It was with squeals of delight and amazement that I received this gem of a press release from David at TheGoodHuman.com. Southwest Airlines, a 500 plane, budget airline in the south western states of the USA, has managed to use the word “green” in a spectacularly inappropriate way. See what you think:

DALLAS, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) today announced at its annual Media Day a “green plane,” an innovative idea that marries efficiency, environmentally responsible products, Customer comfort, and reduced waste and weight. This plane, a Boeing 737-700, will serve as a test environment for new environmentally responsible materials and Customer comfort products.

It is a flying testament to the airline’s philosophy that environmental decisions make good business sense. All of the initiatives being tested on this Green Plane, when combined, will equate to a weight savings of almost five pounds per seat, thus saving fuel and reducing emissions, along with adding recyclable elements to the cabin interior and reducing waste.

“Southwest is committed to continuing to lead the industry in emissions reductions through fuel efficiency. Efficiency in fuel consumption benefits our Company as well as the environment, and this has been part of our business model since the beginning,” said Gary Kelly, Southwest’s Chairman, President, and CEO. “As we look to the future, we know climate change remains of vital importance to our industry, our Company, and our Customers, so Southwest works hard every day in every area to be a responsible steward of the environment.”

Southwest has designated one aircraft to serve as a test for eco-friendly products, which include:

— InterfaceFLOR Carpet – this carpet reduces labor and material costs
because it is installed in sections, thus eliminating the need for total
replacement of areas such as aisles, where Southwest currently uses one
single piece of carpet. The 100 percent recyclable carpet is returned to
the manufacturer at the end of its service life and completely
re-manufactured into new carpet; the process is completely carbon
neutral.

— Seat covers – two new products that will be tested on the aircraft
seats, offering more than twice the durability than the current leather
seats as well as a weight savings of almost two pounds per seat.

— On one side of the aisle, e-Leather is an eco-friendly, lightweight
and scuff resistant man-made alternative to traditional leather. It
is made from recycled materials that have been discarded by the
leather industry. It is then upgraded utilizing eco-friendly
technology, resulting in composition leather, a man-made material.

— On the other side of the aisle, IZIT Leather, a new breed of premium
leather alternative, is an evolutionary step beyond calf skin that
offers a lightweight product that is both economical and durable,
but with the genuine appearance and touch of luxurious leather.

— Life Vest Pouch – more environmentally friendly because it offers a
weight savings of one pound per passenger, replacing the current metal
container with lighter durable canvas. The smaller pouch also creates
more room under the seat for carryon items and offers productivity
improvements due to design change.

— Foam Fill – A lighter weight fill from Garnier PURtec in the back of the
seats that reduces weight while providing increased Customer comfort.

— Passenger Seat Rub Strips – switching from plastic to aluminum will help
with durability, which reduces waste, as well as being recyclable.

“Southwest is proud to lead the aviation industry in environmental stewardship and honored to be working with these eco-friendly vendors and our partners at Boeing,” Kelly says. “We are excited to test their forward-thinking products and expect these green products to not only help the environment, but also create a fuel and materials cost saving for Southwest.”

In addition to the green plane, Southwest also announced the Nov. 1 kickoff of its more robust onboard recycling program, which is a co-mingled system that will allow the airline to capture more recyclable material and divert it from the waste stream. This 18-month process involved team work from all areas of the Company to implement the program on the ground at its Provisioning Bases and re-working of waste collection procedures in the cabin.

“The initiative by the Southwest Airlines Green Team, Facilities Maintenance, Inflight Department, and Provisioning Department was a truly heroic effort; when you serve nearly 68 cities there are often 68 different ways to implement a program,” Kelly says. “We appreciate the hard work of our recycling vendor, Republic Services, and we are excited to take a very effective recycling program and make it even better.”

Environmental Stewardship is a responsibility Southwest takes seriously, and efficient operations are the hallmark of our Company and the foundation of our environmental commitment. Over the decades, Southwest has been at the forefront of such efficiencies as paperless tickets, quick turnarounds, installation of winglets, and, more recently; the installation of fleet-wide advanced avionics. This focus on efficiency not only makes good business sense, it is the right thing to do. For more information on how Southwest Airlines cares for the environment, visit www.southwest.com/cares.

I included the entire press release so that you have time to grasp the monumental gulf between the cool new materials they are using, and the sheer amount of energy required to transport hundreds of people in a large metal airframe with fuel-packed wings against the force of gravity and at high lateral speed. I am torn between whether Southwest actually believe their own press releases and their “cares” information (that’s where they got the hilarious phrase “Environmental Stewardship is a responsibility Southwest takes seriously, and efficient operations are the hallmark of our Company and the foundation of our environmental commitment”), and whether they are acutely aware of how crap airlines are in environmental terms and are just desperate to suck up a few gullible souls with their “green” message.

The thing that turned me from the former to the latter opinion (i.e. they are Greenwashing Hypocrites) was this:

Notice the inducement to take no less than sixteen flights (eight round trips) in a two year period; yes, it’s another flight. Which seems to slightly jar with the claim that they take their environmental responsibilities seriously. Let’s get this straight (and I am getting fed up saying this): there is nothing sustainable about burning fossil fuels to keep things in the air. Hence my attacks on organisations like Climate Counts, which promote themselves as being of benefit to the natural environment, but instead end up making people think — and they do, I’ve heard it from ordinary peoples’ mouths — that inherently destructive things can be green.

