The Unsuitablog

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.

Something like 10 years ago I joined an organisation which I thought would be able to make a real difference; the Woodland Trust had been, and certainly for a considerable time after I joined, have been true stalwarts in the essential job of protecting, managing and replanting the native woodland of the UK. Their work on climate related phenology has been second to none; they have been responsible for bringing doomed woodlands back from the brink of destruction, and have re-established woodlands where once they had been. They have involved thousands of children in educational and practical work…the list goes on.

Then, a couple of years ago, they started ramping up the process of attracting corporate sponsors. It’s not as though money was particularly tight – between 2001 and 2006 their total income steadily rose from just under £16 million to nearly £22 million, with no sign of any financial worries; but for whatever reason, perhaps because certain trustees deemed it “the right thing to do”, they started attempting to attract corporate funding in earnest.

Back in 2001, company donations accounted for a mere £96,000, and that went down in 2002. In 2004 it was still only £140,000. After that they stopped publishing the company donations total in their accounts, but as of 2008, the combined total of company donations and the larger landfill tax and charitable trusts was £2.3 million. Of this, company donations probably still only accounted for less than a quarter of this out of a total income of nearly £30 million. Legacies and member donations, on the other hand, accounted for well over 40% of their income, compared to the probable 2% that was given in company sponsorship.

So why then, does the Woodland Trust make such relationships? Could it have anything to do with the fact that one of their trustees is the former Chief Executive of the biofuel company D1? Possibly, though maybe that trustee appointment is more to do with the general direction the Woodland Trust was already taking. Corporate sponsorship seems to be an addiction in the cut-and-thrust world of charitable fundraising, and like WWF, it doesn’t take long before your image is thoroughly tarred. At the time of writing, the Woodland Trust has corporate partnerships with companies as grossly inappropriate as BP, Ikea, Sainsburys, Ronseal (Thompson), Tesco and Hilton Hotels : all companies that have a hugely negative impact on the natural environment. You can read the full list of donors in their annual reviews, but to save you the time, here are some other choice cuts from their 2008 review:

ALD Automotive
BMW
British Land
Calor
Georgia Pacific
Honda UK

Oh, and Disney. This is no casual partnership, though: it warrants an entire page of their Autumn 2009 magazine — the one I just got through the post — plus a major news release earlier in the year. It will come as no surprise that Disney has featured on The Unsuitablog before; here’s a taster of the article:

There were all sorts of alternative images I could have put at the top of this article: sweatshop workers sewing together Disney branded clothes or assembling Disney branded toys and other consumer goods; container ships full of Disney goods, crossing the oceans with wares destined for every nation touched by the rank hand of industrialisation; airports full of people waiting for their departure to one of the Disney resorts dotted around the world, or aircraft in the air pumping out greenhouse gases directly created by the desire to travel to a Disney resort; landfill sites full of Disney goods, slowly leaching their toxins into the ground; queues of gas-guzzling traffic and hyper parking lots outside shopping malls replete with Disney Stores full of toxic, climate changing, sweatshop produced consumer items; children goggle-eyed before the latest saccharine-sweet, consumer-friendly, merchandise-linked version of the world brought to you by your friendly corporation; fast food stores full of obese families drawn towards the counters by the offer of Disney toys with every Happy Meal; a globe full of brainwashed humans, on their knees, praying in the direction of a Magic Castle, that sits at the centre of a vast concrete, brick, chrome and plastic complex that used to be a swath of pristine, wildlife-rich Everglade.

Not the sort of company that really sits comfortably with the idea of protecting ancient woodlands, educating children about the importance of a healthy ecosystem and warning about the dangers of climate change. Yet in the magazine article we see the following:

“Disney Store is the first big company to help turn our dream of making a vast new forest close to where people live into a reality,” says Sue Holden, the Trust’s chief executive. “By working closely with them [Disney], we aim to inspire thousands of children to look after the environment, as well as creating a fantastic woodland that will excite generations to come.”

