Back in December, I wrote a blog post about the importance of beef as the largest driver of deforestation. The following month, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council wrote a blog on their site, TheOilPalm.org, arguing that my blog proved that palm oil had been unfairly blamed for deforestation, and demanding an apology. Here’s a comment explaining why they’re wrong:
“When I read the post by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board concerning my blog about the importance of beef as the leading driver of deforestation, I recalled a lesson that I learned many, many years ago. I’m now 67 years old, which means that it has been more than six decades since my parents taught it to me. It was simple: when I did something wrong, I couldn’t excuse it by saying that someone else had done something worse. I had to take responsibility for my own actions, no matter what anyone else did.
As I explained in my original blog, new data shows the large role of beef production, particularly in Latin America, as a cause of tropical deforestation. Does this mean that we no longer need to be concerned about deforestation for oil palm production in Malaysia? Does the climate impact of deforestation in the Amazon mean that the destruction of peat swamps in southeast Asia no longer causes any global warming pollution? Does the threat to jaguars and tapirs in South America somehow protect orangutans and rhinos on the other side of the planet?
Of course not. The threats to the environment, the climate and biodiversity from oil palm production in Malaysia are not diminished in the least by the parallel threats from beef production in the Americas. One does not excuse the other. On the contrary, they combine to make the global danger even worse.
This kind of argument is similar to something we’ve been seeing in recent weeks in Washington, which goes by the name “what-about-ism.” When the new government does something egregious on one issue, instead of defending its actions it responds by attacking its critics on some other issue. For example: the courts have found the current administration’s ban on immigrants from Muslim countries to be unconstitutional—well, what about the previous administration’s deportations of immigrants from Mexico?
Few of us have found this kind of blame-shifting persuasive, and I doubt the Malaysian Palm Oil Board’s arguments about beef will be any more convincing. Environmental destruction in one part of the world doesn’t justify it in any other part of the world, whether it’s larger, smaller, or simply different. The destruction of tropical forests by all the drivers of deforestation—beef, palm oil, soy and timber—is a threat to the climate that we all depend on, and thus to people everywhere.”
You may wonder why this comment is posted here rather than on the MPOC web site to which it’s replying. The answer is, because they wouldn’t post it. I submitted this comment on their blog site on Monday, March 13, in full anticipation that it would be published immediately, and when it wasn’t, I sent a followup message two days later asking what was causing the delay. But it’s now a month later and nothing has happened. The comment hasn’t been posted, nor has there even been the courtesy of a reply. That’s why it’s here.