Seriously people, learn.

I sort of hated Stephen Harper before reading the new book by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, but after finishing Chapter Thirteen of “Climate Cover Up“, there’s no “sort of” about it. Whether you believe there is such a thing as Evil or not, by any discription of the term Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada has got to be partaking in Satan’s Brimstone Ball. From my point of view: he is a guy in pathological denial, so utterly inculcated in the industrial economy and all it stands for, that nothing good can exist that challenges this toxic orthodoxy.

So, because I’m feeling generous, I want to share the hate with all of you. Welcome to the world of Harper:

When Conservative leader Stephen Harper campaigned for the prime minister’s job in early 2006, he did so on an interesting two-track campaign. He promised first of all to be a law-and-order conservative who would crack down hard on people who broke the law. And he promised to abrogate Canada’s international legal commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. If any reporters noticed the contradiction, there is no record that they asked him about it. Once elected, the prime minister promptly handed the job of environment minister, which included defending the government’s climate change position, to the Alberta member of parliament Rona Ambrose. Ambrose came across as a Canadian version of the benighted Sarah Palin—attractive, initially popular, and totally out of her depth, which turned out to have been a policy decision. Government scientists in Environment Canada reported to their privatesector colleagues that Ambrose declined to be briefed on the science of climate change.

The Conservative hostility to Kyoto surprised no one. Prime Minister Harper was himself elected as a member of parliament from the oil capital, Calgary (his actual riding is Calgary Southwest), and his party’s base is preponderantly in resource-rich western Canada, and decidedly in oil-rich Alberta.

In 2006 Alberta was awash in cash. Between 1990 and 2006 fossil fuel industry revenues had climbed 61 percent. But that windfall had come with a complicating factor: industry-source greenhouse gas emissions had increased over the same period by 53 percent, accounting for almost half of the total increase in emissions recorded over the same period. Most of the rest came from transportation and from coal-fired electricity generation.

Harper’s position on climate change, that of a loyal Albertan, had been on the record—and perfectly unclear—for years. In a story published December 21, 2006 (“pm Denies Climate-Change Shift”), the Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau chief, Susan Delacourt, chronicled the evolution of the prime minister’s thinking. In September 2002, for example, he passed off the issue as a controversy of little interest to Canadians: “It’s a scientific hypothesis, a controversial one and one that I think there is some preliminary evidence for . . . This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this [the Kyoto accord] will do to their economy and lifestyle, when the benefits are negligible.” In 2004, Delacourt writes, the prime minister updated that position to say, “The science is still evolving.” And by 2006 he was still referring to “so-called greenhouse gases.” If you give him the benefit of the doubt, Prime Minister Harper seemed, even as he took over the reins of power, to be like those well-educated Republicans from Chapter 12, so steeped in uncertainty that he couldn’t bring himself even to believe in the existence of the greenhouse gases that Joseph Fourier had discovered in the early part of the 19th century.

In addition to announcing that he had no intention of trying to meet Canada’s Kyoto targets, the Canadian prime minister also set about dismantling all the climate change policies that the previous Liberal government had implemented to date. He shut down the government’s climate change Web site and removed all references to global warming, and especially to Kyoto, from federal communications, except to say that henceforth he would be resisting international pressure and pursuing a “made-in-Canada solution.”

Here Harper begins to use language that was actually made in America. The Republican spin doctor Frank Luntz was in Kingston, Ontario, in May 2006, speaking to the Conservative- linked Civitas Society and making time on the side for a personal meeting with Prime Minister Harper. (The prime minister confirmed in the House of Commons a couple of days later that he and Luntz had been acquainted “for some years.”)

In the weeks that followed, people started listening more closely to the Conservatives and looking for likely connections to the strategy document, as discussed in Chapter 6, that Luntz had written for the U.S. Republican Party (“The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America”). As Ross Gelbspan recorded on the DeSmogBlog on May 31, 2006, the Kitchener Waterloo Record reported the results in a story headlined “Tory Kyoto Strategy Mirrors U.S. Plan”:

In his 2003 memo, [Luntz] told Republicans not to use economic arguments against environmental regulations, because environmental arguments would always win out with average Americans concerned about their health. Luntz also told his U.S. clients to stress common sense and accountability. “First, assure your audience that you are committed to ‘preserving and protecting’ the environment but that ‘it can be done more wisely and effectively.’ Absolutely do not raise economic arguments first.”

Since the Conservatives took office, they have consistently stressed their commitment to clean air and water, and tried to avoid discussion of cutting back environmental programs— although many have been eliminated. “My mandate is to have accountability on the environment and show real results and action on the environment for Canadians,” [Environment Minister] Ambrose told the Commons last week.

Luntz advises that technology and innovation are the keys to curbing climate change, a theme the Conservatives have repeatedly echoed. “We will be investing in Canadian technology and in Canadians,” Ambrose told MPs.

Despite his general aversion to economic arguments, Luntz . . . advises putting the cost of regulation in human terms, emphasizing how specific activities will cost more, from “pumping gas to turning on the light.” Ambrose has claimed that “we would have to pull every truck and car off the street, shut down every train and ground every plane to reach the Kyoto target. Or we could shut off all the lights in Canada tomorrow.”

