 Let’s make things simple. No fluff, no excess fat, just lean facts. As a whole, Malaysia’s real estate covers roughly 330,000kmsq. That’s about the size of Vietnam and just slightly bigger than Norway. In a list of countries measured by land size, Malaysia is 67th largest in the world. Now imagine something half that size. Something in the order of 165,000kmsq. Which of the world’s countries would fit this geographic mould? It’s about the size of Tunisia, a country that, in 2009, was ranked the most competitive economy in Africa. 165,000kmsq can also be represented by two Austrias. Or stretch your imagination to this: as much as 240 Singapores bolted together side to side. That’s quite a large area. In Malaysia, that same area is all tropical rainforest. Pristine, tropical and permanent rainforest, where trees bask under the scorching heat of the sun and wild animals roam, hunt and habituate. And every monsoon, this rainforest is marinated with rainfall. That area has been untouched and will remain so for many years to come, with all likelihood that not one building, not a single strip of road, not even a house can ever be built on it.
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 A spotless white sign with perfect red lettering caught my attention: “Gutters and Windows—Quality Work Guaranteed,” while we were out for a family drive. The sign was pristine, but I feared the house and barn directly behind it might collapse at any moment. The paint was peeling, the windows were cracked, and the gutters were nonexistent!
In many ways, the cabal of “green” and “civil society” groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE), the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the WWF and even zoos such as the Melbourne Zoo and Auckland Zoo are like that, concerned only with advertising but neglecting the true agenda.
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 John, Mary and their two sons were holidaying in a cabin in Kansas when a tornado touched down. Mary described her experience to me several years later.
“My husband and older son were some distance away, but my younger son and I took cover in the cabin. We heard a sound like a hundred railroad cars and instinctively dropped to the floor in a tucked position. The cabin began to break apart, and I shut my eyes because of all the flying debris. It felt like I was going up in an elevator and then was shot into the air. I landed in a lake and clung to debris to stay afloat.”
Miraculously, both her husband and two sons survive unscathed!
When I think of the situation that palm oil has faced for the past couple of decades in which the commodity is subjected to vile and patently false allegations, I can’t help observing how palm oil had survived all the negative press thrown at it.
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 I received a letter some years ago from a man whom I had never met, telling me that a note I had sent to a nearby friend had found its way to him, and it had encouraged him in a time of weariness and dark despair. The friend to whom I had sent the note sent it to a friend, who, in turn, sent it to a friend, and so on, until it was sent to the man who wrote to me.
It was Frigyes Karinthy, a Hungarian author who wrote a short story 80 years ago called “Chain-Links,” in which he proposed the idea that any two individuals in the world are connected through, at most, five acquaintances. The thesis has been revived today and is usually described as “Six Degrees of Separation.” It’s an unproven theory, of course. But there is a dynamic at work that links us to others around the world.
When I contemplate on the way the palm oil industry has gone about to address the blunderbuss attacks launched against it by a cabal of “green” and “civil society” groups like such as the oddly named Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE), the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the WWF and even zoos such as, wait for this… the Melbourne Zoo, the Auckland Zoo and the Philly Zoo, I can’t help but be impressed with the industry’s calm and level headed approach to the blast of ill will directed against it by these “green” and ‘civil society” groups.
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