It’s very rare for me to be able to take an image straight from a web site and use it, completely unchanged. In the case of this one from London’s famous Science Museum, it says so much, how could I make it any worse? “Your Planet Needs You” juxtaposed with “Sponsored by BASF, HSBC and NISSAN” makes me think that either the public are really stupid (possible, but probably not) or the people who arranged this exhibition are so in awe of the greenwashing lies of the corporate sponsors, and their money, that they let anything pass.

Speaking to various people at the Science Museum and the company arranging the exhibition, The Science Of…, it seems as though there is some sympathy with my concerns, yet when you look at the companies doing the sponsoring, and the jury-rigged press information, you realise that this one has been greenwashed to the hilt:

Sara Milne CEO of The Science of… said “We are delighted to be working with BASF, HSBC and Nissan. Together we are confident that launching this project, which investigates one of the biggest challenges ever faced by mankind, will have a positive impact on society. With the support of our sponsors we have developed a compelling interactive journey that delivers these messages in a highly entertaining and accessible manner. The Science of Survival cuts through the confusion of climate change concerns to provide a positive experience which shows a sustainable future really is possible if we work together.”

The three global sponsors of The Science of Survival have made a five year commitment to see the exhibition through to the end of its global tour. BASF, HSBC and Nissan. are committed to tackling the important issues addressed in the exhibition, not only through their business operations but also by their investment in education and the environment.

(http://www.scienceof.com/download.php?id=89)

Ok, nothing too surprising here — The Science Of are part of the trading arm of the Science Museum, and exist to make money which can then be funnelled back into the museum. A pity it’s dirty money, but that’s what happens when you open up public services to commerce. And that “five year commitment”; well, five years of having your company name associated with a world tour of a childrens education environmental exhibition is manna from heaven for the greenwashing corporate.

The sponsors themselves appear to be great environmental stewards:

BASF, HSBC, and Nissan all share a commitment to a more sustainable future.

BASF’s portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products, agricultural products and fine chemicals to crude oil and natural gas. BASF develops new technologies and uses them to meet the challenges of the future. The company strives to combine economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility, thus contributing to a better future.

For HSBC, corporate responsibility means managing its business responsibly and sensitively for long-term success. HSBC lends and invests in areas such as low carbon energy, water infrastructure and sustainable forestry, sharing responsibility for the environment with governments and citizens to minimise the damaging effects of human activity — pollution of land, water and air and the depletion of resources.

Nissan’s philosophy towards the environment, “Seeking a symbiosis of people, vehicles and nature,” describes the company’s ideal for a sustainable mobile society, now and in the future. They initiated the Nissan Green Program with specific objectives to realise this vision, and are now pursuing it energetically and passionately.

(http://survival.scienceof.com/12/partners/overview.html)

Let’s see: one of the world’s largest chemical and biotech companies; one of the world’s largest commercial investment banks; one of the world’s largest motor manufacturers — all sharing “a commitment to a more sustainable future”. That would be economically sustainable wouldn’t it? I can’t think of any other type of sustainability the big players in Industrial Civilization are interested in.

But what about the kids; the real targets of the exhibition? For a start they will go away thinking that big companies are really nice friendly things trying to save the world — greenwashing for kids is big business. Not only that, there is a cast of four characters that guide the children through the exhibition; each of them has a particular characteristic, and I have to reproduce this in full so you don’t think I’m making this up:

Buz
Buz is what they call a people person. She is the one that keeps this group of friends together. Buz ‘s approach to a sustainable world is to make sure everyone’s needs are met, no matter who they are or where they live. She wants us all to agree on solutions which work for everyone, not just a few people. But sometimes keeping things equal and fair means making sacrifices that the others aren’t always happy with.

Tek
Tek really likes her technology. And she likes to talk about it too, though sometimes she is a bit hard to understand. Tek reckons that technology can come to our rescue and help us live more sustainably, conserving resources and minimising effects on the environment. Though developing new technology can take energy and resources, Tek thinks it’s well worth it.