In this first year that the Harper Conservatives were in power, Canada was also the official chair of the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which gave the country two special chances to drag down the process. First, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose was anything but a champion for action. She dismissed Canada’s own commitments, blew off Canada’s reporting deadlines, and on one occasion at least, declined even to attend a meeting, assuming her position as “chair” over the telephone.

Canada also increased international inertia on behalf of the Bush administration. Having refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the United States was effectively sidelined from the process, forced to sit outside of the most critical meetings awaiting word of how the parties to the accord were planning to proceed. Given that the United States was the world’s number-one producer of greenhouse gases, there was only so much that could be decided by the remainder of the world’s powers, but the United States still feared that its interests could be marginalized by a concerted international effort to discourage emissions.

That was no threat with Canada in the room. Having backed away from its own Kyoto commitments, Canada also chose to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a sort of anti-Kyoto coalition that included the world’s biggest polluters (China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States) and the second-tier countries that sell them oil and coal (Australia and Canada). Even Republican Senator (and later presidential candidate) John McCain dismissed the partnership as “nothing more than a nice little public relations ploy.” McCain told Grist writer Amanda Griscom Little on August 4, 2005 (“New Asia-Pacific Climate Pact Is Long on PR, Short on Substance”), that the partnership had “almost no meaning. They aren’t even committing money to the effort, much less enacting rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The group’s apparent determination to create an alternative organization that could be used to undermine the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, combined with the Canadian decision to join the Big Coal coalition during a year when Canada was nominal chair of the UN Framework process, dealt the UN body a telling blow.

At subsequent UN Framework conferences, especially in Bali in 2007, Canada’s obstructionist position became so obvious that people started to believe the Bush and Harper administrations were working together—that Canada was trying to prevent any progress that might demonstrate how badly the United States was out of step. But the theory broke down at the Kyoto Protocol update in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008. By then Barack Obama was already president-elect, though George Bush would retain the actual presidency until January 20, 2009. So the Bush negotiators were still in the room, but with no real mandate: everyone expected that the Obama administration would take a more aggressive tack in approaching climate change.

With the United States removed as a contrarian force, some people expected that Canada would shift to a more productive position as well. But if anything, Canada stepped up its obstructionism, urging other countries to back away from greenhouse gas reduction commitments they had made in Bali the year before. For its efforts Canada was granted the “Colossal Fossil” award. The environmental Climate Action Network chose a “Fossil of the Day” for each day of the two-week conference, and the country with the most nominations was judged to be the Colossal Fossil when the meeting wound down. Canada really earned that international embarrassment.

While dragging down efforts to build an effective greenhouse gas reduction policy on the world stage, the Harper Conservatives continued to emulate U.S. policy at home. Where in 2003 the Bush administration had proposed a Clear Skies Act that ignored greenhouse gases almost entirely, the Harper Tories followed with a Clean Air Act in 2006, which focused on smog and particulate pollutants and promised (still voluntary) emission targets by 2020.

With U.S. president George Bush advocating “energy intensity targets” as a way to address climate change, the same policy started appearing in Canadian climate documents only a short while later, such as in Environment Canada’s 2008 regulatory framework for industrial greenhouse gas emissions. An energy intensity target is something you might expect to get from Frank Luntz: it’s very specific. The definitions are clear and concise. But when you implement it succesfully, you get a public relations boost without any corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Consider, for illustration, the following definition from the World Resources Institute: “Greenhouse gas intensity targets are policies that specify emissions reductions relative to productivity or economic output, for instance, tons co2/million dollars gdp. By contrast, absolute emissions targets specify reductions measured in metric tons, relative only to a historical baseline.” That means that you can reduce energy intensity by a lot (the Canadian tar sands giant Suncor cut its energy intensity by 51 percent between 1990 and 2006) while at the same time continuing to make the problem worse (despite the “intensity” cut, Suncor increased its absolute emissions by 131 percent during the same period).

Thus, intensity targets are for people who don’t want to deal with the problem. Consider this May 7, 2001, statement from Bush White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer in response to a question about whether the president would urge Americans to change their world-leading energy-consumption habits: “That’s a big ‘no.’ The president believes that it’s an American way of life, that it should be the goal of policy-makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one . . . The president considers Americans’ heavy use of energy a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy.” True to his word, until oil prices spiked in the summer of 2008, the Bush administration held its position, touting energy intensity cuts while supporting the expansion of the coal-fired power industry and the aggressive extension of oil drilling into parks and oceans.

Here’s how things played out in Canada during the same period: the provincial administration in Alberta, home to the largest section of Canada’s huge tar sands deposit, announced a climate change strategy in 2008 that would call for no greenhouse gas emission reductions whatsoever before 2020. In a document titled Responsibility/Leadership/Action, Alberta also proposed to pursue energy intensity targets in the short term (2010), to “stabilize” emissions by 2020 and to “reduce” emissions by 2050 by 14 percent from 2005 levels. Put another way, Alberta was planning to give industry free rein until 2020, after which it would introduce regulations so gently that by 2050, the province still would not comply with the target that Canada promised in Kyoto to meet by 2012. Returning once again to the dark definition of Orwellian, it’s hard to imagine how that could seriously be described as responsibility, leadership, or even action.