Hundreds of children from schools within a 15-mile radius of Heartwood Forest have already attended curriculum linked woodland discovery days during which they looked at flowers indicative of ancient woodland, drew pictures and wrote poems…also popular was a brief appearance by Mickey Mouse as part of the Disney launch.

Disney have a long and tarnished record of making partnerships with organisations to gain influence over the education and other activities of children, and they have plenty of their own irons in the fire: they already owned Hyperion Books for Children, ClubPenguin and an “education” company called Disney Educational Products among many others, and only last year did they buy RaisingKids.co.uk, an online parenting forum!

In the case of the Woodland Trust, how much do you reckon it cost Disney for all this exposure to young minds?

Nothing. All the money for the £100,000 donation came from selling something to their customers they otherwise would not have bought.

As for me: well, I’m resigning from the Woodland Trust. I’ve had enough of this hypocrisy.

Also known as Waxman-Markey, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) which is currently sitting in the US Senate awaiting approval, is being hailed by the environment mainstream as a real answer to anthropogenic global warming. Anyone with half a brain will realise that this is utterly false. One group, calling themselves Climate SOS, are making this point very loudly, and have written the following article just for The Unsuitablog.

Lots of mainstream enviros, especially those involved in the US Climate Action Partnership, are promoting the recent house climate bill as a great step forward. Then there are a bunch more who think it is “better than nothing”…or “the best we can get under the circumstances…”

Very thought-provoking, and worrying. Thanks to Rachel for the words.

I admit to being a bit behind the curve on this one, but like I did, I recommend you get up to speed on the appalling human rights and environmental abuses carried out by ChevronTexaco in Ecuador, all in the name of industrial “progress”. The campaign currently being jointly run by Amazon Watch and the Amazon Defense Coalition is being organised under the appropriate banner of ChevronToxico, and is fighting against the might of this corporate behemoth on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian people.

This is from the ChevronToxico campaign site:

For over three decades, Chevron chose profit over people.

While drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964 to 1990, Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – deliberately dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, spilled roughly 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left hazardous waste in hundreds of open pits dug out of the forest floor. To save money, Texaco chose to use environmental practices that were obsolete, did not meet industry standards, and were illegal in Ecuador and the United States.

The result was, and continues to be, one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. Contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface streams has caused local indigenous and campesino people to suffer a wave of mouth, stomach and uterine cancer, birth defects, and spontaneous miscarriages. Chevron has never cleaned up the mess it inherited, and its oil wastes continue to poison the rainforest ecosystem.

Today, 30,000 Ecuadorians are demanding justice in a landmark class action lawsuit. Despite Chevron’s repeated efforts to sabotage the trial, an independent court-appointed expert recently deemed Chevron responsible for up to $27 billion in damage.

While this unequal fight (by which I mean 30,000 ordinary people against the might of a corporate entity that has the ear of the world’s governments) goes on, Chevron as a company are continuing to push their “caring side” both to the public in general and to a swath of non-profit organisations who might one day be tempted to act against them. If Chevron can win the PR war by brainwashing enough well-meaning people into thinking that, actually, maybe they aren’t such a bad company after all, then their activities in sucking even more oil and gas from delicate ecosystems and cultural centres will be able to continue without too much interference.

Step forward CompassPoint, a company that has a slick line in helping Californian non-profit organisations get the best out of their finances and management structure. Their big selling point is, apparently, working “with community-based nonprofits”, which would seem to rule out having anything do do with a corporation that have gone out of their way to systematically destroy communities in Ecuador.

It seems not:

San Francisco – Chevron, a company facing widespread criticism by many Bay Area organizations for human rights abuses and environmental destruction, is the primary sponsor of CompassPoint’s “Nonprofit Day”. CompassPoint Nonprofit Services is a consulting, research, and training organization, that provides tools to the very same non-profits fighting the likes of Chevron. Chevron’s donation is the latest in a string of good-will gestures intended in deflecting attention from a $27 billion dollar lawsuit in Ecuador. Amazon Watch called upon CompassPoint and all the non-profits participating in the event to demand that Chevron fund a full-scale clean up of its toxic waste in the rainforest.