[N.B. Tek is the only character on the main picture, just in case you didn’t realise what this exhibition is really trying to say…]

Dug
Dug likes tradition and would stick to the way everything used to be done, if he could. Dug reckons we don’t need new technology or approaches for us all to have a happy future. If we think about what we value, Dug thinks we can use what we already know to reduce our impact without radically changing how we live. He is thoughtful and likes to take time – a lot of time - to think about things.

Eco
Eco likes nature, man. He is always out and about doing the outdoors thing. He thinks that preserving all the natural environments on the planet and rebuilding some that humans have destroyed – is key to a sustainable future. And whilst he wants to keep us all from messing with the planet, he can be a bit annoying when he tries to show us how to do it.

Two problems here: Dug likes tradition, so why does he think we can reduce our impact without radically changing how we live? Surely if he doesn’t want technology then he would insist on getting rid of it: but then that would run counter to the needs of the sponsors, so that option is conveniently removed.

Eco is even more badly misrepresented: apparently he is “a bit annoying”, well of course he is because he doesn’t want hi-tech corporate solutions; he wants to do the obvious, most sensible thing. That’s really annoying, isn’t it.

This exhibition is an atrocity — no one should tolerate companies messing with childrens’ minds. The Science Museum should be ashamed for letting this corporate toy into their halls.

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ADDENDUM:I received the following comment about this post on Indymedia, which shows that I am not some lone crazy on a mission…

The whole thing stinks of turning environmentalism into a brand (not that they’d be the first, but it is rather blatant here). Apparently we are “the Eco-Generation” (complete with capital letters, how special we feel now!), presumably the successors to “the Coca-Cola Generation”, and “the MTV Generation”. This is one of the most serious threats to attempts for a sustainable human way of life - the whole movement, and in particular, the more primitivist/radical/etc elements being marginalised and recuperated by big business.

Pathetic.

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Here is the email exchange between myself and Chris Rapley, Director of the Science Museum - it’s a pity he didn’t feel able to response to my second email. You can decide for yourself why he chose not to…

Dear Chris

I have just spent a few hours chatting to various people at The Science Museum, The Science Of and their press agency about your exhibition The Science Of Survival. My main concern was the use of large corporate sponsors to fund an exhibition which is supposed to be informing children about the damage being done to the global environment (damage that is largely the fault of the selfsame large corporations), and what can be done about it.

In short, this exhibition is nothing short of a greenwashing exercise, and I am surprised that a man of your calibre could have been taken in my this kind of thing. It really does put the Science Museum in a very bad light. My findings and comments are here:

http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2008/06/03/science-museum-london-letting-corporations-control-young-minds/

This article will be syndicated to a number of other blogs. I would have given notice, but considering your Does Flying Cost The Earth exhibition is sponsored by EADS (http://www.eads.com/1024/en/Homepage1024.html) and your Can Algae Change The World was sponsored by Siemens (http://www2.sea.siemens.com/Industry%20Solutions/Chemical/Biofuels/) then I really don’t think it would make any difference.

Yours sincerely

Keith Farnish

keith@theeearthblog.org

Dear Keith,

Pity - since we have the same main objective in mind - alerting humans to the serious nature of the environmental crisis and helping them (us all) find the path to a sustainable future - which we are far from following at present.

My view is that that outcome is more likely if one includes all the key players, including the corporations, especially since it is they, not government or the individual (though they have major roles to play) who will determine the true shape and character of the future. You assume that the companies involved in sponsoring the Science Museum do so in bad faith. That is not my judgement or experience. In any case, the SM retains full and absolute editorial control of the content of our exhibits, and draws on respected independent experts to ensure that the information and messages provided are as truthful and balanced as we can achieve.

I note that your website has many sections on hypocrisy; I wonder if for completeness you should add a section on your own - I assume that you eat, travel, use commodities and merchandise, all of which will have been produced by the corporations you so despise. In the meantime it is not clear what you contribute yourself. I would be more impressed by a constructive approach, rather than one which seeks to polarise and divide.

Regards,

Chris Rapley

Dear Chris

Thank you for responding.