Now, I get the feeling that you really want to do something about this imbicile; you’re not alone. Want to know the best way? So do I. But anything you can do to ruin his credibility and upset the system that he merrily wallows in has to be a good thing.

Thanks to Bindarri, an Australian creative arts hub, which has exposed the lies of Australian Pulp in promoting their ENVI “sustainable” paper which, unsurprisingly, still requires primary forest to be logged for its production…

Q – how do you sell woodchipped Australian native forest to an Australian market who is becoming more environmentally aware?

A – buy some offset credits and launch Australia’s first carbon neutral paper.

Go Greenwash with ENVI

Australian Paper (AP), the manufacturer of ENVI has had a long history of sourcing fibre from native forests and has been subject to consumer boycotts.

AP’s Maryvale Mill in Gippsland Victoria will consume 350,000m3 of native forest pulp in 2009 [pdf pg 29] as well as producing pollutant emissions. This mill produces its famous Reflex paper and some of the ENVI range.

“ENVI grades are exactly the same paper that AP already produces. The only difference is that they have had the associated greenouse gas emmissions calculated and offset with carbon credits” (quote from Dalton). Some of ENVI’s range includes part recycled content such as “ENVI Recycled 50/50” while some of their papers such as “ENVI DM MATT” and “REFLEX CARBON NEUTRAL” contain no recycled content.

Currently, AP is linked to logging in the Central Highland, Strzelecki Rainforest Reserve and the Baw Baw National Park, which has been recognised by several key scientific studies as one of Victoria’s most biologically significant sites and one of its most important water catchments.

The Central Highlands of Victoria are the world’s most carbon-dense forest according to researchers from the Australian National University. Professor Mackey said “It identifies a gap in climate change policy that Australia needs to address. There has been a lot of talk about the need to address tropical deforestation in developing countries, but these results show we must start by recognising the carbon benefits to be gained from protecting our native forests”.

Accrediting a paper which is sourcing part of their pulp from the worlds most carbon dense forests raises questions about the integrity of the “Greenhouse Friendly” program and what “Carbon Neutral” really means.

While Melbourne is facing strict water restrictions this summer, Melbourne’s main water catchment is losing 20,000 megalitres a year due to logging. Logging reduces waterflow in to our dams by 50% and causes erosion and pollution which impact on water quality.

You can read about the whole clearfelled mess at the Bindarri website, which also contains stacks more information about the corporate links of Australian Paper and other corporate greenwashing they are indulging themselves with.

This is a beautiful, sad advert produced by an agency of the British government. Very powerful, very moving.

It tells us that we are responsible for “over 40% of the CO2”, which is caused by ordinary, everyday things, like heating, powering appliances and driving.

The governments and their corporate masters, decided that they couldn’t afford to tell people that around 30% of all the CO2 was the result of the generation of electricity; electricity that ordinary people use directly, or indirectly in the things they buy, and the things that form the infrastructure that we all use. That might make people go to extra efforts, and stop them doing lots of things that keep civilisation moving.

And the same corporations told the governments most emphatically, that they couldn’t mention the other 30% that was the direct result of manufacturing and transporting all the things that the adverts made ordinary people want to buy, for that would mean the ordinary people might stop buying things and the economy would stop growing, and the corporations would hurt.

The outcome of this was that the British government produced a beautiful film that lots of people would be touched by, and decide that, “yes” they would do their bit, and try and cut carbon emissions by just 40%.

And the other 60%?

Don’t tell.

I’m in possession of what is already turning out to be an excellent book by Jim Hoggan and Richard Littlemore called “Climate Cover Up“. I will be publishing a review once I have finished it; which might take a little while because I have a huge stack of things to get through, but just to whet your appetite, Richard has given me permission to publish some extracts on The Unsuitablog.

Chapter Four, from which this first extract is taken, largely concerns the formation and activities of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), a monstrous “Astroturf” which was created on the suggestion of the public relations company APCO (the same company that fought to promote tobacco in the face of virtually all medical advice). It also discusses at length the Astroturfing activities of The American Petroleum Institute (API). This section introduces a veteran of the anti-climate change lobby, Frederick Seitz, but most importantly “Mr Junk Science”, Steven Milloy. Enjoy.

TASSC’s early membership list included “sound science” supporters like Amoco, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corporation, Procter & Gamble, the Louisiana Chemical Association, the National Pest Control Association, General Motors, 3m, Chevron, and Dow Chemical. For “science advisors,” they had people such as Frederick Seitz.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Seitz was a widely admired scientist, a former president of both the National Academy of Sciences and Rockefeller University. In 1978 he took that reputation to work for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. According to “While Washington Slept,” a May 2006 Vanity Fair article by investigative journalist Mark Hertsgaard, over a ten-year period Seitz was responsible for handing out US$45 million in tobacco money to people who were pursuing research that overwhelmingly failed to link tobacco to anything the least bit negative. Seitz later admitted to accepting almost US$900,000 of that money himself.

