There is a sucker born every day, according to legend and of course there are many confidence tricksters around who are all too ready to relieve them of their wealth.

Two main levers of confidence tricksters are gullibility and greed. They will exploit the incautious and the naive and offer something for nothing as an appeal to our natural desires.

There are more con tricks than days in the year. The ingenuity of confidence tricksters -- and the gullibility of Joe Public, would require a book of such prodigious length that it would dwarf the holy books on this planet.

For a scam that’d eclipse all scams, indeed a scam that’d prove to be the scam of this century, we need look no further than the “global warming scams” perpetuated by misguided weather scientists and dishonest environmental organizations, potently yet unwittingly propagated by the incautious, unsuspecting and innocent media publications and newswires of this world.

What makes this scam all the more sinister is the fact that it exploits not greed, but the gullibility and ironically, the altruistic desire of governments, corporations and the public to do good, to “save the world”, so to speak!  

For the weather scientists, invoking an issue like global warming translates into increased funding for their research programs.  The environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth (FOE) motives are, to quite some greater extent, no less avaricious!  Falling over each other to champion this cause of global warming, no one and nothing is spared.  So long as the funds continue to roll in to fund their operations and the lavish lifestyle of their office bearers, even palm oil has not been spared the literal assault and battery of these chameleonic organizations, dressed in the altruistic cloak of social conscience and public charity.

Many of the world’s so-called distinguished leaders, illustrious print media and eminent scientists have been quick to weigh in, some purely misled and misguided but others sinisterly riding the crest of the environmental movement for their own selfish reasons, exploiting this very human and altruistic need to “save the world”.  Al Gore has divined that the threat of global warming, has resulted from human production of greenhouse gasses and is “the most serious problem that our civilization faces!”  We have to wonder where he places nuclear proliferation, rising ethnic tensions and the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.

A media chorus, led by such erstwhile prestigious organizations as the New York Times, the Public Broadcasting System, and Scientific American has fanned the fear of climate change.

Just recently, the cosmetics producer Lush is also jumping on the band wagon, setting up a forum to find alternatives to palm oil, a crop that they allege is unsustainable but that is still found in many everyday products such as soap and moisturizers. Aligning themselves with Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth (FOE), Lush argues that palm oil production involves “highly destructive practices in places such Malaysia and Indonesia, where they say that forest is cleared to make way for land to grow the crop.”

However, as the Palm Oil Truth Foundation has shown, nothing could be further from the truth, especially where Malaysia is concerned.  Apart from being the prime mover for the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), Malaysia has long pursued sustainable planting policies.  Much of the palm oil produced in Malaysia are grown on legitimate agricultural land or on previously logged over areas.  In fact, Malaysia introduced Environmental Impact Assessment procedures for all developmental projects in 1988.  Promulgating and enforcing environmental friendly measures under various laws such as the Environmental Quality Act, the Land Conservation Act and the National Forestry Act “to minimize the impact of the growing population and human activities relating to mineral exploration, deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, tourism, and development of other resources, on the environment,” Malaysia had shown the foresight and leadership in promoting sound environmental practices for some 20 years now.

Even then says Andrew Butler, Campaign Manager for Lush: "If everyone reduced their use of palm oil by 50% and boycotted any biofuels using it, then it could be a sustainable oil. There's not enough time to sit and pontificate - the public need to put pressure on manufacturers now."  Calling the forum “Actively Seeking Alternatives to Palm (ASAP)” and claiming that it has already attracted interest from a handful of small soap and food businesses, Butler hopes that major retailers will engage with the forum too.

However, the big manufacturers appear to have no intention to drop palm oil.  Instead, the likes of Unilever, Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury's and Marks and Spencer want to continue working with the industry-led Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Given the Malaysian track record in embracing sustainable planting and environmental friendly practices for 2 decades now, it certainly calls into question the motives behind these baseless attempts to demonize palm oil, a legitimate agricultural product of a developing country.  Could it be that this product is proving too much of a handful for the competing oil seeds of the developed world such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower oil?  THE END.