Ultimately, and there is a very good reason for saying this, the answer lies with the individual and not governments and most certainly not corporations which are the primary reason that Industrial Civilization is so destructive. There is a great deal of information on my Earth Blog (http://www.theearthblog.org) which shows in more detail where I am coming from. In a few weeks time you will be able to read a complete and detailed analysis of the causes of and the solutions to the global environmental crisis when my book is release, for free at www.amatterofscale.com.

As for my apparent hypocrisy, I have been undergoing a continual distancing from corporations for many years and would suffer far less than most should every corporation disappear from the face of the Earth. I think it would be rather foolhardy of me to run an anti-hypocrisy web site if that were not so.

It surprises me tremendously that you should have such a pro-corporate viewpoint (at least from the tone of your message), given your background — it is not a question of “bad faith” on the parts of the sponsors as simply “business as usual”: they exist to make money and if the Science Museum can provide them with a tinge of green, or whatever tinge they require, then they will have no hesitation in stepping into whatever breach is presented.

On a separate note, the BAS has always, in my eyes, been a bastion of straight-talking, agenda-free science: it would be wonderful if the Science Museum could become similarly distanced from outside influence.

Yours sincerely

Keith Farnish

This month at your local news stand, and in supermarkets up and down the Western world, you will find National Geographic Magazine devoting an entire issue to the realities of climate change. It’s their “Changing Climate” edition. It’s not the first time National Geographic has featured on The Unsuitablog: last time they were filling their regular editions with car adverts, showing that their primary motivation is to make money.

But, a whole edition on climate change, surely they wouldn’t stoop so low as to place unsuitable adverts, would they? I didn’t need to read the text to know that it would contain the usual superficial sycophantic articles about issues that need to be given the acid rather than the warm flannel treatment — we are talking about global catastrophe here, guys! I also didn’t need to read the Solutions section to know that the only solutions presented would be straight out of Ikea and Walmart, and nothing to do with actually changing the way humans live.

I didn’t have to read the text, but I did — and I was right on both counts. But one thing that struck me was the apparent absence of adverts throughout the magazine; a pleasant surprise, I may add, considering the normal consumer rush that readers are subjected to each month.

And then I looked inside the front cover:

ConocoPhillips. A full page advert telling us that they are funding university courses, brainwashing the minds of tomorrow into the ways of the oilman. Yes, ConocoPhillips, major stakeholder in the Syncrude partnership, extracting millions of barrels of thick, carbon-intensive oil from the tar sands of Canada. ConocoPhillips, major supporter of the hopelessly polluting coal to ethanol technology, and all round destroyer of ecosystems across the globe.

As I put the magazine back on the shelf, I glanced at the back cover. There, staring at me, bathed in the verdant, lush glow of a forest canopy, proudly sitting on a rough dirt track, was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid. “Green Vehicle Of The Year” despite notching up a piss-poor 21 MPG fuel economy. Chevy, makers of a sizable chunk of the most polluting cars in the USA and recent stars of The Unsuitablog.

Thank you for this eye-opener, National Geographic Magazine: three great greenwashers all coming together in a symphony of shit. I bet you are so proud of yourselves!

A few years ago, possibly in 2004, I visited the Eden Project; a mixture of perfectly tended meadows, terraces and exotic planting, topped off by a pair of impressive plastic “biomes” (they were building the third at the time), all in the setting of an abandoned clay pit in Cornwall, England. My family took home some wonderful memories from that day — it was steaming hot, so much so that the Tropical Biome had to be fully vented; my younger daughter had endless fun running around the mazes and gawping at the giant bee; my older daughter discovered what it was like to be soaked in a tropical mist.

Spin forwards four years, and something has gone bad in Eden — they are allowing themselves to be used as a platform for every major car company to do a spot of greenwashing. What better place to pretend you have the interests of the planet at heart than at the Eden Project, that bastion of sustainable tourism and ecological education for all generations? What better place to show that cars are not bad things — they are just misunderstood.

The official blurb makes for deeply uncomfortable reading:

Why a car show at the Eden Project? 
 
Love them or hate them, cars are not going away. But road transport accounts for a fifth of our carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, so it’s time to transform the way we buy and use them.
 
