They use so many dirty tricks against us. Age-old dirty tricks too, like 'image magick'. Using symbolic abstractions to mesmerize us... to mystify us. The environmental NGOs who sell their 'brand' for the purpose of corporate greenwashing.are certainly deeply involved in such dark magic... attempting to distract us with their mindfucking trickery while our mother is raped and our children are robbed.

The Roundtable for Sustainable Soy, initiated by the World Wildlife Fund (World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF), is one such greenwashing effort and one that hits close to home as the event took place in Buenos Aires last week. The supposedly venerable behemoth of the environmental movement (with the cute panda logo) cuddled up with agribusiness titans for a few days in the ritzy Hilton Hotel; ostensibly hammering out agreements that will save the 'earth' while simultaneously feeding an ever-growing human population (and that human population's exponentially-growing energy demands). And while those with a deep ecological conscience are undoubtedly skeptical of the WWF and their corporate 'clients', many in the mainstream media (and consequently, the public served by that mass media) are taken in by the Wizard of Oz sort of smokescreen that is 'corporate greenwashing'.

Perhaps it's not an entirely self-serving venture on the part of the NGOs who have chosen to participate in the 'roundtable'... maybe it's not just a job for some well-meaning wage-slave, or an atonement by some socially-conscious socialite, or a tax write-off for some image-conscious corporation that doesn't produce anything... perhaps those involved really think that they're pursuing the best possible course for preserving what little is left of the New World's once-overwhelming biotic abundance while simultaneously advancing the human cultures that inhabit these continents. Most likely, it has a lot to do with the difficulty of leading an individual to a particular realization when his worldview & livelihood depend on denying that realization... In such situation people can formulate all sorts of convoluted justifications and convince themselves to believe all sorts of ridiculous things. History has certainly proven that.

Ironic that, at this critical juncture, 'we' ALL seem to recognize the need for 'sustainability', for an ecological consciousness... and we even try to direct our actions to those ends, but there are fundamental errors in our course... problems that aren't addressed by any hollow solutions that propose to grow 'the economy' while preserving 'the environment'.

Monocrop agriculture cannot be 'sustainable' (because of its resource-intensiveness and essential evolutionary instability)... commodity crop agriculture cannot be sustainable (due to inevitable market fluctuations and energy restrictions)... and an export-based agricultural economy is not sustainable because of ever-increasing fuel costs for transport, if for no other reason (though there are several other reasons).

What's cool is that so many people recognize this. By sitting down with demons like Cargill (and discussing biodiesel production while people starve after being driven from the land where giant monocrops of soy are grown) even the WWF's cute little panda bear loses his charm... and the organization that he represents squanders its remaining credibility. Even the president of Argentina recognizes the ecologically and socio-economically destructive nature of the soyization of South America, and she's made that point repeatedly in battling a highly publicized tax-rebellion by soy-enriched landowners. So, I guess the moral of this story is that when the president's stance toward a particular agricultural practice is more 'ecologically-informed' and radically demanding than the stance of your environmentalist NGO, then your environmentalist NGO is rapidly approaching the point of irrelevance. (Though, frankly, from my perspective, the NGO's involved in organizing and attending this Roundtable for Roundup-Ready Soy are long past the point of irrelevance and into the realm of despicable war profiteers.)

It's not 'responsible', from an ecological perspective, to grow crops in Argentina for consumption in China. It's not responsible to obliterate hundreds of thousands of acres of a highly diverse habitat in favor of chemically-treated monocultures of patented genetically-engineered crops. The WWF has compromised far too much, for far too long... they're trying to sell what was never theirs.

Industrial soy agriculture is 'responsible' for poverty, death, and destruction... and these NGOs who pay (and get paid) to sit with the heads of industry are not there to ameliorate the damage... they are apologists for the destroyers... they are collaborators. And people are seeing them for what they are.

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http://www.lasojamata.org/ -- La Soja Mata (Soy Kills)

http://www.lasojamata.org/node/141 -- La Soja Mata actions against the 'roundtable'

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0804/S00205.htm -- Withdraw NGO Support To Responsible Soy Roundtable

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/forests/our_solutions/responsi...