A story on the bright side of environmentalism for this morning. I’ll get to the negativity in a little bit
When Kellogg’s announced this week that it is moving to limit the deforestation caused by the palm oil it uses to make Frosted Flakes, Keebler cookies, Rice Krispies, and Girl Scout cookies, it represented an enormous achievement for two 15-year-old girls from Michigan.
You may remember Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen from my article two weeks ago, “Are Girl Scout cookies killing orangutans?” They’ve been working for several years to get Girl Scouts USA to switch from palm oil to more planet-friendly and healthier alternatives like canola or olive oil.
Their campaign started as an orangutan research project to earn their Girl Scouts Bronze Award. In their investigation, they discovered that the main threat to the orangutans’ survival, as well as other endangered wildlife like Sumatran tigers, Sumatran rhinoceroses, and pygmy elephants, was the clearing and burning of Southeast Asia’s rainforests for palm oil, an additive in cookies, crackers, and cosmetics. So imagine their surprise when they found out that their beloved Girl Scouts were selling palm oil.
Good for them. That is an excellent achievement for two 15 year olds, and one that truly makes a difference to the environment and wildlife. They should be offered kudos and congratulations for seeing an important environmental issue, and, rather than just complaining, going out and doing something about it, and doing it in a ration, well thought out manner, which achieved a positive result.
Yet, once again, Grist forgets to mention something, the same something I mentioned back when I blogged the original story on the two Girl Scouts: namely, that a huge use for Palm Oil is bio-fuel, not cookies and other food. The various types of forests and wildlife are disappearing, well, being systematically cut down and hunted, in order to create palm oil plantations. As I wrote back in February
The climate alarmists created an environment where companies rushed in to do everything they could to make money developing and offering bio-fuels, and, as usual, the results were worse than the actual issue.
But, we can obviously blame…..Patterico for living a modern life in the urbanized and heavy CO2 outputting area of LA.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
A little info, palm oil was once listed as very bad for your health. Now it is listed as very good. It is one of the better tasting oils and keeps food fresher than other oils.
Additional information, nothing, and I mean nothing that you eat influences your health in anyway. That is if it is not making you excessively fat. But the old issue of fat in the diet being associated with heart disease is now a myth.
Some things are better left alone- like girl scout cookies. And Frosted Flakes.
It’s like the New Coke- we saw how long that lasted! You shouldn’t fix it if it isn’t broken. Instead, how about you don’t eat a whole box of thin mints (or Frosted Flakes) in one serving?
But, leftists who don’t like to have or expect personal responsibility, would love to see food companies lose sales because they’r emade to follow a new world order filled with food police.
Oh, and by the way, anyone who thinks that this will save the planet, is a poster child for euthanasia.
Again, I have to agree with the outcome. The production of palm oil thru deforestation is causing needless environmental degradation and species loss, thanks mostly to climate morons policies. I like what he 2 girls have accomplished