from the airport, there is no way that it makes sense to fly.

    I used to work with a guy who drove home to Switzerland. So it does depend on what you like and what you are used to. I still take a train from London to Edinburgh even though an air ticket is cheaper and a car is absolutely fine. It is stupid, but it is a habit. That is not even 750 km.

  23. One hopes there is no frequent flyer motivation here the benefit of which accrues personally to this person?

    And that he uses economy, not business, class which would make his sociopathic destruction of the planet even worse?

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