The Public Eye Awards (formerly Public Eye on Davos) are a critical counterpoint to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Organized since 2000 by the Berne Declaration (BD) and Pro Natura (the latter replaced by Greenpeace in 2009), Public Eye reminds the players of the global economy who impact people and the environment with destructive business practices that actions have consequences – in this case for the image of the company. We present shame-on-you-awards to the nastiest corporate players of the year. Two of these (in the categories „Global“ and „Swiss“) will be awarded by an in-house jury of experts while winner of the people’s award will be chosen by the people, who can vote online (http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote).

The deregulation of world markets has greatly expanded the range of transnational corporations. This change has come about at such a rapid pace that national laws have long lost their ability to impose an orderly framework. The voluntary restraint or social/environmental commitment pledged by companies is often not worth the glossy paper it is printed on. Patents that price life-saving drugs out of reach of poor populations, natural resources exploited without regard for the local environment, or workers exploited ruthlessly in a race to the bottom, you name it – there is nothing that the global players assembled in Davos will not do to improve their bottom line. In the second year of a major world economic recession it is more important than ever to remind corporations of their social and environmental responsibility. We want a legal framework that will hold them accountable for their practices.

Starting this year, Public Eye also presents a „Greenwash Award“ to account for the rapidly growing number of institutions that fabricate social-environmental fig leaves in an attempt to make inveterate corporate players look greener than they are.

As the “Mother of all Window Dressers,” the WEF would naturally be a serious contender for this special award. The shortlist for the most dubious eco or social distinction includes the the highly-diluted CEO Water Mandate, a greenwashing project launched in 2007 within the framework of the UN Global Compact by (then) Nestlé boss Peter Brabeck to tackle the water crisis. But instead of doing so, CEO Water Mandate pursues systematic water privatization without meeting mandatory environmental or social criteria . Other nominees for the Greenwash award are he Round Table for Responsible Soy, co-initiated by WWF, and the partially state-owned Health Promotion Switzerland foundation.

Nominees for the Public Eye People’s award include Roche for organ transplantation from executed prisoners in China, the Royal Bank of Canada and the International Olympic Comittee. Voting takes place online on www.publiceye.ch/en/vote until January 27th. The more people vote, the more powerful the message!

This is a guest article, written by Annina Rohrbach of Public Eye, Switzerland.

Oh, the sheer hubris is making me smile so much! Unite, the union responsible for the welfare of cabin staff at British Airways has moved well ahead with plans for a 12 day all-out strike designed to ground the majority of British Airways craft over the lucrative Christmas and New Year period; and won’t it be a corker if it goes ahead:

Bruce Carr QC, representing the airline at a packed hearing yesterday, said the union was “depriving literally millions of people of a happy Christmas”.

He added: “The apparent recognition of the deliberate timing is highlighted by the fact that Unite needed to make [the strike] 12 days of Christmas, not 10 or 14 … It knew the number has a resonance for the many passengers who are deprived of flying with BA.”

Let’s suppose that the striking workers manage to ground half of BA’s fleet from just Heathrow and Gatwick for this period. Stephen Bowler’s plane spotting website gives a good estimate of 500 flights from the two airports every day, with about 40% being long-haul (more than about 5000 miles). It’s difficult to extrapolate precisely, but assuming each an Airbus A320 emits just over 9kg per kilometre travelled that’s…

…about 45 tonnes of carbon dioxide per flight (with an average of 5000 km per flight)…

…about 22500 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day…

…about 42750 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per day, due to 1.9 multiplier from high altitude flying…

…about 256000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent prevented from being emitted over the strike period, assuming half of planes are grounded.

Wow! That’s the same as the entire Central African Republic emits in a whole year. And that’s just direct emissions. I’ve taken into account the people who would have gone to other airlines in my 50% “grounding” figure, because it could be as much as 90% grounding if the strike is solid, but there are a hell of a lot of people who would think again about flying over the Christmas / New Year period if they were to experience a season at home again. Many, many of these people are habitual fliers who can’t imagine any other way of communicating, and heaven help anyone who wants to stop them exploring the world — but the cabin crew might manage that.

