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As an "advocacy group" Greenpeace actively and aggressively campaign against nuclear power with a fervour that they don't even apply to campaigns against fossil

As an "advocacy group" Greenpeace actively and aggressively campaign against nuclear power with a fervour that they don't even apply to campaigns against fossil fuel power, despite it (coal in particular) being many orders of magnitude worse than nuclear on every environmental metric. I'm not usually prone to conspiracy theorising, but if I were Russia in the 2000s and 2010s, I'd be throwing lots of money at Greenpeace to get France, Germany etc to shut down their nuclear energy programs.

cgrealy 4y ago
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the point at hand. Whether you agree or disagree with this stance is completely irrelevant. My point was that Greenpeace don't make environmental policy, the same way the EFF does not write privacy legislation.
- simondotau 4y ago
  I think the line between making and influencing policy is blurrier than you are inferring. Furthermore, it's important to appreciate that reality on the ground isn't just defined by legislation, it's also defined by a desire by private entities to avoid visible, distracting clashes with entities like Greenpeace.
  - cgrealy 4y ago
    That argument could be made in the case of massive monied lobbying, like the NRA, the fossil fuel industry, medical insurance, etc, but neither Greenpeace nor the EFF have anything like that kind of clout. The government (especially in the US) are perfectly happy to go against Greenpeace or the EFF. In fact, it’s a badge of honour for a subset of idiot on the right (“drill baby drill”, etc)
onphonenow 4y ago
Actually, they also go against apple pretty hard, but if you look at Apple phones for example relative to the markeplace at large, the mfg's from other companies have much worse records on almost every measure (social, child labor, privacy, enviro) and greenpeace doesn't say a peep. So it's clearly at times a weird attention / marketing thing more than any real analysis of the relative strength of phone brands in various dimensions. The irony of the Greenpeace anti-apple stuff is in terms of secondary markets and device support, apple historically has crushed competitors. This has pretty significant impacts on things like waste - the folks Greenpeace say nothing on basically drop support when device ships, and sometimes ships with outdated software to start. Apple is on the relative other end of spectrum there. So it's seriously kind of weird.

cgrealy 4y ago

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the point at hand. Whether you agree or disagree with this stance is completely irrelevant. My point was that Greenpeace don't make environmental policy, the same way the EFF does not write privacy legislation.

simondotau 4y ago
I think the line between making and influencing policy is blurrier than you are inferring. Furthermore, it's important to appreciate that reality on the ground isn't just defined by legislation, it's also defined by a desire by private entities to avoid visible, distracting clashes with entities like Greenpeace.
- cgrealy 4y ago
  That argument could be made in the case of massive monied lobbying, like the NRA, the fossil fuel industry, medical insurance, etc, but neither Greenpeace nor the EFF have anything like that kind of clout. The government (especially in the US) are perfectly happy to go against Greenpeace or the EFF. In fact, it’s a badge of honour for a subset of idiot on the right (“drill baby drill”, etc)

onphonenow 4y ago

Actually, they also go against apple pretty hard, but if you look at Apple phones for example relative to the markeplace at large, the mfg's from other companies have much worse records on almost every measure (social, child labor, privacy, enviro) and greenpeace doesn't say a peep. So it's clearly at times a weird attention / marketing thing more than any real analysis of the relative strength of phone brands in various dimensions. The irony of the Greenpeace anti-apple stuff is in terms of secondary markets and device support, apple historically has crushed competitors. This has pretty significant impacts on things like waste - the folks Greenpeace say nothing on basically drop support when device ships, and sometimes ships with outdated software to start. Apple is on the relative other end of spectrum there. So it's seriously kind of weird.