Excuse the partial reposting of my own article, but because there is a big chunk about Greenwashing, and also that Climate Change Denial is one of the major manifestations of environmental hypocrisy, the article is extremely relevant to The Unsuitablog.

And I also put an awful lot of work into it, so why not?

If someone doesn’t want to believe something then what can you do to change their mind? Trust me, it’s more difficult than you think: it isn’t just the simple case of someone not believing something, the key word is “want” – if they don’t want to believe then there is almost nothing you can do about it. Even if all the evidence is against them.

I see this all the time: on the TV news, in the printed media, on blogs and discussion boards, and in the streets; this constant battle between two entrenched positions – be it over religious idealism, abortion, vaccinations or anything else that invokes emotional involvement – is almost unbearable to witness. For the most part, this battle will grind on and on until the various parties give up trying to convince the other side, through lack of energy, lack of time, illness and even death. People have died for their beliefs, in their millions – but there are always others to take their place.

The battle between the two sides over climate change, or anthropogenic global warming (AGW), won’t be ending any time soon; and there will be blood, mark my words. This is more than a battle for intellectual superiority – it is battle over an idealistic principle, and that principle is…actually, let’s come back to that. First of all, given the title of this essay, I think we need to consider the words “denial” and “denier”.

Put simply, denial is an unwillingness to accept a position: I deny that white people are racially superior to black people, which to most of us is a reasonable position to take. The opposing position is less common, but nonetheless can be couched in similar terms; the denial that black people are racially equal to white people. Go back less than 100 years, though, and the second position would stand you in pretty good stead as a European or American citizen wanting to get ahead in the civilized world.

A denier is someone who adopts a denial position. For instance, I deny that economic growth is a necessary characteristic of human society, which places me very much in the minority of people in the civilized world. I’ve discussed the reason for this elsewhere, needless to say the opposing position – that economic growth is a necessity – is far more cultural than based on an absolute body of factual evidence. That is important, because it helps understand why denial positions are so difficult to deal with: if someone is deeply inculcated with a particular belief, such as economic growth being a necessity, then no matter how much contrary physical evidence is presented to them, they are highly unlikely to change their position. If that physical evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to their belief system then we say they are “in denial of the facts”.

That, of course, often only serves to inflame things.


The Danger Of Denial

I make no bones about my belief in anthropogenic global warming, for various reasons, and not just the scientific evidence; so if you are reading this and thinking about clicking somewhere else because you don’t agree with me, then click away – this essay is aimed at those people who more or less have the same mindset as myself, and are in the all-too-common situation of feeling they have to defend that position. To you, dear reader, I offer the following words: you are in danger of losing your sanity.

As we have seen, and probably realised from experience, arguing with a Climate Change Denier is like wrestling in a deep, muddy pit: it can be filthy, exhausting and, worst of all, there seems to be no way out. Personal issues aside, the wider danger is that the other side might get their way – and that person, or group, or business, or government, will then be able to spread their own beliefs in the knowledge that there is no-one willing to take the opposing position. The many people who are wavering, or even understand that AGW is fact, can then be easily tipped into denial. This is what happens in totalitarian states: the ruler’s position becomes the de facto belief.

In ecological terms, this would be disastrous should it happen against AGW, for there would not even be enough dissenters to restart the process of change, let alone carry it through. It’s strange in a way – all the time it has seemed like an endless game of factual table tennis, it has in fact been a battle for the future of humanity, played out in a million places across the globe.

You can read the rest of this article at The Earth Blog.

Watch this video, especially if you live in the UK, although it probably applies in many other legal frameworks. Do your homework and find out - this is a VERY POWERFUL TOOL for undermining the system, and the many fictional entities that have statutary power over you.

N.B. Violence and peaceful when mentioned are relative to Common Law, NOT STATUTE. You can LEGALLY use force against anything not backed by Common Law.

I have written before about many of the very worst forms of environmental hypocrisy — the types of things that transcend simple greenwashing and seem to have become articles of faith. We are talking about behomothic, potentially species-ending “developments” such as genetic modification, carbon capture and storage, biomass as transportation fuel, carbon offsetting and geoengineering. All of these are symptoms of Industrial Civilization, and the basic mythology that we have to continue moving at breakneck speed in the same, catastrophic direction, whatever the consequences. The system will utilise everything in its toxic toolbox to convince us (and ensure we convince each other) that its “solutions” are the only ones we are allowed to consider.