In a letter sent to CompassPoint, Amazon Watch voiced concern towards CompassPoint’s conflicting relationship with Chevron:

“We believe that as Chevron’s very prominent sponsorship of the event publicly associates your name with Chevron’s corporate brand and image, you should know what the Chevron brand has come to represent in the Ecuadorian rainforest and beyond.

“Your organization represents the best of the Bay Area. We hope that you will join us in using Chevron’s association with Nonprofit Day as an opportunity to press the company to do the moral thing in Ecuador.”

“Our concern is not in the intention of CompassPoint, rather that Chevron’s participation in Non-profit day dilutes the mission of the organization. This is typical Chevron spin, throwing peanuts to a good cause, while throwing punches at communities where they operate,” said Paul Paz y Miño, Managing Director at Amazon Watch. “This is the very same corporation that attacked last year’s Goldman Environmental Prize winners with a full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle.” The Goldman Prize and its associated family fund are two of the most respected non-profits in the San Francisco Bay area.

Chevron has seen a wave of negative press in the past months, primarily focused on the company’s dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste water into Amazon waterways and abandonment of more than 900 unlined waste pits filled with oil sludge. In the past months, Chevron has launched its PR crisis team to new levels by hiring online bloggers, paying for bloggers to attend Chevron-chaperoned trips to Ecuador, and hiring three giants in the PR world (Edelman, Sard Verbinnen & Co., and Hill & Knowlton) to develop a crisis plan for the company.

A verdict in the $27 billion lawsuit in expected later this year or early 2010.

Sadly, the letter to CompassPoint had no effect, and their sponsorship of Non Profit Day went ahead, with Chevron being the lead sponsor and, notably, providers of a $10,000 dollar prize:

One organization will leave Nonprofit Day with a $10,000 capacity-building contract with CompassPoint. This prize, sponsored by Chevron, will be awarded during the luncheon. Your organization will be automatically entered when you register.

I love the idea of registering as an earnest non-profit, then finding you have won a prize paid for by a truly evil corporation — I wonder what the winner said:

“Thank you to CompassPoint for this wonderful prize, and also Chevron for sponsoring it. I accept this gift on behalf of 30,000 sick Ecuadorian people and the dying ecosystem, which without Chevron would not have been possible.”

Civilization has singularly failed to reduce its emissions, and so the planetary climatic, oceanic and biological systems are running into repeated and major tipping points, plunging us into increasingly dire trouble. No, this is not the future, this is now – there is nothing we can do about the greenhouse gases that Industrial Civilization has so far poured into the atmosphere, and there is very little indeed we can do to reverse the widespread effects of deforestation, marine ecosystem plundering and the multitude of different persistent chemicals currently polluting the food chain.

But we can stop things getting worse than they might. According to the Royal Society, what we need to do is to geoengineer the climate. The following story from The Independent outlines the “Plan B” project that is being drawn up by the Royal Society; see what you think:

Some of Britain’s most distinguished scientists have put their names behind controversial proposals to engineer the global climate with highly ambitious technology projects if international attempts to control man-made emissions of greenhouse gases show serious signs of failing.

The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, has warned that if political leaders fail to reach agreement and enforce a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions following the climate conference in Copenhagen this December there may be no other option left than to introduce drastic measures involving the “geo-engineering” of the global climate.

A group of eminent scientists appointed by the Royal Society said in a report published yesterday that future efforts to reduce greenhouse gases needed to be much more successful than they had been so far if geo-engineering was to be avoided as a way of cooling a dangerously overheated planet.

“Geo-engineering the Earth’s climate is very likely to be technically possible. However, the technology to do so is barely formed, and there are major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness and environmental impacts,” the report says.

Geo-engineering projects range from schemes to fertilise marine plankton with iron powder to injecting sulphate particles into the atmosphere in order to simulate the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. All are controversial and none are without some risk but they should nevertheless be taken seriously if conventional measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions fail to stop potentially dangerous climate change, the Royal Society said.

