The Unsuitablog

They (350.org) refuse to countenance the idea that industrial civilization is the problem – every action leads to the Senate, even requests to non-US “members” lead to the Senate. They are like a stuck record – a really dated record, like Alice Cooper trying to down with the kids when he spends most of his time playing golf. Bill McKibben may once have bitten the heads off proverbial bats, but now he’s just trying to get a clean shot down the fairway with all his mainstream buddies waiting in the clubhouse.

Not a day goes by when the words of the representative of some Environmental Group or other isn’t contacted by a newspaper or television station asking for comment on the story of the day, whatever will happen to sell the most papers or garner the most viewers. Without fail the comments offered are words of the most ineffectual sort, gently admonishing this or that company or politician, and offering the kind of advice that would sit comfortably in the pages of any corporate enviro-speak manual. Only today, a representative of Greenpeace Netherlands referred to the export of thousands of tonnes of electronic waste using the execrable phrase: “The fundamental problem with electronics is that it’s designed in a very bad way.”

Not, “The fundamental problem with electronics is that it is a symbol of an ecocidal consumer culture”, perhaps adding, “and the tide of toxic waste won’t end until that consumer culture comes to an end.” You won’t hear that from Greenpeace, or any other mainstream environmental group.

Not a week goes by without some campaign or other being launched to prevent environmental destruction, or make efforts to put right that destruction. The vast, vast majority of these campaigns are based upon the same “logic” as the vast, vast majority of people who make comments to newspapers or television stations: this is the system we have, so we have no choice but to make it behave itself as best it can. That, of course, is bullshit.

As I have written time and time again, it is an utterly pointless task trying to make Industrial Civilization sustainable or “environmentally friendly”, because the nature of civilization is to destroy, to take what it wants to achieve its aims and only stop when it runs out of energy, people or space. It only stops when it collapses – it never stops of its own accord.

The mainstream environmental movement has never got this, and never will, because its very existence depends on the support of a large number of people both for income and staffing. It also depends on the good will of the system itself, that permits it to protest peacefully, speak freely and generally operate within the Law of the Land. There is an invisible line that separates the words and deeds of the mainstream from the words and deeds of the “extremist”; that same line separates that which is pointless, ineffective action from that which will actually achieve the kind of change humanity requires in order to survive.

This line is never crossed.

If you want to see this entire movement in microcosm, look no further than 350.org and the work they do which has come, in recent months, to define environmental symbolism. I have written about them before, but was moved to write again by the following email that purports to originate from the desk of Will Bates, one of their key campaigners:

Dear Friends,

On the morning of April 21, 2009, as people rallied in thousands in the city of Cochabamba, a young woman walked to the center of the conference, took a deep breath, and improvised a 350 banner, joining a new worldwide call for climate action.

She had worked the previous day to try and convince her friends at 350 to join her, but in the mainstream NGO community, taking REAL action on climate change is a risk that few larger NGOs are willing to take. This was one the smallest actions that day, but one of the most powerful.

And she didn’t stop there. Determined to make a difference, she overcame even more challenges at Cochabamba by calling for no NGO to undermine 300ppm in the plenary sessions and calling for action on behalf of millions of people in Bolivia and around the world.

Unfortunately, not all representatives of 350.org shared her bravery and failed to fight for a fair, ambitious and binding international people’s agreement steering us towards safety below 300ppm.

So she, the activist, with other activists, went back to work.

I spoke to the woman on the phone last week, and she relayed the news that she’s found a group of activists who were inspired by her actions, and together they’re planning to keep calling for support of the people’s agreement out of Bolivia. Temperatures must not exceed 1C and we must get back down to 300ppm.

But we’re not waiting until October to Get To Work–we’re starting now. Ambitious climate action takes a bit of planning–that’s why we’re coordinating a week of local “Climate MeetUps” at the end of August calling for 300ppm. The meetups will be short and casual meetings we can use to make big plans for the coming year.

Think of it as a synchronized, global planning meeting. At your Climate MeetUp in August, you’ll be supporting real activists around the world in unveiling the new 300.org campaign — a Global Work Party supporting the position finalized in Bolivia:

“On a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, the submission calls for developed countries to “take the lead and strive towards returning greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to well below 300 ppm (parts per million) CO2eq with a view to returning concentrations to levels as close as possible to pre-industrial levels in the longer-term, and to limit the average global temperatures to a maximum level of 1degree Celsius with a view to returning temperatures to levels as close as possible to pre-industrial levels in the longer-term.”

The Global Work Party, supporting our new campaign for 300ppm will be a chance for all of us to show what leadership really looks like — together, we’ll get to work creating climate solutions from the ground up and demand our politicians do the same.

Thank you for making us see the light,

Will Bates on behalf of the entire 350.org/300.org team.
_____________
350.org is an international grassroots campaign funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. It aims to build and protect their brand at all costs. It mobilizes a global climate non-movement united by a common call to protect the current economic system. By not sharing the real climate science with citizens and supporters, and by protecting the status quo, we will ensure that the world’s most vulnerable will not succeed in establishing bold and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. 350.org is what we like to call “ The most powerful brand in the world”.

What is 350? 350 is the wrong number that we tell supporters is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in “parts per million” (ppm), so 350ppm is not the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need to get back to pre-industrial levels of 278. However – 278 is a different kind of PPM- this is a number which would only be possible by embracing a new economic system based on people, not profits as we build a zero carbon society. Unfortunately, this model representative of social equality is not a model that compromised, well funded mainstream NGOs embrace.

I have no way of verifying whether Will Bates wrote this or not, but if so it would be an extraordinary turnaround by an organisation that was originally set up using a grant originating from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a bit of guilt-shedding “philanthropy” funded from a long history of global oil, construction and banking interests.

