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Meet Agnes Walton â a professional in playing down the facts and playing up the feelings.
Her name is Agnes Walton, and in her environmental fanaticism she makes Greta Thunberg look half-hearted and Al Gore look irresolute. Letâs start with her 2017 video for HBOâs VICE News Tonight, in which she noted that âmore than half of all consumer goodsâ contain palm oil â often labeled on packaging as âvegetable oilâ or âvegetable fatâ â and, over images of trees being felled and cute animals running for their lives, claimed that the growth of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia was causing âmassive deforestation,â âkilling the rainforest,â and âdriving forest species to the brink of extinction.â
Only one country, Walton said, had âtaken on the industry.â That country would be Norway, where, she explained, the entire population boycotted palm oil products; consequently, the substance was removed from all Norwegian food products. (I live in Norway, but somehow I entirely missed this peopleâs crusade.) Since Norwayâs population is so small, alas, this glorious local success âdidnât put a dent in the global market.â The only answer, then, instructed Walton, is for the rest of the world to follow Norwayâs example prontissimo â or consider itself responsible for a genocide of both flora and fauna.
Or check out Waltonâs video editorial from August of last year. In this one, produced for the New York Times, Walton warned of another existential dilemma: American lawns, which, she solemnly asserted, âare damaging our planet, ruining our health, and wasting our time.â Maintaining them depletes precious water and involves the use of dangerous fertilizers. And why should we want lawns, anyway? Walton flashed an image of the Stars and Stripes, and another of a wholesome-looking traditional white family (mom, dad, two sons) standing behind a white picket fence â thereby linking lawns to those two appalling phenomena, the American dream and middle-class suburban life…