Simplicity, reduction and deceleration are anathema in this world: have no doubt, you will never be asked by authority — whether that be a politician, a business “leader” or even a mainstream environmental organisation — to do these things to such an extent that they actually make a difference. Economic Growth is the only game in town — it is the Endgame.

From Rising Tide North America comes a guide that illustrates many of these contradictions in stark terms; I can’t recommend it highly enough as a primer in the types of developments mentioned earlier, along with many other contentious ideas that, frankly, have no place in a survivable future.

Only a few years ago, some companies were saying climate change wasn’t a problem. Now, as its impacts becomes apparent, corporations are suddenly scrambling to claim leadership on the issue. Desperate to avoid regulation that may hit their profits, they present a dizzying array of “false solutions,” quick fixes that perpetuate inequalities in our society and attempt to cash in on the crisis.

Our fear of change and the unknown, and the widely held belief that technological progress can solve all problems make these techno-fixes and market-based solutions extremely seductive.

In most cases it’s an easy sell. Since the 1980’s, global politics have been dominated by a model of corporate globalization: An entire generation has grown up in a world in where little has been possible without corporate assent. Economic growth and increased consumption are society’s implicit goals and to achieve this, multinational corporations must be given free reign.

Yet upon closer examination, the choices they have presented are false ones, dangerous detours on the road to a just, livable planet, distracting us from the root causes of the crisis.

This concise, but hard-hitting document can be downloaded using the following link:

Download Hoodwinked In The Hothouse

I’m feeling weary and need to recharge for a while: it’s not much fun being bombarded with hypocritical rubbish every day (and I do get it every day), and The Unsuitablog only gets to see the tip of the iceberg, as it were. Trust me, working to undermine the greenwash industry and all of its powerful players takes it out of you

While I’m away, staying a few hundred miles away in a windswept and beautiful part of England (in case anyone was interested), I would like every Unsuitablog reader to take the time to read my book “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis“. One of the most critical aspects of creating positive change is getting people to connect with the real world, thus realising your place as one component in the web of life - one component that is fundamentally important to you, and which is utterly dependent on almost all other forms of life, large and small. In the next week, I’m going to be connecting with the sea, the sky and the land: finding some solitude, and also letting my children enjoy the deep connections with nature that we all must understand in order to make our way successfully, and sustainably, through life. Our inability to connect, as Civilized Humans, is the reason we are pulling the plus on our life-support system.

The Unsuitablog exists in order to remove some of the noise and lies that prevent people from connecting with the real world.

Time’s Up! makes it clear that this undermining process is key to giving humanity a chance of survival - but there is a lot more to it than just accepting we need to change; people have to want to change: I believe that the book can make this possible.

There are quite a few ways you can get hold of Time’s Up!:

1) You can buy it. Lots of people prefer to read a book rather than a screen, so if you want to buy it then you will be able to find it at almost any online bookstore (although, at the moment, it is only being printed in the UK). Here are a few places I know it is usually in stock:

Green Books
Waterstones
Amazon.co.uk

2) You can ask your library to stock it. This is really important to me, because I think that libraries are some of the last bastions of free thinking in the mind-control industrial system: if your library does not hold it, then please ask them to.

3) You can read it on Google Books for free. I have just opened it up so you can read the entire book through this medium, which uses the original proofs directly from the publisher; not a word is different. As I have always said: if you believe in something that strongly, strong enough to commit to the page, strong enough to commit a huge chunk of your being to, then why then make people pay for it?

More information about the book can be found at www.timesupbook.com.

And please pass this information on to everyone you think may be responsive to change: we owe it to ourselves to give humanity a chance.

I think I can truthfully say that television is the means by which greenwash, and other forms of anti-environmental propaganda, reaches people most effectively: magazines, newspapers and billboards are certainly grevious offenders, but as we subvert more and more of our lives to the great glass teat in the sitting room (the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the pub, the car…) we become ever more receptive to what is coming out of it, even though we may not think we do.

Television is where the greenwashers go if they really want to get their message over to the maximum number of people in the most insidious way possible — which makes television, public television in particular, an obvious target for sabotage. You might not be able to get into peoples’ homes (although, as this article suggests, it would make a fine project) but, as this article from The Sietch Blog shows, everyone can have a go at freeing peoples’ minds…

I have had some interesting discussions with people who don’t like what I say in my book about sabotage. In a nutshell, sabotage, or probably more accurately, “undermining” is a vital activity in allowing a sizeable number of people to regain control of their lives that are otherwise being controlled by the forces that ensure we follow our current, destructive path. Sabotage of the things that control us is therefore, fundamental to creating large-scale change.