But by the late 1980s he seemed to have lost a step. In a Philip Morris interoffice memo dated 1989, an executive named Alexander Holtzman reported that he was told that “Dr. Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational as to offer advice.” Yet Seitz continued to stand as a TASSC regular, in particular lending his name and leveraging his old National Academy of Sciences affiliation to the global warming denial movement for nineteen more years, dying in 2008 at the age of ninety-six.

It’s probably time to introduce Steven Milloy, a.k.a. “The Junkman,” to our cast of characters. While tassc was originally run by executive director Garrey Carruthers, an economist and former New Mexico governor, Steven Milloy took over in 1997. Milloy’s academic background is also considerable: he has an undergraduate degree in science from Johns Hopkins, a masters in health sciences and biostatistics (also from Johns Hopkins), and a masters in law from Georgetown. But there is no record of his directly pursuing science or law as a career.

Instead, Milloy emerged in the 1990s working for a series of public relations and lobby firms, including the eop Group, which the Web site pr Watch.org describes as “a well-connected, Washington-based lobby firm whose clients have included the American Crop Protection Association (the chief trade association of the pesticide industry), the American Petroleum Institute, AT&T, the Business Roundtable, the Chlorine Chemistry Council, Dow Chemical Company, Edison Electric Institute (nuclear power), Fort Howard Corp. (a paper manufacturer), International Food Additives Council, Monsanto Co., National Mining Association, and the Nuclear Energy Institute.”

Milloy, who is currently an “adjunct scholar” at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and formerly held that position at the Cato Institute, is also the creator and proprietor of the Web site JunkScience.com, which works to “debunk” everything from the dangers of secondhand smoke to the risks of genetically modified foods. Milloy was a founding member of a team assembled by the American Petroleum Institute (API) to create a 1998 “Global Climate Science Communication Action Plan” (the precise contents of which Greenpeace later discovered and made available for public viewing). The api made no bones about its intent in creating its plan for the public. The document plainly states that its purpose is to convince the public, through the media, that climate science is awash in uncertainty. Notwithstanding that the industry’s own scientists were saying as early as 1995 that the science of climate change was undeniable(as in the New York Times report discussed in Chapter 1), the API set out an entire strategy bent on making doubt, in the words of the memo below, “conventional wisdom.” The API document begins with a kind of mission statement (the parenthetical additions appear as in the original):

Victory Will Be Achieved When

• Average citizens “understand” (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the “conventional wisdom”
• Media “understands” (recognizes) uncertainties in climate science
• Media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current “conventional wisdom”
• Industry senior leadership understands uncertainties in climate science, making them stronger ambassadors to those who shape climate policy
• Those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.

The statement seems to make clear that the goal was not to promote an understanding of science, but to spread uncertainty. The goal was not to put the best case before a deserving public, but to ensure at all times that the public was treated to “balance”—and in this case, the API strategists meant that every time a top scientist offered the public new insights into the risks of climate change, the institute would be there with a contradictory view. Victory would be achieved when the public accepted this balance—this confusion—as “conventional wisdom.” It was also a priority that industry leaders learn not about science but about uncertainty, with a specific goal of attacking the Kyoto agreement, making its supporters appear “out of touch with reality.” There is, however, no contention here that Kyoto supporters really were out of touch, only that the api would like to cast them as such.

The plan went on to describe how the api might achieve these goals, beginning with a campaign to search out and recruit “new (scientific) faces who will add their voices to those recognized scientists who already are vocal.” The document goes on to expand on the list of specific tactics (with my emphasis added in italics):

• Develop a global climate science information kit for media including peer-reviewed papers that undercut the “conventional wisdom” on climate science. This kit also will include understandable communications, including simple fact sheets that present scientific uncertainties in language that the media and public can understand.
• Conduct briefings by media-trained scientists for science writers in the top 20 media markets, using the information kits. Distribute the information kits to daily newspapers nationwide with offer of scientists to brief reporters at each paper. Develop, disseminate radio news releases featuring scientists nationwide, and offer scientists to appear on radio talk shows across the country.
• Produce, distribute a steady stream of climate science information via facsimile and e-mail to science writers around the country.
• Produce, distribute via syndicate and directly to newspapers nationwide a steady stream of op-ed columns and letters to the editor authored by scientists.
• Convince one of the major news national tv journalists (e.g., John Stossel) to produce a report examining the scientific underpinnings of the Kyoto treaty.
• Organize, promote and conduct through grassroots organizations a series of campus/community workshops/debates on climate science in 10 most important states during the period mid-August through October, 1998.
• Consider advertising the scientific uncertainties in select markets to support national, regional and local (e.g. workshops / debates), as appropriate.

Like the Western Fuels Association campaign in the early 1990s and the TASSC campaign that followed, this document once again set out a major work plan that involved burying science writers in “a steady stream of climate science information” concentrating not on quality but on doubt. It can hardly be a coincidence that even as the science itself was becoming ever more certain—and ever more alarming—the “conventional wisdom” in the late 1990s and into the early part of this century turned more and more to confusion and doubt.

More to come, but if that hasn’t already made you angry then I’d be very surprised indeed.

Something has been niggling me for a while: every time I open my Inbox, an old email goes flashing past, annoying but not quite annoying enough to blog about; but I kept it for when the niggle eventually became a pain. Back in April, for that joyous event that some companies like to call Earth Day (Week, Month, etc.), a company called Nature Air sent me a message all about their product.