The good news is that we can reduce road transport carbon dioxide emissions by a massive 80% by 2050 if we start buying the right vehicles now and take our old bangers off the roads. The technology is out there and our Sexy Green Car Show brings it to you.

You can read this in one of two ways: first, that there is a general acceptance that car transport is not going away for a long time, so we need to make the best of the situation we have; second, that car transport is a good thing, and it can be made even better if it is made greener. The difference is subtle, but is important.

The first explanation is realistic — it accepts that there will be a need for some car transport, in some places for quite a while until alternatives are found or, more importantly, people stop having the need to travel so much. The second explanation is straight out of the greenwashing guide, written by the automotive giants. Yes, maybe individual vehicle emissions can reduce by 80% in 42 years (not that that is anything like sufficient), but the car companies are exploiting huge markets in Asia and South America, plus pushing to ensure car transport is the only option for travel in the industrial West: net transport emissions are unlikely to go down at all, regardless of how “green” individual vehicles are.

The second explanation is the true meaning of the Sexy Green Car Show. Take a look at the roster of companies showing at the event:

All the major manufacturers will be flaunting their newest, greenest models including Ford, Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Volkswagen, SEAT, Honda, Axon, Lotus, Saab and Morgan. Vectrix’s electric motorcycle will also be on show, and the hydrogen-powered Morgan LIFE car will make its first public appearance in this country.

This is a trade event, designed to make car manufacturers look good, while still continuing their effortless plundering of the planet’s diminishing natural assets. Eden Project, you have well and truly been taken for a ride.

So, as I suspected all along; according to an article in todays Independent, the public don’t support “green” taxes.

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.  

Wow! What a revelation: people don’t want to pay money to save the planet. For some bizarre reason the mainstream environmental movement still think that money and the planet mix, and that if they can only persuade governemnts to impose taxes to change behaviour then everything will get better. For instance:

It’s tax time - time to fight global warming and save yourself some green at the same time.

Federal, state, and local governments offer a range of tax incentives, grants, and loans that will help you save energy, fight global warming, reduce your energy bills, and let you keep more green in your wallet after Tax Day comes around.

That’s our old friends The Sierra Club, talking up the “green dollar”.

Increasing taxes on fossil fuels is an essential weapon in the Government’s armoury for tackling climate change. And if Alistair Darling used these extra taxes to cut those on people and jobs, it would be extremely popular too. It’s time the Treasury played its full part in delivering a low-carbon economy.

Friends of the Earth this time.

It’s a funny subject, because governments are loathe to impose punative taxation on environmentally damaging activities — well, that would mean taxing everything, really — which would seem to suggest that “green” taxes are actually a good thing for the environment. Sure, a 100% increase in fuel duty might make people think twice about buying fuel, but it would also be a guaranteed vote loser. In an age of apparent environmental awareness, why should that be?

The simple fact is that the whole of civilization is geared towards making money.

Who wouldn’t complain if someone tried to take it away from you — for environmental reasons or not. The environmental mainstream are terminally stuck in a mindset that says it is possible to make things better by working within the system — imposing “green” taxes, making business “greener”, buying “green” products — the very system that is nothing without economic growth.

Fools!

Back to the Independent article:

The results of the poll by Opinium, a leading research company, indicate that maintaining popular support for green policies may be a difficult act to pull off, and attempts in the future to curb car use and publicly fund investment in renewable resources will prove deeply unpopular.

That’s not news — that’s just the way things are in this consumption culture.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been had? It’s an iconic quote from a punk legend, but as with all great sayings, it can be applied in many different places. This is one example: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry talking shop if ever there was one and, like the ineffectual light-green environmental groups who “fight” for changes to government policy and send out gleeful press releases whenever a corporation promises to behave itself, the RSPO are actually making things far worse than if the public were left to their own devices. Sustainable palm oil is simply snake oil in a clever diguise: it doesn’t exist and it never will do.

Here’s how it works.

1) As a group of big businesses whose primary interest is to ensure the expansion of the lucrative palm oil industry – retailers, traders, processors, growers, investors; that sort of thing — set up a shell organisation that claims it is going to make the industry “sustainable”.