In case you think I am attacking British Airways out of hand, bearing in mind that aviation accounts, at the moment, for a relatively small proportion of global emissions, then you need to see the kind of nefarious tactics that BA have been using to convince us all that flying isn’t really a problem, and they are even one of the good guys when it comes to planetary ecocide.

First, their own web site, containing the following statements about the “efforts” they have been making to cut emissions:

We have actively campaigned for aviation to be included in global carbon trading since 2000.

We were the first airline in the world to gain practical experience through participation in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which enabled us to reduced our UK carbon emissions by 23%.

As a direct result of our efforts, the EU carbon trading scheme is going to include the aviation industry from 2012.

Exactly how did BA reduce its emissions by 23%? They didn’t cut the number of flights — oh no — they simply purchased a load of “permits” to pollute (actually, were virtually given them by the pro-flying UK government, but that’s another story) and struck them off their carbon balance sheet. Job done. Or rather, greenwash done. With aviation in the European scheme from 2012 there will be even more opportunity for BA to sweep their emissions under someone else’s carpet.

Second, they are a key member of Future Heathrow, an organisation promoting the (deep breath) “sustainable” expansion of London Heathrow airport. This is classic greenwash from their web site:

It has been suggested that the environmental costs of Heathrow outweigh its economic benefits but if capacity at Heathrow continues to be constrained, foreign hubs such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris will grow instead. This will not provide any climate change benefits but would severely damage the UK’s global competitiveness and UK jobs.

Of course, everyone in the UK will suddenly move to Germany, Holland or France so they can fly from there. Alternatively, without the expansion there will be fewer options for the airlines to seduce people into flying, so they might just stay at home ;-) And, of course, as part of Future Heathrow’s climate change mitigation, they will also be turning to emissions trading in a big way to “offset” the increase in Heathrow’s emissions (hang on, didn’t they say that the emissions wouldn’t increase overall?)

More about Future Heathrow can be found in this Unsuitablog article.

Third, British Airways are also a key member of the pro-flying lobby group Flying Matters. Ironically, for this article, the trade union that BA are fighting against, Unite, is also a member. Among their charming comments from their Press section is this one, essentially saying that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to hell for suggesting people should grow their food locally:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called air-freighted food “unsustainable” and wants it to be replaced by homegrown produce from thousands of new allotments.

Dr. Williams made his comments in an interview with the Times, in which he also said that he tried to have a “flight-free year” in 2008, but didn’t manage to.

Although Dr. Williams said he wanted to avoid creating an “instant crisis” in developing countries whose economies rely on the ability to export fresh food to market, FlyingMatters Director Michelle Di Leo told The Times that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Alternatively, we could listen to Rowan Williams and not fall into the trap of thinking globalisation is what the financially poor nations of the world need – hey! Maybe they should be allowed to grow food for themselves rather than forcing them into market-led trade subservience.

British Airways, The World’s Most Hypocritical Airline.
__________

STOP PRESS: The strike has just been ruled “Illegal” by the High Court of England. That’s 256000 tonnes of carbon dioxide likely to be pouring into the atmosphere over Christmas once more…

I thought the dirty tricks and fake grassroots activism being pushed by the group known as Hopenhagen couldn’t get any worse, and then I hear this from Johann Hari, who is currently in Copenhagen, lending an ear and column inches to the people who will be worst affected by climate change:

Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city’s central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos – the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald’s announces “I’m loving it!” in great red letters above. “Welcome to Hopenhagen!” it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air.

Yes, “Welcome to Hopenhagen”, that’s the rallying cry of the media executives who work for the corporations that will do anything to dominate the proceedings at this last-ditch attempt for politicians to show they have a desire to make things better. As Johann goes on to say: “This plastic planet is the perfect symbol for this summit.” The politicians of the Industrial world have their agendas set by the corporations, who are kindly sponsoring the efforts of the Hopenhagen organisation, which just happens to be run by the International Advertising Association.

