Greenpeace head admits false info, calls for no economic growth

The out-going head of Greenpeace International, Gerd Leipold, recently made some very interesting statements, first admitting that his organization was wrong to invent a preposterous dooms-day climate change scenario, and secondly, stating that "we" should end economic growth in order to slow global warming.

Prison Planet reports on Greenpeace's claim that the entirety of the ice caps would melt in 20 years:

In an interview with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Leipold initially attempted to evade the question but was ultimately forced to admit that Greenpeace had made a “mistake” when it said Arctic ice would disappear completely in 20 years.

The claim stems from a July 15 Greenpeace press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” in which it is stated that global warming will lead to an ice-free Arctic by 2030.

Sackur accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” based on “exaggeration and alarmism,” pointing out that it was “preposterous” to claim that the Greenland ice sheet, a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle that has survived much warmer periods in history, would completely melt when it had stood firm for hundreds of thousands of years.

“There is no way that ice sheet is going to disappear,” said Sackur.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” Leipold was eventually forced to admit.

Now that's a big oops. Will the environmentalists admit that they were wrong on all of their other absurd predictions?

Despite the fact that Greenpeace has put out fake global warming information, we are still expected to take seriously their key policy prescription: suppress economic growth. So, bring in poverty as a trade-off for slowing the warming of the earth [that is, if CO2 actually causes global warming, a claim hotly disputed by many scientists (also here w/ several links at the bottom of the article) and a notion not supported by Americans]. On the matter of Greenpeace's call for supressing economic growth, Climate Depot reports:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has issued a call for the suppression of economic growth in the U.S. and Western nations. Under questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the August 5, 2009 “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said “the lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model.

Excerpt from NotEvilJustWrong.com: “Leipold told the BBC that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.”

“We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold told the BBC.

“If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary,” Leipold explained.

You can watch the full BBC interview with Leipold here or here.

This is not the first time an environmentalist has called for economic recession as a solution . As I previously posted under the heading, Maurice Strong, global warming, and economic collapse:

"The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. [...] Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” --Maurice Strong, co-creator of Kyoto Protocol

Our economic demise. Is it part of the motivation behind the climate cult? Kyoto Protocol, of course, is the climate treaty that punishes wealthier nations for their "carbon footprint," but gives developing nations a pass, leading many to accuse Kyoto-promoters of attempting to lower the standard of living of developed nations, accomplishing some degree of a worldwide socialistic economic leveling. Strong's quotation above seems to support those accusations.