The way we have been taught, especially in recent years, to view anyone interfering with the workings of civilization as “terrorists” is a travesty. Sabotage for the sake of creating something better, no less than in order to ensure humans have a future on Earth, is no more negative than growing your own food or refusing to buy new goods; and is a lot more positive an action than, say, voting, which changes nothing except the superficial appearance of the political system.

And in case you think sabotage in order to give people their minds back is going to be difficult, here’s an example of something that everyone can do easily, quickly and without getting caught - and if you do get caught then what’s the worse that can happen? “Officer, I caught this individual switching my bank of televisions off!” Clearly a capital offence.

TV-B-Gone — and I make no excuses for advertising a product, because it’s one that could really change things — switches televisions and other remote controlled screens off. Simple. And it does it brilliantly…

This turns 17 off in 2 minutes at an electronics fair:



This clip shows how to use it through windows:



And this one, which I think is the best of all, shows how to use it in places where, surely you would get caught, but are not!



You can buy TV-B-Gone directly from the www.tvbgone.com or on your local eBay site.

I’ve just ordered one, and It’ll be attached to my house keys, so it’s always there when I get the urge. Go on, you know you want to do it!

You would be amazed how many times, and in how many different places, I have used mine…

People aren’t listening: this is the season of supermarket voucher collecting in schools around the UK, and the exortations to “Collect! Collect! Collect!” are coming thick and fast, in every newsletter sent home with students, on every school website, and on posters liberally pasted and hung on the walls of a school near you.

I have tried my best to be analytical and instructive. The Unsuitablog published a series of three articles last year giving details about the operation of, the commercial incentives and the brainwashing imposed by such schemes. Here they are, in case you missed them:

http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2008/10/13/school-supermarket-voucher-special-introduction/

http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2008/10/15/school-supermarket-voucher-special-greenwashing-children/

http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2008/10/17/school-supermarket-vouchers-special-winners-losers-and-fighting-back/

The schemes are back with a vengeance - most prominently the newly rebranded Tesco for Schools & Clubs and the Sainsbury Active Kids 2009 schemes: both designed to teach children and their parents that supermarkets are a force for social good, and not the commercial resource-sucking, community-killing, globalization machines that anyone who pauses for even a short moment would realise they really are.

In the last article I tried to suggest ways of stopping these schemes, and tried a number of them myself, to little effect - all except for one, which worked wonderfully!

All you need is a pair of these:

Take a look at the photo at the top of this article, paying particular attention to how the incidious banners — which provide supermarkets with wonderful free advertising on public land — are attached. Not very securely, are they?

Now, with your wire cutters to hand, pay a visit to any school which has one of these banners, preferably when it is dark, and with just four quiet snips, you can cut down this brainwashing tool, stuff it into a bag (why not use a Tesco or a Sainsbury’s one, for extra irony) and then put it in a bin a few streets away. It’s not illegal, by the way: you are doing a public service, and the banner was a “gift”, rather than part of a contractual arrangement.

Once you have done it once, then you’ll want to do it again: and maybe in a short while, we will have together, given the supermarkets a good kick in the balls, which is the least they deserve.

I put this in because it’s a great little film, by a group of German university students, who want to make a lot of very important points in a very short time - we don’t have much left, you see.

Our Little World – The Climate Movie from Josef Buchner on Vimeo.

See how many things you can spot that have been greenwashed by corporations and politicians, and think about the number of different ways you could present this information in a skewed, twisted way to keep people brainwashed about the consumer economy…it’s quite surprising how little effort it takes. How horribly indoctrinated we have let ourselves become.

I must admit to a wry grin when I heard that UK Business Secretary (a very important minister of state) Peter Mandelson had been “slimed” with green custard prior to entering a conference in London to discuss “green” industry, on Friday 6 March. The protagonist, Leila Deen, certainly made a good shot, and not surprisingly, the incident was covered not just nationally, but internationally. The usual splits between the pro-environmental and anti-environmental press showed through, and many of the tabloids took the chance to make fun of one of the least popular British politicians of the last 20 years.