Back in June, I said: “This raises a hell of a lot of questions: not least that if Hopenhagen is the brainchild of an industry that depends on continuous consumer spending for its existence, how could it be sustainable in any way?” As they promised, the campaign has been ramping up and up, with their billboards, their viral ads and their Facebook group, for which there are 42,000 members largely dancing to the tune of the corporate world. One person just posted the following: “The title is Hopenhagen, Let’s try to keep the comments toward the hopeful and not rant at everyone. If we all put a little effort into making small changes, we can make big changes. Peace”

To which I responded:

The IAA wants the corporations of the world to thrive otherwise it’s members would suffer: Hopenhagen is currently being promoted in Copenhagen with billboards covered in corporate logos. One of Hopenhagen’s key sponsors, DuPont was a founder member of the climate sceptic Global Climate Coalition. Coca Cola suck India and Mexico dry; Gap exploit workers for cheap clothing; BMW make overpowered gas-guzzlers; Seimens have a nice line in oil and gas exploration – all of these partners of Hopenhagen.

I have nothing more to add. But you might want to say something…

I really like peanut butter! There you go, no secret about it, and in terms of ecological footprint it’s a lot better than beef, pork or cheese, even when the peanuts have to come from thousands of miles away. However, and this is the point of this Friday afternoon bit of mental cruelty, it seems that not all peanut butters are made the same.

Step forward Whole Earth Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter, my second favourite because it’s really crunchy and tastes nice and earthy. I was also influenced by the “organic” bit, because it really is organic as far as the peanuts are concerned, but as Lierre Keith has been going on about for a while, just because it’s organic doesn’t mean it’s not destructive. Nevertheless, like for like, I would rather have organic than non-organic.

Then we have my personal favourite, and probably the favourite of most British kids, Sun Pat Original Crunchy Peanut Butter – I have no idea why it tastes so nice, but it does, so there! It doesn’t have it’s own page on the Premier Foods web site, because Premier Foods own loads of different brands, as opposed to Whole Earth, whose owners are a relatively small company, so you’ll have to take my word for the ingredients – which I have in front of me, printed on the label, on the jar:

Roasted Peanuts, Stabilizer (E471), Cane Sugar, Peanut Oil, Sea Salt.

So, just 5 ingredients, including the strange sounding E471, which turns out to be a fatty acid derived from vegetable oil, used to keep the peanuts in good condition (I phoned them up). Nothing too sinister there apart from the cane sugar, which I try to avoid normally, preferring to buy British sugar beet.

Going back to the Whole Earth peanut butter; if you click on the link above you get the list of ingredients, of which there are just four (no sugar in this one). And, as I say, it’s all organic. But look at the second ingredient: it’s Palm Oil, that ubiquitous ingredient which is found in everything from potato crisps to biscuits to hair conditioner to motor fuel. To sum up: palm oil is a disaster.

It seems that Whole Earth recognise this, and have linked to a special page which tells customers all about how nice and ethical the palm oil they use is:

we are well aware of the environmental concerns surrounding palm oil and are pleased to be able to tell you that the the palm oil in our Peanut Butters is supplied by one of the founding members of the round table for sustainable palm oil (RSPO). Their plantations are managed in such a way as to maximise long-term sustainability throughout the production process. Their methods include zero-burning policies, special planting techniques and ‘natural’ production processes which minimize pollution, reduce the use of fossil fuels and artificial fertilizers, and safeguard the environment. Equally, they follow sustainable ‘social’ policies, created to enhance the local economy and the lives of those who work on or close to their plantations. Their ethical and environmental policies relate to the environment as a whole and are in line with Sustainable criteria as defined by the RSPO, which also includes specific Orang Utang habitat as a high conservation value.

Whole Earth are setting great stall by the policies of the RSPO, but as I exposed on The Unsuitablog in April 2008, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil cannot be trusted to look after habitats, and they certainly aren’t the kind of body you would want to use to rubberstamp your environmental credentials:

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.

So, with that in mind, I called up Whole Earth, who answer the phone as “Callow Foods” and tried to find out why they thought their palm oil was sustainable. Here is the recording:

Whole Earth Foods talk about Palm Oil

Columbian palm oil, “certified” by the RSPO. Hmm, I think I’ll stick to Sun Pat for the time being…

Apparently it’s ok to clearfell forests providing they are certified as sustainable.

I suppose there’s a precedent for this: Dick Cheney, as we all know, said it was ok to torture prisoners of war enemy non-combatants so long as someone in the US government claimed it wasn’t really torture, or they were able to simple redesignate the people being tortured.

