Day 284 - 22 Oct 96 - Page 33
1 stirs up much more fuss if you use rainforest rather than
2 tropical forest, then you are stuck with that really, are
3 you not? It has much more impact if you use rainforest,
4 they say. Then you are stuck with that.
5
6 MR. MORRIS: The point is, the words tropical forest and
7 rainforest are interchangeable so far as the public is
8 concerned.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, that is for me to decide.
11
12 MR. MORRIS: That is the way I understand it. And evidence
13 obviously --
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: One witness, I cut him short, but he got as
16 far as saying we use the word rainforest, and carefully
17 explained what we mean by rainforest.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: Yes, that is what I believe this leaflet does, it
20 says here 'lush green belt of incredibly beautiful tropical
21 forests around the equator'.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That could refer, could it not, to
24 rainforest proper, that particular eco system where it
25 produces its own clouds and its own rain.
26
27 MR. MORRIS: It does not limit it in any way, what it says is
28 that the lush green belt around the equator of tropical
29 forest... Tropical forest is what we are talking about.
30 'The one that supports a billion people dependent on water
31 flowing from those forests', et cetera et cetera. And
32 which the whole of the Amazonia, for example, would be part
33 of. Because of that referred to in the paragraph above.
34 If I note also, the hundred million years in Dr. Ratta's
35 statement about Sarado, which includes tropical forest as
36 well as other vegetation, he talks about a hundred billion
37 years of untouched development and so we have a concern
38 about diversity around the tropics, and that is really what
39 this is about. If lush green biodiverse vegetation is
40 destroyed within the tropics by the hamburger industry then
41 that is what this pamphlet is concerned about.
42
43 That is what Charles Secrett said the rainforest campaign
44 that he initiated, which put the whole subject on the map,
45 was about, was about all tropical forests. I doubt if a
46 great deal of public were aware about tropical forests
47 until around that time. It became a campaigning issue and
48 all our experts have given evidence on definition of their
49 area of concern and what rainforest and tropical forest
50 means to them. And not only did none of them agree with
51 McDonald's artificial construct of what rainforest means,
52 but I think they all strongly, strongly, opposed that
53 definition as being what the area of concern is when people
54 use the word 'rainforest'.
55
56 MR. JUSTICE BELL: To what extent am I, since English is my
57 native tongue, entitled to say I just can't see rainforest
58 including dry forest, even if it is within the tropics,
59 because the two are contradictions in terms, whatever any
60 expert tells me. If an expert tells me that dry forest is