2) Call in some gullible (yes, I said “gullible”) NGOs and environmentalists and say that they can have a seat on this august, influential body if they allow business to continue as before — but they will be allowed to suggest changes to the industry providing it doesn’t affect the business model.

3) Repeatedly announce to the world, through member companies such as Sainsburys and Unilever, that agreements are being reached and work is moving on swiftly to make plantations sustainable, but that we have to give them time because this is a tough job, and there are so many products that contain this oil it is just “impossible” to do this any other way.

 4) Do almost nothing for years while counting the massive profit that has been made from cheap oil being grown on recently deforested land using cheap labour.

5) After a few years say that the there are so many plantations that no more deforestation has to take place. Meanwhile the South East Asian rainforest has ceased to exist, carbon levels through wood and peat burning have boosted the greenhouse effect, and people have still not realised they have been well and truly greenwashed.

Alternatively, you could, like Meridian Foods, just take palm oil out of your products until it is sustainably produced. I’m not in the habit of promoting companies, but you have to give them credit as they didn’t even publicise the change.

The RSPO have an impressive roster of members, but it’s the board that matters, so here is their board membership, in full:

President:
Unilever : Jan Kees Vis (massive food multinational)

Vice-President I:
WWF Malaysia : Darrel Arthur Webber (NGO — history of corporate partnerships)
 
Vice-President II:
Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI) : Derom Bangun (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President III:
Malaysian Palm Oil Association : Mamat Salleh (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President IV:
New Britain Palm Oil Limited : Simon Lord (Papua New Guinea’s largest oil palm plantation and milling operator)
 
Treasurer:
Aarhus Karlshamn UK : Ian McIntosh (Palm Oil trade “solutions” company)
 
Members:
 
Federation of Migros Cooperatives : Robert Keller
IOI Group (Malaysia/Netherlands) : Don Grubba
Cadbury Schweppes plc : Tony Lass
WWF-Indonesia : Fitrian Ardiansyah
Oxfam International : Johan Verburg
Sawit Watch : Rudy Lumuru
HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad : Paul Norton
FELDA : Mohd Nor Kailany
Co-operative Insurance Society : Samantha Lacey

You will notice that there is only one organisation represented on the board management that has any interest in ensuring the palm oil becomes sustainable, and that organisation is one of the most business-friendly NGOs in the world. Overall, NGOs and small growers are outnumbered three to one on the board. They will always lose in voting.

Add to this their pathetic “aspirations” as a body:

RSPO is an association created by organisations carrying out their activities in and around the entire supply chain for palm oil to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and open dialogue with its stakeholders.

In other words, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is an industry body that has absolutely no intention of producing or using sustainable palm oil all the time there is more profit to be made from the type that comprises 100% of all palm oil currently being produced. Clearly they also have no intention of scrapping the use of palm oil all the time it is unsustainable.

*** UPDATE ***

A post in Tempo Magazine Indonesia (via the Dear Kitty Blog) has justified my decision to attack the RSPO:

Novi Hardianto, manager of the habitat program at the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) said on Thursday last week (4/9) that two big palm oil companies, IOI Group and Agro Group, have cut down forests that were known to be the habitat of orangutan.

This was despite the fact that these forests were included in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Not content with members refusing to keep their word, they somehow try to smooth it over in this appalling example of sycophancy:

Meanwhile, RSPO spokesperson Desi Kusmadewi said that RSPO would check out the area mentioned by Greenpeace.

“If it is true, we will give chance for the company to repair what they have done first before being removed from RSPO,” said Desi.

Repair! How can you repair the destruction of pristine ancient rainforest?!

The rest of the article makes for equally depressing reading, putting the lie to the claim that there can ever be such a thing as “sustainable” tropical forestry where governments and corporations are involved.

I’ve had enough of the sanctinomious, corporate marketing of Earth Day, and it looks as though a group in Toronto have had enough too. The Toronto Climate Campaign ran an event on Sunday which reflected almost exactly what I wrote earlier:

In April, 1970, the environmental movement burst onto the political stage with one of the largest grassroots demonstrations ever seen. Between 20 and 25 million people, mostly in the United States, answered the call on the first Earth Day. Event organizers were shocked at the response and marveled at the crowd that drew from every constituency: students and seniors; inner cities and small towns; faith groups and hippies. 