So when the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a “non-profit” (oh, that phrase is so useful if you are a greenwasher) whose board is awash with timber industry cronies and various other representatives of the industrial machine, come along with the idea of their own certification scheme, who can blame them if it just happens to be of the utmost benefit to the industry. Actually, I really want you to stop reading this for a minute and go along to the SFI web site: read the biographies of the board members, and then come back here with perhaps a little anger in your veins…

Thanks to the people at ForestEthics, the greenwashing carried out by SFI is a little more in the public eye now. After their antics at the Greenbuild conference in Phoenix, Arizona a few days ago, the people at SFI seem to have become a little annoyed:

As sustainability practices continue to evolve, it is important that planners, designers, builders, customers and architects know the source of the wood used in their project, and increase the wood in their projects! Today in North America we are all fortunate to have a number of strong forest certification standards, which means the building community have a lot of options when it comes to responsibly sourced wood. But the fact remains that just 10% of the world’s forests are certified – collectively, we all need to promote credible forest certification to influence the other 90%.

As you may know, USGBC is currently reviewing and revising its wood certification benchmarks under LEED. I strongly urge them to recognize all credible forest certification programs, including SFI. This is really a huge opportunity for the USGBC to take a leadership role, end the certification debates and encourage more forest certification worldwide by focusing on sustainability. The certification debates, and subsequent PR stunts, take away from the real goal we should all be working towards – responsible forestry.

The “certification debates” that the SFI and other organisations decry so much, are looking into the failure of certification schemes worldwide to provide adequate protection for ecosystems — they are vital, as are the “PR stunts” such as the one below, that highlight the greenwashing to a wider audience.

I will leave it to ForestEthics to tell the story of their fun at Greenbuild…

Greenwashing by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was an unexpected addition to the agenda at this year’s Greenbuild–the world’s largest green building conference–in Phoenix, Arizona. Today–the day after keynote speaker Al Gore exhorted Greenbuild to call out greenwashing–ForestEthics released a large floating banner exposing SFI as a greenwasher.

On the conference’s opening day, ForestEthics ran an ad in USA Today’s Phoenix edition spotlighting SFI’s “greenwashing practice” of certifying forest destruction as ‘sustainable’. Copies of this ad and a brochure detailing SFI’s shortcomings circulated throughout the massive conference–with an estimated attendance of 25,000 people.

The ad targeted three prominent window companies for their ties to SFI, as well as to “notorious” California clearcutter Sierra Pacific Industries.

These actions add powerful visual elements to a campaign that began in September when ForestEthics filed legal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that became the focus of an article in the New York Times on September 12.

In its FTC complaint, ForestEthics described how SFI, funded and managed primarily by large logging companies, gives its seal of approval to the logging practices of these same companies that harm people and wildlife, damage water resources and destroy forests.

In October, the Sierra Club also filed a complaint with SFI, presenting scientific evidence that SFI certified logging by Weyerhaeuser on extremely steep and unstable mountainsides in SW Washington despite publicly available evidence that these mountainsides were prone to landslides. In a major regional rainstorm in December 2007,massive landslides did occur on logging sites certified by SFI as sustainable, producing downstream logjams and record flooding. The report submitted to the IRS focused on SFI’s nonprofit status, as SFI’s funding and activities serve the private interests of wood and paper companies that want a ‘green’ image. This is not a proper purpose for an organization with the same nonprofit status that the IRS gives to public charities.

Edit: For the record, I have no faith in FSC or any other certification scheme, nor do I think ForestEthics are squeaky clean – certainly I do not endorse them, only the action they carried out.

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.

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.

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 ;-)

Heard the one about the giant electricity generation company that wanted people to use less energy?

No, neither have I — why would an energy company want you to use less energy, given that would mean they are getting less money from the energy being used? But if appearing to want to make people use less energy could give you the bigger market share you’re after, then sponsoring a “green” day is a guaranteed winner.

This blog has already had a few words to say about the dodgy tactics of EDF Energy (see this article), so it’s no surprise that they are still greenwashing all the way to the bank. With their blanket sponsorship of the Team Green Britain website and activities then anyone getting involved couldn’t help but be impressed by the credentials of EDF Energy; especially given that some of the things on the web site (walking instead of driving, swapping stuff and meeting your neighbours) are all decent things to do in themselves.