Nature Air. It sounds like the merest zephyr that brings the tang of the wild into your nostrils and a cooling breeze across your skin.

Wrong. Nature Air is an airline – a small one, yes, with turboprop planes, but nevertheless an airline. “Airline” doesn’t mean life-saving doctors on call, emergency in the wilds of Australia, it means “Commercial enterprise that encourages flying in order to make money.”

So what did this email say?

Hello:

As you are planning your Earth Day coverage I thought you would be interested in this recent news from NatureAir. While many companies are cutting costs today, NatureAir continues to spend money in an effort to save the planet and create a better future for Costa Rica children.

Just recently NatureAir expanded its sustainable projects and began using bio-diesel. The alternative fuel, formulated with recycled vegetable oils, is used to fuel all NatureAir ground equipment and vehicles. The use of bio-diesel has an enormous impact on the environment. A fleet that uses 1,000 gallons of bio-diesel per year generates enough CO2 emission reductions equivalent to removing 1.4 cars from our roadways. NatureAir is the first company to bring this cleaner, sustainable fuel to Costa Rica.

Please see the release below for more information on all NatureAir’s eco-friendly and educational projects and let me know if you have any questions or would like to speak with someone from NatureAir.
—
Thank you!

Carolyn Evert
Adventure Travel Media Source
Account Manager
Carolyn@atmstravelnews.com

And there was a press release attached — thanks, Carolyn. Now, reading through the email, you would be forgiven for thinking that Nature Air was running their planes on recycled vegetable oil; but, of course, that’s not possible due to the unforgiving nature of aircraft engines, which require highly refined kerosene to stay in the air — hence the caption in the photo above. Apart from running a few tiny ground vehicles on a bit of leftover cooking oil, what else are Nature Air doing to help “save the planet” (their words)?

Furthermore NatureAir reduces CO2 emissions through its fuel-efficient twin-engine planes, reduced taxi waits, and offsetting 100% of carbon emitted from every flight. The airline just embarked on its 5th consecutive year of compensations for its flight emissions, an approximately $90,000 yearly investment. 100% of its greenhouse gas emissions are compensated through preservation and reforestation of tropical forests in Southern Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.

Every flight NatureAir takes to the skies guarantees that a forest will be free from clear cutting.

Wow! That’s brilliant! I can take a flight and save a rainforest!

So what about the kerosene being burnt in the engine that isn’t contributing to climate change in any way at all? Oh, it’s being offset by the forest preservation, which would not have been necessary without the greed of market capitalism, which Nature Air are just another part of. And don’t forget that there is no guarantee whatsoever that the preservation will be there for 200 years, which is how long it has to be in place to account for the carbon emissions. Someone must be checking all this.

Let’s check out their certification page at http://www.natureair.com/carbonneutral/…

Oh dear, it seems to have disappeared for the moment. I’ll try somewhere else…

Since 2004, Nature Air has been the first airline to compensate for 100% of its carbon emissions from flight operations. We do this thru a locally certified compensation program, certified by the government and international third party auditors. Nature Air has chosen to support reforestation and conservation programs to help combat the impacts of deforestation in Costa Rica.

Well meaning, I’m sure, but incredibly naive.

The reason I decided to turn to this stupid email from this deluded company was because of a great blog written by my friend Annie on her blog a few days ago. She wrote about whether flying to see the family can ever be justified, which then raised a few comments about children being “denied” the opportunity of seeing far away places, and the chances of exotic experiences that would otherwise not be available if they didn’t fly. This, of course, is not “denial” at all — it is merely the way we were before we were sold the dream of being able to go wherever we want, very quickly, with little regard for our life-support system.

I will end with a comment that was made below the article itself, by another Annie, which I think is a wonderful statement of what holidays are about:

Most kids who fly abroad just go the beach or swimming pool of their hotel, eat chips and have no cultural experience whatsoever! Your children are NOT being deprived by not having foreign holidays. They live in a beautiful place with big gardens. Children need freedom and to be outside in nature not stuck in front of a telly, and the wilds of Wales are as good a place as any for that. Grasshoppers and ladybirds in your garden can be just as fascinating as an exotic animal. Also, your kids get to experience alternative culture at festivals etc. when they are older they can go anywhere they want – and by then trains might be cheaper and better and aeroplanes a thing of the past!

Do you have a beautiful Tuscan mansion? And another in New York, southern England, the Caribbean and probably all sorts of other places? And do you fly on a regular basis between them, and anywhere else that takes your fancy…in private jets…and helicoptors? And do you have personal chefs, masseurs, lifestyle advisors, gardeners and houshold maids? And have you had a Hilarious.Run.In with a Guardian journalist that more people need to see, just for the entertainment value? And do you promote healthy, sustainable living and tell people to save the rainforest?

Hi Trudie!

Love the moves…

Now, one video alone is never enough to move the contents of your stomach upwards, forcefully opposing the laws of gravity to emerge in a chunky stream of meal remainders. What we need is a proper emetic, in the form of this press release from Marissa at Trudie’s PR agency, Krupp:

GAIAM AND TRUDIE STYLER CREATE DVDS IN TUSCANY

Trudie Styler and Celebrity Trainer James D’Silva to Star in

Series of Mind Body Fitness DVDs

NEW YORK, NY – Gaiam, Inc., the leading distributor of lifestyle media and fitness accessories, today announced that it will produce a series of mind body fitness DVDs with Trudie Styler, the actress, producer, and environmental campaigner.