Over the years, corporations began to fund and sponsor Earth Day events, some out of sincere interest, more out of desire to buy “green” credentials. This shifted the emphasis from public rallying to put pressure on politicians and policy makers, to predominantly innocuous and symbolic events. Large scale, interconnected mobilizations were out. Decentralized photo-ops were in. The unfortunate result was, most activists began to ignore Earth Day.

Which is why I will be doing nothing different today. In fact, what I will be doing is what I have been doing every day for years — trying to make my own life as sustainable as possible, while also trying to generate change at all levels.

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I said I would probably get more self-promoting bandwagon e-mails between my last article and today, and so I did. Here is a choice selection, with the pertinant points highlighted. Bear in mind that these are from people who purport to be “green” but somehow can’t help selling stuff:

Why You Need a Plastic Bag Ball

OSSINING, N.Y. (April 15, 2008)-Boredom has lent itself to building balls of rubber bands, and street fairs across America have begged the question, “Can you guess how many jellybeans are in this jar?” As we near Earth Day on April 22, Eco-Bags Products, Inc. is asking green-minded citizens to collect 1,000 plastic bags and build PLASTIC BAG BALLS, to visualize and understand the impact on our planet. Earth Day celebrators are encouraged to document their ball builds and submit photos or video to the community blog My Greenest Hour. Up to ten participants who demonstrate the most environmental prowess will receive one ECOBAG® to carry along on their next grocery trip.

(The full e-mail contained 9 separate mentions of their registered trademarked, incorporated product)

GREENOPIA COMES TO NEW YORK!

New York, NY (April 21, 2008) - A must-have on the West Coast has finally arrived in New York just in time for Earth Day:  Welcome the first edition of Greenopia New York City, a guidebook to green businesses in all five boroughs - from car services and hotels, to nail salons and burial services.  Hitting bookshelves this week, Greenopia New York City makes living an eco-friendly life in the Big Apple easier than ever! 

Featuring more than 1,300 listings of local green businesses and resources, Greenopia New York City is sold online at Greenopia.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, Macy’s and other area bookstores and specialty retailers. 

The book’s suggested retail price is $17.95.

(Just blatant marketing)

Low Carbon Diet Takes Bite out of Global Warming: Earth Day event and online calculator lower carbon footprint of America’s favorite foods

Experts available:

* Chefs on Bon Appétit’s low carbon eating strategy, from menus to operations management. Celebrity chefs also available.
* Spokespersons from company headquarters, local cafes, and the sustainable food movement

Where:        

* Bon Appétit Management Company cafes in 28 states and major metro areas including: Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, and Boston. 
* Visit a cafe in your area on April 22nd to report on the action on Low Carbon Diet day’s low carbon meals, educational activities, and diners’ reactions to the event.

(I wonder why they are asking you to visit their cafes?)

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So have fun this Earth Day. See how much more hypocrisy and marketing you can spot. Sent it to news@theunsuitablog.com and I reckon there is a good chance it’ll be published!

I sometimes get the feeling I’m shooting fish in a barrel, writing this blog — not that I would ever shoot a fish — with the targets getting easier and easier to pick off. This is never so true as with the “environmental” charities that huddle up, all cosily, with business in the vain attempt to get them to play nicely.

They really don’t get it — business doesn’t want to “play nicely”, business wants to do business, and will not do business if it doesn’t make a profit. In order to make a profit the business must get more more out of a process than it puts in; and if you are a manufacturer or a producer of raw materials then that extra either comes from cheap labour or the extraction of something you didn’t have before — like oil or timber. If you are a retailer or an investment bank, the profit you gain is dependent on selling something for a greater value than you bought it — you are dependent on the manufacturer or producer of raw materials having something you can resell at a profit, so they must reduce their costs as much as possible. In order for these costs to be reduced they must cut corners, so they treat workers badly; pollute the land, water and atmosphere; use their commercial muscle to ensure they don’t have legislation to comply with…and so on. If you are an advertiser or PR company, your job is to make all these companies look good.

In short, business is unsustainable, at all levels.

