We are fast approaching Halloween, followed shortly thereafter by Thanksgiving and Christmas. Chocolates are used as gifts and treats of course. Well last year around Easter, some (I hope) well-intended people started conspiring to affect positive cahnges to the Rain Forest. They targeted the use of palm oil in chocolates. Palm oil is healthier than most, and one group or another will protest using it or not using it.
Palm trees are harvested and animals suffer in terms of not having shaded habitat and food for a season in that particular area. Animals do however migrate when there are fires and other forms of destruction and make a home in another place quite well. People producing palm oil would be shooting themselves in the foot or committing personal economic suicide if they were not rotating their crops and orchards or plantations, because they would run out of plants and hence oil, and therefore profits/livelihood/ability to sustain their own lives.
So it is in the best interest of the palm farmers to keep growing and producing a healthy oil that replaces unhealthy oils. So we have two choices. Stop palm oil production or use it responsibly. I am of the latter opinion. Plus, someone who REALLY cares would get educated and come up with a better oil or a more dynamic solution to “fixing” the problem than simply whining about it or them.
Well, some have decided to do far more than whine and it is not even a choice between good, better or best. This is their choice to be destructive and take the righteousness of environmental stewardship down with it. Zealots will hurt our cause. They will cause economic damage to companies, stores and employees and perhaps even start altercations. They will give us all a bad name and then people will think environmental stewards are kooks. These Jim Jones types with brown shirt emotion and thoughtless rights vs (no) responsibility types, give the cause a bad name and harm the end result when the inevitable backlash occurs.
We should always marry the environment and the economy together and do things that blend “rights” with “responsibility.” This is what these folks did last year (or what they proposed to do and agitate) as posted on Planet Green.
” Wishing to break the cycle, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has created a way for us to send Hershey’s a message to remove palm oil from the chocolate-y mix. Dubbing it “Hershey’s Week of Action,” they’re asking us to head out to our nearby markets selling Hershey’s brand Easter candy and stamp the products with stickers that say, “Warning: Product May Contain Rainforest Destruction.”
No solution, just an adult temper tantrum. Please find healthy ways to get your message out and produce solution-oriented positive actions. Please help the cause of Environmental Stewardship and not perform some sort of fundamentalist crusade, jihad or scorched earh policy that harms everyone and is nearly terrorism. Please! For the Rain Forest and for the Animals be reasonable and a friend to ecological co-existance.