She will be joined in DVD workouts that combine elements of yoga, Pilates and ballet with traditional exercises by celebrity fitness trainer James D’Silva, who trained as a ballet dancer in his native Goa. He specializes in workout regimes to increase flexibility, strengthen and tone muscles, and improve posture.

The programs are filmed on location at Il Palagio, the Tuscan villa Styler shares with her husband Sting, and will feature music from Sting’s #1 classical album of 2006, “Songs From the Labyrinth,” plus extensive bonus material.

The first two DVDs will launch in October 2009, the third in December 2009, and two more DVDs and Myofascial Release kit in 2010. Each DVD will reflect elements of Styler and Sting’s philosophy on eco-friendly living.

“Trudie Styler embodies Gaiam’s lifestyle message of good health, wellness, and sustainability,” said Lynn Powers, CEO of Gaiam, Inc. “Her dedication to a personal lifestyle that focuses on health, the environment and social responsibility serves as an example for all.”

Trudie Styler said, “I have enjoyed yoga, Pilates and dance over the years and I certainly feel I have benefited from the integrated mind body experience they offer. It’s exciting that through Gaiam, James D’Silva and I are able to introduce these routines to others. I hope they will derive as much pleasure and benefit from them as I have done.”

The DVDs will feature Styler and D’Silva performing various mind body fitness routines, in the setting of the Il Palagio estate in Tuscany. They will also contain interviews with Styler, Sting and D’Silva covering thoughts on the environment, music and several of Sting’s songs.

“These new DVDs will combine fitness, aesthetics, and artistry designed to enhance the spirit of the workouts,” said Gaiam President of Entertainment and World Wide Distribution, William S. Sondheim. “Additional bonus segments will give viewers a glimpse at how Trudie and Sting have personally dedicated themselves to inspirational practices and green living.”

Bonus material will include a tour of Il Palagio’s kitchen and gardens. More than 70% of the food at Il Palagio comes from the estate itself, including products that are sold to the public such as honey, olive oil, fruit, vegetables, Tuscan salami and, coming in 2010, wine. Additionally, there is a behind-the-scenes look at how Il Palagio uses the surrounding land to create a self-sustaining and eco-friendly house that runs on bio fuels. And lastly, a lifestyle piece about organic wine production, the conversion of estate lands into biodynamic vineyards, and the story behind Sister Moon, the couple’s organic wine label.

You want them, don’t you? All of them.

Strangely, my reaction to this slightly misdirected press release was not over-effusive, sycophantic congratulations and a promise to promote the DVDs all over my blogs. I thought this would be more appropriate:

Hi [name withheld to protect the innocent]

To be honest I would rather eat my own hand than watch flying-addict Trudie, she of the 4 or 5 homes (I lose count), tell everyone how to live in a sustainable way on only $10m per year, while delightfully pirouetting to Sting’s self-obsessed ballads.

Thanks for asking, though.

Keith

To give her some credit, she is probably just as pissed off with sending this banal crap out as I am with receiving it. Her response was perfect:

So you’re passing? Just kidding. Thanks for letting me know and have an awesome weekend :-)

:-D

Did you enjoy that? Hilarious wasn’t it? So dour and pragmatic, you could almost think that the creators were being serious about the idea that CO2 wasn’t a pollutant, and that the presence of an excess amount in the atmosphere didn’t have dire consequences for the future of humanity and the rest of life.

Remember, a pollutant is simply something that is in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong quantity. The idea that carbon dioxide, therefore, isn’t a pollutant is not only physically wrong but also syntactically wrong. So it’s obviously a very clever, very funny spoof.

Leo Hickman in The Guardian, thinks otherwise.

“Is this a joke?” splutters one of the comments underneath the YouTube video of a new 30-second TV advert that has started being aired in a handful of US states over the past few days telling viewers that “CO2 is green“. Sadly not, it seems.

In a slick attempt to undermine the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant because rising levels of the gas in the atmosphere will “endanger public health or welfare”, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for these adverts to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. The ultimate aim of the advert, though, is to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which now appears as if it might even impact on vital UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

So who’s behind “CO2 is green” and this advert? One of its founders is H Leighton Steward who, until his retirement in 2000, was the vice chairman of Burlington Resources, a Houston-based oil and gas company bought by ConocoPhillips in 2006. Steward received the American Petroleum Institute’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in 2001 and remains an honorary director of the oil industry lobby group. In other words, we can conclude that this man boasts a particular pedigree within the oil industry.

The Washington Post (which admits it has taken a half-page advert from the “CO2 is green” group) is reporting that Steward, along with some associates, is now trying to establish the group as a charity:

Steward has joined forces with Corbin J Robertson Jr, chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291m [£184m] in 2008. They have formed two groups – CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for education – with about $1m. Plants Need CO2 has applied for 501(c)(3) tax status, so that contributions would qualify as charitable donations, said Natural Resource Partners general counsel Wyatt L Hogan, who also serves on the group’s board.