So what was the point of this? Superficially, Leila Deen, acting on behalf of the campaign group Plane Stupid, was making the point that they do not welcome the current pro-business stance of the UK government, in particular the decision to build a 3rd runway at London Heathrow Airport. At a slightly deeper level, it was a reflection on the state of politics in general - as Leila states:

Peter Mandelson epitomises all that is wrong with our democratic system. His CV is a reason for us to give up on democracy and take direct action. After several disgraces and resignations, Mandelson is back from exile in Europe to be shoe-horned into government as an unelected minister, via an archaic loophole which allows the Prime Minister to create peers and place them in power for his own political ends. This is what democracy in the UK looks like.

So the incident leaves a clear message that Mandelson and his ilk are not safe from environmental protestors and the watchfulness of the public in general — or does it? I’m not convinced: despite my immediate glee, the feeling I get from this is one of superficiality. The action, which Plane Stupid will accept was symbolic in all sorts of ways, went as well as it could possibly have done, yet all that is being discussed in the media now is the incident itself, not the reason for it. This is not surprising: the press are notoriously fickle about what makes a good story, and the nefarious goings-on between the UK Government and various industry lobbyists is not news, sadly. So we are left with a story about a woman who threw green custard at a government minister and is now on police bail. Furthermore, such opportunities for mischief-making — potentially a very effective thing, if you are able to make a public figure genuinely look bad — will now be curtailed even further because of this incident.

The lesson here is: don’t expect the media to do your work for you; you must keep on pushing and pushing, exposing the catalogue of corruption and never letting go on your key message. More important, though, it would be far better to concentrate your efforts on getting at the real villains of the piece: the lobbyists and the PR people themselves, without whom such corruption would be far less likely to take place. Target the PR machine and the channels though which the lobbyists are able to brainwash not just governments, but the public in general, and you can get away with a lot more than just an opportunistic custard lob: you can do some serious sabotage without anyone being any the wiser.

Which do you think is the more effective action?

I already love “What’s Going On?” by the political comedian Mark Steel, and I’ve only just started reading it, having spotted it earlier today in my local library (I’m sure Mark will approve of being borrowed rather than bought). Like Mark Thomas’ magnificent “As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela“, Mark Steel’s book shows just how important comedians are in getting important messages to large numbers of people - something I could only dream of being capable of.

The quotation I have picked is beautifully pertinant to The Unsuitablog:

There’s nothing especially novel about large companies eagerly making vast profits with little regard for the consequences; what is new, is that it appears to be universally accepted by all major parties that it can’t be any different. The world must be run by big business. We can’t confront them, we must involve them. For example, if Tesco are able to buy computers for schools in return for their mass advertising campaign inside classrooms, why wouldn’t it be possible to compel the company to do the same without giving them the right to plaster their logo at the eyeline of the nation’s children? It wouldn’t be that unfair, would it, if the tax system were such that the major supermarkets had to cough up a portion of their profits (made from the parents of those children) towards education.

Similarly, throughout the debates on global warming, every initiative seems to include ‘bringing business onside’, with complex formulas to try to persuade big corporations not to continue destroying the planet. No one suggests this with less serious crimes. Imagine if someone announced, ‘The important point in dealing with street crime is coming up with a plan that can bring the muggers on board.’

Take note Sierra Club, WWF, Nature Conservancy and their ilk: just because business is the biggest cause of environmental destruction doesn’t mean you have to involve them in the solutions. Do you really think businesses give a fig about the state of the planet when (to quote Mark Steel again) ’success’ is another word for ‘profit’?

every week I get the usual splurge of emails from companies, big and small, and sometimes PR people representing some of the biggest of the big; like this example sent by IBM Public Relations on behalf of Bosch, Xerox and DuPont, all companies that have a less than excellent record in environmental and social behaviour.

From: Michael Maloney
To: keith@theearthblog.org
Subject: Xerox, DuPont and Bosch Join Eco-Patent Commons

Keith,

I want to let you know that today Xerox, DuPont and Bosch have joined the Eco-Patent Commons, a first-of-its-kind business effort to help the environment by pledging environmentally-beneficial patents to the public domain. The newly-pledged patents include:

– A Xerox technology that significantly reduces the time and cost of removing hazardous waste from water and soil;
– A technology developed by DuPont that converts certain non-recyclable plastics into beneficial fertilizer;
– Automotive technologies from Bosch that help lower fuel consumption, reduce emissions, or convert waste heat from vehicles into useful energy;
– Technologies developed by founding member Sony that focus on the recycling of optical discs.

