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NEWS: Foes of the earth (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 13:29:13 PST
From: Alan McGowen <alanm@klerk.cup.hp.com>
To: res-econ@unixg.ubc.ca
Cc: alanm@hpindbu.cup.hp.com
Subject: Foes of the earth (fwd)
Reposted from nwfor.
Alan McGowen
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_The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-environmental Organizations_
by Carl Deal. Berkeley: Odonian Press, 1993--95 pages, notes, index.
ISBN 1-878825-05-4, LC JA75.8.G77, US$ 5.00.
--Reviewed by Dale Wharton, February 1994
[Test Deleted]
...50 organizations deflect and usually defeat
efforts at conservation. The book lists addresses, officers, backers.
(Transnational corporations--TNCs--provide financial support.) The 50
recognize our concern. So they prudently camouflage their work.
Misleading tactics unite the diverse organizations. Example: they
claim that conserving resources and preserving ecosystems hurt the
economy. They favour the false theme that rich big-city treehuggers
threaten smalltown employment. The 50 usually profess that they, too,
care about Nature. "So don't be fooled by a green facade," warns Carl
Deal. He arranges the 50 organizations into six types.
1 PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS. PR is Type One. Its rank befits PR's
virtual conquest of the press. Corporate diplomacy now permeates
popular media, with press releases comprising about 40% of the "news."
In manipulating events, greenwashing aims to coopt or neutralize
activists. The fees enrich PR firms, some of them TNCs themselves.
Take Burson-Marsteller. Its 56 branches spread through 28 countries.
(B-M's Canadian chair, Allan Gotlieb, is also a deputy chair of David
Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and former ambassador to the USA.)
B-M does damage control and "issues management" for the likes of the
BC Forest Alliance (a "grassroots" disguise of B-M), MacMillan
Bloedel, Exxon, Union Carbide, General Motors, Hydro-Quebec, Procter &
Gamble, the Business Council for Sustainable Development, etc. Other
relationists to watch out for: Hill & Knowlton of New York,
Shandwick of London, and E. Bruce Harrison Co. of Washington DC. That
last one has specialized in "environmental communication" for 20
years. Its clients include the Chemical Manufacturers Assn., Monsanto
(asbestos), Waste Management, and Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn.
2 CORPORATE FRONT GROUPS. These outfits have two tasks. First,
divert and lull consumers. Pretend that we can go on destroying the
environment at this rate without severe consequences. Second, persuade
lawmakers to roll back unprofitable regulations. The National Wetlands
Coalition, for instance, drafted a law to restrict the definition of
wetlands (streams, ponds, lakes, swamps, marshes, coastal regions).
The law would compensate US property owners (usually corporations) for
any costs or financial loss from applying environmental regulations.
Two other examples are The Evergreen Foundation and BC Forest Alliance
(see PR firms). Their true message is that conservancy is unreasonable
and extreme, stems from bad science, and ignores the full social and
economic outcomes. (They neglect the loss of forestry jobs owing to
mechanization, overcutting, and export of minimally processed logs.)
3 THINK TANKS. The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute deny the
evidence of environmental crises. (President Reagan's Secretary of
the Interior, James Watt, applauded the Heritage Foundation's
suggestion to open federal wilderness to strip mining.) This type has
two newcomers. The Science and Environmental Policy Project branched
off a Moonie think tank (see type 6 for more about Moon). Citizens
for the Environment view strict deregulation as the solution.
4 LEGAL FOUNDATIONS. Mountain States Legal Foundation (founding
president, James Watt), Pacific Legal Foundation (first--in 1973),
National Legal Center for the Public Interest (umbrella for scattered
locals). All use the US courts to fight government regulations and
citizen lawsuits intended to protect the environment. The foundations
have been effective. In 1992 they won a major Supreme Court decision
(Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Commission). It held that government
regulation of a developer's private property amounted to a government
seizure. Thus it was unconstitutional.
5 ENDOWMENTS AND CHARITIES. Private philanthropies may collaborate
with TNCs. They can pipe in untraced corporate money and underwrite
attacks on the conservation community. In 1991 alone, four of the
largest of these charities disbursed more than $150 million for the
purpose. These four were the Lilly Endowment (pharmaceuticals), the
John Olin Foundation (munitions), and two outposts of the Mellon steel
empire: the Carthage Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
6 WISE USE AND SHARE GROUPS. The Wise Use movement links contrived
"grassroots" locals in the western USA. Founder Ron Arnold aspires
"...to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely." He got
seed money in 1988 from the American Freedom Coalition, an affiliate
of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. (The Moon church
also supported Latin American deathsquads in the 1980s.) Wise Use's
financial backing now comes from timber, mining, ranching, chemical,
and recreation companies and their trade associations.
Wise Use may get rough. It "... can do things the industry can't.
It can stress the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit
community. And it can turn the public against your enemies." One
goal of Wise Use: convert "all decaying and oxygen-using forest
growth in the National Forests into young stands of oxygen-producing
carbon-dioxide-absorbing trees to...prevent the greenhouse effect...."
Canada's Share movement mirrors the Wise Use movement. ###
__
This review draws on investigative reports by John Dillon, Rutland VT;
Johan Carlisle, San Francisco; and Joyce Nelson, Toronto.
-- _
Dale Wharton dale@dale.cam.org M O N T R E A L Te souviens-tu?