The advert (which varies slightly depending on the state) is really something to behold. Here’s a transcript:

Congress is considering a law that would classify carbon dioxide as pollution. This will cost us jobs. There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the earth’s ecosystems and would support more plant and animal life. Please take action. Contact your senator and congressman today and remind them CO2 is not pollution and more CO2 results in a greener earth. Go to CO2isgreen.com, because we all need CO2.

The advert is ripe for spoofing. It’s certainly tempting to laugh it off. (For extra merriment, visit the “CO2 is green” website and read the “Why do people believe these myths?” section: “They have been misinformed by people that benefit financially from propagating the myth.” Oh, the irony.)

But the advert is also a juddering reminder there are still powerful, influential forces straining every last sinew and dollar they possess to deny that rising CO2 levels are a problem. That such efforts should so easily be traced back to oil industry operatives is not wholly surprising, but sobering nonetheless.

Far more depressing, though, is the fact that they have produced this “Plants need CO2” website to better inform the public about the “positive effects of additional atmospheric CO2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO2”.

If it is real then what can we do about it?

Simply keep up the pretence that it is a spoof, and make the originators a laughing stock: everywhere it appears, in video form, or as a poster, or as an item on a web site, make sure you make a comment along the lines of “This is hilarious” or “Where can we see more spoofs like this” or “Genius, I haven’t laughed to much in ages.”

You can even join a Facebook Group about it: just make sure you make a few posts on their wall ;-)

I was digging around for a recording of something today and found this gem from December 2008 hidden away in the dark recesses of my hard drive. After listening to it and nearly spraying a mouthful of coffee over the keyboard, twice, I felt it had to go on The Unsuitablog as possibly the best example of Un-Joined Up Government ever committed to a sound file.

Click to play file, or right-click to save

[The silence halfway through is not a break in recording, just telephone silence]

Next time you feel like calling a civil servant or a government minister, remember this recording, then get on the train and visit the Department personally. Better still, just accept that governments have no intention of making things better, and do a bit of undermining — it’s far more satisfying, and ultimately a lot more effective.

(They never did phone back, by the way)

An innocuous little email was sent to me the other day, and had it come from a small company that only makes light bulbs then I might have let it pass. But it didn’t come from a small company that only sells light bulbs; it came from the 12th largest company in the world, the fifth largest in the USA — General Electric.

GE, as they have generally always been known, are pushing compact fluorescent light bulbs as the answer to the world’s energy problems; as the email makes clear:

There’s no question that GE Energy Smart® bulbs give consumers the energy-saving benefits they want and the high-quality lighting they expect. With a complete family of different shapes and sizes, consumers have energy-friendly lighting options for nearly every room in their homes – including decorative fixtures.

If every household in the U.S. replaced ONE light bulb with an ENERGY STAR® qualified GE Energy Smart® bulb, consumers would save:


a.. A combined national total of $600 million a year in energy costs.
b.. Enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gasses equivalent to the emission of more than 800,000 cars.

Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR® is a national campaign encouraging all Americans to join with millions of others and take small individual steps, like changing a light bulb, that make a big difference in the fight against climate change. ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices. Take the Pledge.

Apart from the bile-inducing statement, “There’s no question that GE Energy Smart® bulbs give consumers the energy-saving benefits they want”, which takes assumption to the whole new level (although, as I don’t consider myself to be a “consumer”, then maybe in a strange way, they are right…); is the statistical blunderbuss approach to this press release. For one, changing a single light bulb will reduce power consumption by a paltry 45 watts at most, which is about 15% of the power consumption of a plasma TV screen, and utterly trivial compared to the amount of energy consumed by a vacuum cleaner or oven. Second, it also waves around the “x million homes / people / cars” statistic, which always sounds impressive (yes, I was guilty of this once) but falls down as soon as you realise that they are only talking about the lighting for those 3 million homes, which also comprise only around 2% of US homes.

Then there is the “doing your bit” myth: the idea that we can all save the world by doing bugger all, like changing one lightbulb. You would imaging that GE would want to sell lots and lots of lightbulbs, but don’t forget — and here’s where it starts to get interesting — they are also an energy generation and transmission company, which makes big bucks out of providing electricity to millions of homes. If each home cut its electricity consumption by, say 50%, then it would be a financial catastrophe for the generation and transmission arm of GE.

What GE are creating is a “win-win-win” for themselves: (1) they look like a “green” company, (2) they ensure that they remain financially viable as an individual corporation and (3) they perpetuate the “doing your bit” myth which is essential to the continuation of the brainwashed consumer society.

It’s quite remarkable that I haven’t covered GE here already, but it has been excellently covered by DeSmogBlog, who paid particular attention to GE’s “clean coal” adverts:

Forget “clean coal.” Energy giant General Electric thinks coal is downright sexy.

This “coal-is-so-clean-its-sexy ad” was pulled by General Electric a while back, but it goes to show just how far some will go to sell clean coal.

Strange choice of music for the ad – “Sixteen Tons” by Merle Travis is a song about the misery of coal mining.

Why not spend a few moments reflecting on this, while you also ponder GE’s magical light bulbs…

Given that EVERY – WEB – SITE in the General Electric armoury appears to have “the environment” at the very top of its agenda — yes, that really does include coal, aviation and oil — I think we might be seeing more of this brutal monolithic corporation on The Unsuitablog pretty soon.