The Eco-Patent Commons, launched by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in January 2008, provides a unique opportunity for global business to make a difference sharing innovation in support of sustainable development. The objectives of the Eco-Patent Commons are to facilitate the use of existing technologies to protect the environment, and encourage collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations.

The new pledges more than double the number of environmentally-friendly patents available to the public. They are available on a dedicated Web site hosted by the WBCSD (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc). Many of the original patent holders have been contacted directly about their patents and we know of at least three patents that have already been used by others since the January launch of the Commons.
…

Nothing too terrible about this, until you look into the organisation behind this move, the WBCSD — a blatently business-friendly trade organisation that…well, here was my response:

To: Michael Maloney/Somers/IBM@IBMUS
cc: christian.fronek@de.bosch.com ; daniel.a.turner@usa.dupont.com ; Elissa.Nesbitt@Xerox.com ; keith@theearthblog.org ; obm@wbcsd.org ; Shusuke.kanai@jp.sony.com
Subject: Re: Xerox, DuPont and Bosch Join Eco-Patent Commons : The WBCSD are trying to kill us

Dear Michael

The WBCSD are proposing a trajectory for greenhouse gas emissions towards 550PPM by 2050 (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/tmp/policy-low.pdf). This is in stark contrast to the actual scientific findings by NASA chief climatologist Jim Hansen that 350PPM is the maximum permissible to prevent irreversible climate change (http://www.sub350.org/). 550PPM, which all of the contacts on the email below support in principle, will lead to catastrophic and deadly climate change leaving a world where prior human activity is utterly impossible, let alone the business as usual strategy that the WBCSD are pursuing.

No matter, it seems that industrial civilization is on the verge of collapse, and IBM will go the same way as Du Pont, Xerox, Bosch and Sony — all irrelevant icons of a past in which humanity was brainwashed into thinking that this toxic existence was the only way to live.

I recommend you and your colleagues read A Matter Of Scale (http://www.amatterofscale.com - free online), particularly Chapters 11, 13 and 16, and consider whether your job is part of the solution or the problem.

Kind regards

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.unsuitablog.com

Basically, what I did was to CC the company PR people he had listed at the bottom of his original email, and included my own email address in the CC list. If I had thought about it, I would have followed my own rule of putting my address in the middle of the CC list, but in this case it didn’t matter, because Michael panicked:

From: Michael Maloney
To: christian.fronek@de.bosch.com ; daniel.a.turner@usa.dupont.com ; Elissa.Nesbitt@Xerox.com ; keith@theearthblog.org ; obm@wbcsd.org ; Shusuke.kanai@jp.sony.com
Subject: Re: Xerox, DuPont and Bosch Join Eco-Patent Commons : The WBCSD are trying to kill us

Sorry everyone. I’ve sent this blogger news in the past and he hasn’t jumped down my throat like he does below. I don’t recommend that we respond. I guess you can’t please everyone.

Michael Maloney
IBM Media Relations
Energy & Utilities, Chemicals & Petroleum, and Environmental Issues
P: 917-472-3676 T/L: 522-3676 M: 516-578-5535
E: maloney2@us.ibm.com

My emphasis, but do you see what happened? He clicked on “Reply All” and asked his colleagues to not engage me in discussions, essentially because they might say something that the IBM PR machine didn’t approve of.

Well, I wasn’t having that:

To: christian.fronek@de.bosch.com ; daniel.a.turner@usa.dupont.com ; Elissa.Nesbitt@Xerox.com ; keith@theearthblog.org ; obm@wbcsd.org ; Shusuke.kanai@jp.sony.com; Michael Maloney/Somers/IBM@IBMUS
Subject: Re: Xerox, DuPont and Bosch Join Eco-Patent Commons : The WBCSD are trying to kill us

That’s right, everyone, you do as Michael says - rather than make a coherent response, just ignore any attempt to suggest that there is
another way to live.

Now, if I were in your shoes I would consider what the responder has said, read the relevant sections of the book and act like a free-thinking human being.

Your choice, and that’s what life is all about.

Kind regards

Keith

P.S. If being presented with some stark information and choices is “jumping down my throat” then maybe PR isn’t Michael’s ideal vocation

Sadly, that was that, but I do wonder what they thought of Mr Maloney afterwards, and whether anyone on the list had second thoughts about what they were doing in their current line of work.