Patrick Moore

Patrick Moore is a former environmentalist who now works as a spin doctor for corporations engaged in enviromental destruction. Much of his woork is conducted through the PR firm he founded: Greenspirit Strategies. Moore has worked for the farmed salmon Industry, the logging industry, the nuclear and biotechnology industries among others.

Pro-Nuclear

Moore is a speaker at the march 2006 FORATOM hosted second biannual pro-nuclear conference. It is being sold under the banner "Nuclear energy: Riding the Winds of Change".

The conference chairman is Mike Parker from BNFL. Other speakers along with Moore include Giles Chicester MEP; Pierre Gadonneix, the chairman of EDF and Andris Piebalds EU Commissioner for Energy.[1]

Pro-GM

'GREENPEACE FOUNDER SUPPORTS BIOTECHNOLOGY' ran the headline on the AgBioworld press release about Patrick Moore's support for AgBioWorld's 'Declaration in Support of Agricultural Biotechnology'.

Although the headline proclaimed Moore to be Greenpeace's 'founder', it's opening sentence changed his background to 'ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace'. A paragraph later Moore's status was reduced yet further to ' a founding member of Greenpeace'.

The press release went on to say that despite many years of involvement with the organisation, 'Recently... he broke with Greenpeace, accusing it of abandoning science and following agendas that have little to do with saving the Earth.'

The biotech industry flew Patrick Moore to appear as one of its expert witnesses in front of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in New Zealand. His only 'expertise', however, was his connection with Greenpeace.

Press articles have also portrayed Moore and his support for GM in terms of the recent disillusion with Greenpeace of its founder. But far from leaving Greenpeace recently, Moore quit almost two decades ago and he was never more than a founding member.

When asked why he opposed the campaign of concern over GM crops, Moore told New Scientist, 'I believe we are entering an era now where pagan beliefs and junk science are influencing public policy. GM foods and forestry are both good examples where policy is being influenced by arguments that have no basis in fact or logic.'

To some, Moore's pro-GM stance seems less part of a road-to-Damascus conversion away from ultra-leftism, pagan beliefs and junk science, and more part of a career trajectory over the last two decades that has been industry-symathetic, and often industry-funded.