If you are the Nature Conservancy, one of the largest and most respected environmental charities in the world, then it would make sense not to work with profit making businesses, especially not the most damaging of them…you know, companies like Alcoa, BP and Cargill — really, really bad companies.

Actually, if you are the Nature Conservancy, you say the following:

The Nature Conservancy works with the business community to find common ground between conservation and industry. We accept their financial and land donations, engage in cause-related marketing, foster direct conservation action, and participate in event sponsorship.

As you can see, they really think there is common ground between business and conservation, and will happily provide branding for any company that pretends they are doing good things. They are good enough to provide a list of these companies — here are some really nasty ones:

Alcoa — massive polluter and consumer of energy
American Electric Power – coal burning (73%) electricity producer
Bank of America — will invest in anything, regardless of impact
BP – oil giant and greenwasher supreme
Cargill – food giant, GMO user on massive scale
Caterpillar – provides military equipment to repressive regimes

And many more, including Monsanto, Proctor & Gamble and Georgia-Pacific. All of the nasty companies The Nature Conservancy have partnered with continue to be nasty — but look great, because of their links with TNC.

In fact the history of the Nature Conservancy shows that they were only able to grow as they did in the 1960s because of a cash injection from Ford Motors, which allowed them to employ an IBM executive as their first President. Now please humour me and read this web page about their cosy relationship with General Motors, and tell me if I am being paranoid:

http://www.nature.org/joinanddonate/corporatepartnerships/partnership/generalmotors.html

I think I need to lie down…

I was having a bit of a browse yesterday looking for useful environmental groups that might help out with a project I am doing and stumbled across the World Environmental Organization. They don’t do things by halves, these guys, clearly the domain name www.world.org didn’t come cheap, and to proudly proclaim yourself as the World Environmental Organization, i.e. an organization that represents the environment of the world, must mean you have a truly global presence.

WEO don’t exactly say a lot about themselves: they seem to have just the one office, which is in Washington DC, and a board of directors that includes Jeff Gold as Chair. Jeff made lots of money from selling internet domains, particularly go.com and q.com, and he currently holds solar.org which is “A project of the World Environmental Organization”, and is also a showcase for GE Energy products. Now I don’t need to tell you what GE have done for the planet, I’ll let Corporate Watch do it for me. I wouldn’t let GE, or any of the other energy behemoths anywhere near my work.

What really pisses me off, though, is the list of sponsors which WEO shows on its site:

Eco-Partners ($5,000+)

GE Energy Ford Motor Company Viking

Platinum Sponsors ($1,000+)

Bosch Southwest Windpower Xantrex Grundfos Takagi SMA America Vermont Castings Trojan Battery Company Exeltech Samlex America

 

Like WWF, which I featured a while back, it seems that for a small stipend, and despite any history that company may have, they can be associated with an “environmental” organization (the World Environmental Organization, no less) and thus an extra layer of slippery green oil can be applied to their filthy, polluting bodies for the cost of a big corporate lunch.

And if having a list of highly dubious sponsors wasn’t enough, WEO (or rather, Jeff Gold) has gone on to trademark everything on the site: the logo, the domain and even the name; despite World Environmental Organization being a widely discussed global concept that could potentially be vital for overseeing the activities of the greenwashers that blight this planet.

As it is, WEO is a small, very worthy, East Coast USA based setup that really should learn to be a little more modest, and careful with the people it decides to do business with.

 

Disturbing, but not at all surprising, considering what I have been uncovering in the last few months…yes Earth Day 2008 is nearly upon us and right on time the “green” groups and “green” campaigners are cashing in on the potential bonanza. Proof, if proof be needed, that it’s money and not good intentions that runs the industrial world.

Take a look at this, from the Earth Day Canada web site:

Earth Day Canada Hats.

Bucket hats in natural colour, 100% cotton garment-washed, embroidered with the Earth Day Canada logo. Also available in natural with navy trim.

Baseball hats in natural or navy colour. One size fits all. Embroidered with the Earth Day Canada logo.