Professor John Shepherd, an earth scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, who chaired the Royal Society’s working group, said that geo-engineering had to be prepared as a backup in case the “plan A” discussed in Copenhagen fails. “[Geo-engineering] is a plan B, but a very real plan B that has to be taken seriously,” Professor Shepherd said.

“It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geo-engineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases,” Professor Shepherd said.

“Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them,” he said. “Geo-engineering and is consequences are the price we may have to pay for failing to act on climate change.”

The report recommended that Britain should spend £10m a year on research into geo-engineering schemes, which is about a tenth of the Government research budget on climate change.

The Royal Society’s report, which took 18 months to prepare, was welcomed by Professor John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who said that it was time to treat geo-engineering seriously. “Some kind of modest investment in geo-engineering is what we should be thinking about now,” Professor Beddington said.

“There are going to be emergencies that we did not expect and we need to think about how to deal with them. Geo-engineering techniques are not the solution but they are part of the solution.”

In the past decades, geo-engineering has gone from almost pariah status to a subject that scientists can talk about in public without fear of ridicule. However, many climate scientists are worried that political leaders will use the debate to suggest that there is a workable alternative to deep and painful cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

“Geo-engineering is creeping on to the agenda because governments seem incapable of standing up to the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby who will use it to undermine the emissions reduction we can do safely,” said Doug Parr, from Greenpeace. “Intervening in our planet’s systems carries huge risks.”

‘Plan B’: The weapons in science’s armoury

Spraying seawater into the air to generate clouds and injecting sulphate into the atmosphere to simulate the cooling effects of volcanic explosions are two geo-engineering ideas considered by Britain’s leading scientific body. A Royal Society report defines geo-engineering as the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The report divides geo-engineering schemes into two categories: techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the air to counterbalance emissions directly, and projects to offset the warming effects of increased greenhouses gases by reflecting sunlight into space. In terms of solar radiation, the report reviews ideas ranging from painting roofs white to space-based mirrors. It says these technologies are cheaper and faster-acting than carbon dioxide removal but have several drawbacks: they don’t address the root cause of global warming or ocean acidification.

It says methods to remove carbon dioxide would be preferable to solar radiation management methods, because “they effectively returned the climate system to closer to its natural state” and involved fewer uncertainties and risks. The problem with many carbon-reduction schemes that do not involve reforestation is that they are largely unproven and expensive. One idea is the enhanced weathering of silicate rocks, a natural process where carbon dioxide in the air reacts with silicate minerals to form carbonate rocks which effectively trap the gaseous carbon dioxide. Another is the capture of carbon dioxide by devices that can filter the air, perhaps using solar energy to power the process.

A variation on this theme is the proposal to fertilise the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms that could in theory capture carbon dioxide and convert it to solid material which would fall to the seabed. But the Royal Society warned of that project’s possible unintended consequences for the marine environment.

Let’s get this straight, as Doug Parr said, geoengineering is an excuse for corporations and governments to do nothing. Worse than that, by producing this report the Royal Society have, in effect, announced that “even” if business and governments don’t manage to reduce emissions sufficiently (which they obviously have no intention of doing), there is something waiting to take up the slack at the end of the rainbow. Cue even more reasons for everyone to do absolutely nothing – hooray, technology will save the day!

It is important to stress the comments in this article, by Royal Society members, about the inherent dangers of geoengineering — they cannot be stated strongly enough:

“Geo-engineering the Earth’s climate is very likely to be technically possible. However, the technology to do so is barely formed, and there are major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness and environmental impacts”

“Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them”

But those, deeply important statements will be conveniently swept under the carpet when the shit hits the fan, as suggested by John Beddington, Chief Scientist for UK Government Incorporated. And the Royal Society themselves are so obviously in thrall to the lie that there is only one way to live, as evidenced by the statement: “geo-engineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases”.

So, when I said at the beginning of this piece that we could stop things getting worse than they might, what was I thinking about? Certainly not geoengineering, which is the last catastrophic hoorah! in the civilized world’s great toxic party. Something far more radical in civilised terms, yet completely logical:

Getting rid of Industrial Civilization.

If you consider the alternative, then that doesn’t sound too bad at all, does it?