Booker On The RPSB & WWF
By Paul Homewood
Booker on the RSPB and WWF:
It is intriguing to contrast the current agendas of some of our more celebrated environmental charities with the aims of those who first set them up. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), for instance, originated in 1889 with some Victorian ladies wanting “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds” – which for decades was what the RSPB very laudably did.
Yet its latest publication – a report headed “The RSPB’s 2050 Energy Vision” – says little about birds. Not only does it call for Britain’s target for cutting CO2 emissions to be raised from an improbable 80 per cent to an impossible 100 per cent, it also says “our research shows the UK could have six times the current level of onshore wind turbines”. Since we already have 5,500 of them, the RSPB would thus be happy to see 25,000 more littering our countryside.
Yet studies show that the prime victims of turbine blades are birds and bats, notably birds of prey that like to hunt over just the kind of landscapes that are most profitable for wind-farm owners. The Spanish Society for Ornithology found that Spain’s 18,000 turbines kill up to six million birds a year, averaging as many as 300 birds per turbine. This confirmed the findings of a scientific paper 20 years ago, which discovered that each German turbine killed on average 309 birds a year. More recently, a German government ornithologist estimated that every year they kill between 200 and 300 red kites alone. One vast Californian wind farm killed so many birds, including many rare eagles, it was shut down.
In Britain we might expect no one to be keener to carry out similar studies than the RSPB. Instead, it calls for thousands more bird-killing wind farms, while blandly assuring us that these should only be built “in harmony with nature”. Those Victorian ladies must be swivelling in their graves.
Then consider the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), founded in 1961 by Prince Philip, Prince Bernhard and leading conservationists to protect the world’s wildernesses and endangered species. Today it has become the richest environmental lobby group in the world, thanks to its obsession with climate change and climate-related projects on which it is funded to advise by governments and international bodies – including the EU and the UN.
It is not surprising that Prince Philip, having failed to save the WWF from being taken over by its new climate agenda, sadly withdrew from the organisation he co-founded
But some of these are seriously controversial, such as a UN-sponsored scheme to evict thousands of villagers in Tanzania for the damage their primitive farming was doing to the world’s largest mangrove swamp, because it “sequesters” large quantities of CO2. Now Survival International reveals that the WWF has become the official partner of a giant French logging company that is deforesting 2,000 square miles of Cameroon rainforest, home to a huge variety of wildlife and tribes of Baka “pygmies”.
The company’s maps show the Baka villages as just “poachers’ camps”, soon to disappear. Even the EU has condemned every mass-logging operation in Cameroon as illegal. It is not surprising that Prince Philip, having failed to save the WWF from being taken over by its new climate agenda, sadly withdrew from the organisation he co-founded with such very different aims 55 years ago. Now the President of WWF-UK is his son, Prince Charles.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Unfortunately it is yet another Booker piece that is without “Comments”, so no way to see how it is received by the readers.
Looks like all the Telegraph stuff has dropped Disqus
Comments for the article are on the Telegraph FB page here
– I got that URL by going to the comments on the Telegraph FB page finding the story, then put the mouse over the top LEFT “5 hours” then clicking which opens the comment in a clean page.
So you need Facebook to see or make comments.
“So you need Facebook to see” NO
“or make comments.” – YES
You could have just clicked to find out.
And Yes so far the Tele FB hasn’t been a great place for comments, it’s much better if the comments are on the newspage itself.
Tho on US sites you get 1,000 noisy people clouding the good points.
More fromTelegraph “Paint your homes white to protect from heatwaves, officials warn”
set of comments for the article on FB here
oops link above goes to the story
– This is to the comments
An “unbearable 24.5C”?
I wonder how all those millions of holidaymakers who travel to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and even warmer holiday spots survive…
Turbine Wind Farm Terrorism?
About the kill counts from turbines:
It has never been clear to me how these are done or how accurate they are. Being somewhat of a skeptic, I would like to know the particulars of each report. For example, does a person monitor, say 30 turbines, from hidden sites for days, weeks, or a year? Or does someone go out on Sunday afternoons in April and walk around looking? Alternatively, are these informed guesses?
While I think wind power is a stupendously stupid idea, bat and bird deaths are not the main reason.
~~~~~
@stewgreen – – quote from someone
“… we start to die when the temperature reaches an unbearable 24.5C”
Could that be a mis-print? Even if 44° was meant, this is not a killing temperature (unless body temperature). Next weekend in Southcentral Washington State there will be widespread deaths as the Temp is expected to exceed 32°C.
You’re right it’s likely to a typo or something.
But I was thinking do they mean stable weak people start to die at that temperature ..like already sick grannies.
“According to a 1958 NASA report, people can live indefinitely in environments that range between roughly 40 degrees F and 95 degrees F (4 and 35 degrees C), – more and graph
“The document, …says temperatures need only to rise to 24.5C for people to start dying from the heat. It was published in May 2015 but healthcare professionals and the public are being reminded to take note of its advice again as this summer approaches.”
– So another attempt to scare us
The NHS Heatwave Plan 2015 PDF only mentions 24.5C once with no source quoted
“24.5°C Temperature at which any excess deaths may first become apparent”
Is the 24C fig really sourced from ONE study, in ONE OLD NHS maternity hospital over 2 years ?
The logic of a bird preservation society advocating turbines is the exact same as the Vietnam era military logic of “destroying the village to save the village” – the greater danger (global warming or communism) must be defeated before ANY village can be saved long term.
The logic is unassailable but for the assumption that the greater danger – here, C02 induced global warming – will destroy the environment, killing all birds, not just the turbine-affected species. Just as the victory of North Vietnam in reunifying Vietnam did not destroy Vietnamese as a whole, so too the global warming hysteria will (IMO) be found excessive. I predict that 20 years from now there will be a counter-attack on turbines for their bird killing, the new logic being that some other form of green energy is better than turbines, so we don’t need the ‘choppers anymore.
Holistic thinking was supposed to be the philosophical end result of sensitive environmentalism (and socialism). In practice, “holistic” means “taking into consideration the OTHER things that I think are more important than yours”.
I think it is appropriate when discussing RSPB and WWF to list both the amounts and the proportions of their funding attributable to public / state funding.
The RSPB was getting at least £20,000,000 a year from the UK state … The WWF’s income from governments (i.e. us) is much, much more that that….
The piper’s paymaster calls the tune…. – the many entryist lefty green agitators in both outfits have no trouble spending OPM.
Prince Charles is heading the WWF ? So it’s in safe hands then ?
Reblogged this on The Road to Revelation and commented:
Christopher Booker telling it like it is…as usual!