1 - 11 hats   $15.50 ea
12 - 24 hats $14.25 ea
25+ hats      $12.95 ea

Obviously they are organic, Fair Trade, and all that — no? They also sell a lovely Garden Tote Bag, a steal at $36, or if you can’t afford that then just show your support by buying a gold plated (where did this gold come from?) lapel pin for only $4.

You can have lots of fun looking around for more examples like this, some from charities and some from blatantly commercial companies, although I’m having more and more difficulty telling them apart lately.

One thing that particularly bugged me was an e-mail from a publisher pushing a book who wrote:

From: <giwilks@aol.com>
To: <keith@xxxx.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 5:43 PM
Subject: This Earth Day go green while saving the green

Green is in and protecting the environment and its natural resources has become a universal effort.  For many consumers, “going green” will not only help save Mother Earth it will help save money, too.  Greg Karp, author of Living Rich by Spending Smart: How to Get More of What You Really Want (ISBN: 978-0-13-235009-9, $17.99, February 2008) and a syndicated personal finance columnist, offers tips for consumers that will help protect the green spaces and the green in their wallets.

Well, way to go, Greg Karp; give your promoter a big pat on the back for green exploitation at its worst. I responded, of course:

This is so superficial. I don’t need to spend $18 to get a pile of money-making, pseudo-green tips: I could give you a thousand of these tips and still be no closer to a better way of life. We are not consumers, we are people: modern society has given us labels and all the time we accept those labels we are prisoners of that culture.

Strangely, I didn’t get a response. If you want to do something this Earth Day, then go ahead — but make sure it doesn’t involve screwing money out of people, otherwise you stand a good chance of being called a hypocrite.
 

(STOP PRESS: I’ve just received a kind invitation to advertise an Earth Day event taking place at Universal Studios, that well known bastion of green thinking mind-melding media behemoth. I have a funny feeling I will getting a lot more of these self-promoting bandwagon messages over the next 2 weeks.)

All the time the people from Plane Stupid are planning their devastating (sic) t-shirt walk around the new Heathrow Terminal 5 on its day of opening, something far more unexpected is being ignored by the world’s media. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam is planning a seventh runway. Campaigners opposing this move (via a personal e-mail) take up the story:

“In the Netherlands, the debate is centered on the development of a SEVENTH RUNWAY, called Kaagbaan II, at Schiphol Airport. The expansion may represent a competitive move. If a race for market share between Amsterdam vs.
Heathrow gets started, how far will they go? Amsterdam already has six runways, to Heathrow’s two.”

Even if air transport weren’t as potentially damaging as it promises to be, Schiphol Airport already has ample capacity for massive expansion in its six runways. This suggests very strongly that the motivation may be a combination of land-grabbing by the developers so they can reap the rewards of a large capital project, and a nice bit of posturing by the owners. 

Schiphol Airport is 100% owned by the Dutch national and local government. The interests in operating the airport are public only, therefore you would expect air transport to be right at the bottom of the list of a government that prides itself on being a model of environmental sustainability. Not so.

Go to the Dutch Transport Ministry web site, and you find some hopelessly conflicting statements:

“The Dutch government has set ambitious targets for improving air quality, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions in the Netherlands. The negative environmental impact of increased should be limited, by stimulating innovative solutions in road transport, shipping and aviation.” (from this page)

Just one click away from this is the following:

“As well as having a positive influence on the area surrounding airports there is no doubt that air traffic can also have a negative impact. Although airports create jobs for the local community, they are also a source of noise pollution. Municipalities have limited options for expansion because they must comply with strict regulations governing construction in the areas surrounding airports. In addition, the emission of hazardous substances has an impact on air quality.” (from this page)

Incredibly (or not, depending on how you feel) climate change is not mentioned at all. Guess why. Because, like every other Western government, the Dutch Government are scared of upsetting the companies that operate in their territory.

Money is power, and governments never upset companies that have the potential to make money if they can get away with it. If the Dutch people don’t decide to rapidly change their focus from making money to giving themselves a chance of surviving the next couple of decades before the polders flood, then their government will carry on supporting environmentally damaging projects.

I suppose the only funny thing is that Schiphol Airport is 3 metres below sea level. The flood defences won’t last much longer: what a monumental irony.