But I couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be no overall body behind it; wherever I clicked just took me round in circles — no contact details, no credits, just various organisations and companies “supporting” the project. The Team Energy page says: “EDF Energy is supporting Team Energy. They’re the energy experts [Hmm, are they?] and know that the less energy we all use, the less CO2 we produce which is believed [A little bit of scepticism here] to be one of the main causes of climate change. That’s why they’re doing what they can to cut down their own energy emissions as a company and to help their customers reduce the energy they use at home.”

Not being able to phone anyone, I resorted to a DNS Lookup, which is how you find out who owns a domain name on the internet. By querying DNSStuff I got back the following:

Domain ID:D154858173-LROR
Domain Name:TEAMGREENBRITAIN.ORG
Created On:08-Dec-2008 17:52:54 UTC
Last Updated On:07-Feb-2009 03:52:53 UTC
Expiration Date:08-Dec-2010 17:52:54 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Group NBT plc aka NetNames (R60-LROR)
Status:OK
Registrant ID:758771515-NBTo
Registrant Name:EDF Energy PLC
Registrant Organization:EDF Energy PLC
Registrant Street1:40 Grosvenor Place
Registrant Street2:Victoria
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:London
Registrant State/Province:London
Registrant Postal Code:SW1X 7EN
Registrant Country:GB
Registrant Phone:+44.442082988292
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+44.442082988364
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant **************@edfenergy.com

Team Green Britain, and Green Britain Day is owned by EDF Energy, a company with a UK generation capacity of 4.8GW, of which 83% is coal: the dirtiest mainstream form of power generation there is.

This appalling contradiction was exposed by Fred Pearce of The Guardian, a few days ago. He was unequivocal about the depth that this greenwash sank:

Just two months ago, EDF Trading was patting itself on the back for bringing the largest load of coal ever to Antwerp, when the 300-metre-long ship Bao Guo docked 163,000 tonnes from Richards Bay in South Africa, destined for the company’s French coal-fired power stations.

Well done, guys. But don’t call it green.

But what can we expect? Judging by this link, EDF seems to have (shall we say?) borrowed the idea of a green union flag from its rival Ecotricity, a genuinely green power provider.

But back to EDF’s Green Britain Day press release, a model of Greenwash that its hirelings at Lexis Public Relations may well be proud of. “EDF Energy will be asking people to ‘do something green for the team’ on Green Britain Day, creating a wave of tangible actions across the UK,” it reads.

Perhaps, dare I suggest, EDF should join the party and “do something green” itself by committing to getting out of coal.

That, and the fact that Team Green Britain is run by EDF Energy, makes the statement, “That’s why they’re doing what they can to cut down their own energy emissions as a company”, look rather disingenuous, doesn’t it? They are talking about themselves, but speaking in the third person; this Astroturf methodology is pretty sophisticated greenwashing.

And not only have they tried to greenwash the public big time, with their avalanche of posters across the whole of Britain, they have even stooped so low as to steal the Green Union Flag idea from another, much less environmentally damaging energy provider; Ecotricity:

The most amazing thing has happened.

Our Green Union Jack – the one that Ecotricity’s been using for the last three years or so, has been ‘borrowed’ by another energy company.

We’re used to the Big Six energy companies behaving badly, but this is something else.

One of them decided that they liked the idea of a green union jack and the idea of a Green Britain so much – they’ve just gone and adopted it – lock, stock and barrel.

That would be shocking enough but the culprit is none other than EDF.

And that’s all the more shocking because of what the letters EDF stand for – Électricité de France, which seems just a little at odds with the adoption of the green flag… :) And of course the fact that they are a Nuclear power company [Ed. And a coal power generator in the UK] (not everybody’s idea of Green).

A French, state owned, Nuclear power company – using ‘our flag’ (or one very close to it) to green itself up – you couldn’t make this stuff up. And they’ve submitted a Trademark application… they want to own the Green Union Jack!

You know what I’m doing on Green(wash) Britain Day? I’m going to make sure as many people know what a bunch of arrogant, money-grabbing, carbon-belching turds EDF Energy are.

Please join in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


The Danger Of Denial

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

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

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

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