Actually, looking at the 350.org website, I see no evidence of this turnaround as yet, and am not the slightest bit surprised because any organisation that would take its seed-money from the same fund that founded the conservative free-market thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute is not likely to bite the hand (or rather system) that feeds it.

The upshot of this is that nothing 350.org – or for that matter WWF, Conservation International, The Sierra Club, Greenpeace and any other mainstream environmental group you wish to name – do, is going to upset the system from which that group gets its money and its support.

One sees occasional glimpses of light, but just as soon as something chances to suggest a genuine desire for real change from the mainstream, the heavy fist of popular support comes crashing down. No wonder all anyone is ever asked to do on behalf of these Groups (often called NGOs) is make a symbolic gesture.

When you take part in a protest that does not directly threaten the thing you are protesting against, you are simply sublimating any anger you might have into whatever symbolic acts you have been led to believe will lead to change.

This process of sublimation is repeated in all facets of Industrial Civilization, from the Government Consultation and the Parliamentary Process through to apparently useful tools as Judicial Review and industrial Whistleblowing; all chances of real change are prevented by an array of gaping holes, channelling our anger into “constructive” activities. Because we followed the recommended course of action – the peaceful alternative – we feel sated and content that right has been done, even when nothing has been achieved.

About 3 years ago, talking to a friend, I had what I thought was a pretty good idea: I would take it upon myself to show the environmental mainstream up for what it is; show to people that groups like WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are a big part of the problem, not part of the solution. It occured to me that simple exposure of these double-standards might be enough to change the public’s perception of “environmentalism”.

Of course I didn’t realise at the time that I might be falling into the same trap as everyone else in my position, and that simple exposure would not be nearly enough. True, if you tell someone something enough times then they will begin to believe it is true, but all the while these groups have big incomes (often from corporate funding) with which to publicise their work then the small voices that say, “but this won’t change things,” will be constantly drowned out by the mainstream desire to stay within the confines of the ecocidal industrial system.

I say again: it is an utterly pointless task trying to make Industrial Civilization sustainable or “environmentally friendly”. The big environmental groups don’t get this and they never will.

What is needed – if you are willing to do this with me – are a range of different tactics that will inject a hefty note of dissonance into the pitiful messages of “change” that the mainstream perpetuates. I will give you an example: let’s suppose that the email above was a fake; produced, in fact, by someone who wanted to show the truth behind the nice, civilised press releases that 350.org churn out. It would not take a huge effort to alter an existing email, then forward it on – thus masking the original email header – as a piece of “news”. How many false press releases would need to be circulating before people started asking questions of the originators of those messages?

I consider this to be low risk, for how can such an act be libellous if it contains more truth than the original message – the one that said that small reductions in carbon dioxide over decades are sufficient; the one that said that writing to or petitioning politicians would change things; the one that said we can continue having a growing economy and also protect the biosphere? That’s three lies that are commonly written, or at least implied in huge number of press releases. How can your amended version be libellous if it contains more truth than the original message?

Plus, who would want to admit that they had been lying in the first place?

As the Environmental Groups pat each other on the back – notice how they hardly ever criticise each other, that would be like criticising yourself – tell each other what a great job they are doing, and pouring another glass of celebratory fizz, they might not spot who is sneaking in the door, switching the music off and turning on the bright lights of reality.

Low Risk

Ok, there’s a small chance you might get lynched, but what about starting at a real party, like the one Greenpeace is holding near to Heathrow Airport on Saturday 28th August. Here, you can have my personal invitation if you want. There are all sorts of events like this, celebrating pyrrhic victories, such as the cancellation of a third runway west of London (is this really a “local” party, considering WWF, Greenpeace and RSPB are involved?), at the same time as as airport expansion pushes ahead in Edinburgh, Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester and to the east of London. Plus what about campaign launches, updates and anniversaries – there are so many to choose from all over the world.

Perhaps the most subversive thing you can do at these events is to ask questions of as many people as you can; questions like, “What will/did this achieve?” “Why are you doing this?” “Why do you think it will work?” “What’s the point if the system stays the same?” and so on. Creating uncertainty is the key here for, certainly at every meeting I’ve ever been to, the attendees are in search of answers, but rarely ever question the ones they are given. For instance, events to organise marches – as though marches ever achieve anything – are always framed in such a way that the march will happen anyway, and it is just the detail that is being discussed. Ask the questions – challenge the received “wisdom” that marches change anything: create uncertainty. Then leave.

I want to make it clear, I have plenty of time for the research work and dissemination of information that many groups do, even WWF produce some excellent papers. What I have a problem with is what happens when we know this: what do we do? We do what we are told, because we have been led to believe change will happen…and it never does.

Local and national radio stations are ripe areas for undermining the mainstream message of inaction. Care is, of course, necessary here because you don’t want to be undermining the fact that environmental destruction is taking place; but right from the off, the message that a representative of Greenpeace or Sierra Club will give is that humans are causing the damage – not civilization, not the industrial system, but humans. In many cases a news story based phone-in will welcome a representative of an environmental group, and you can be that representative. As the show starts, call the station, let them know that you represent whichever Group is relevant to the story (all the better if the story is about the group itself!), give a false name if you like, and then go on the show.

Remember, what you are getting across is essentially what the group is afraid of saying: that there is no point appealing to politicians and businesses, there is no point marching, signing petitions, holding candlelit vigils; all of this is just grist to the mill. No, your Group is going to change its tactics and denounce the entire industrial system because the industrial system is the problem. You will refuse to work with politicians and business, and embrace communities; give the say back to the people, not tell them what actions to take from some head office. In short, you are telling the world that you have failed and something entirely different is needed.

(On a specific note, and one that really rankles with me, if you can go on as a spokesperson for PETA, then mention that you are no longer going to use sexist, misogynist campaigns that focus on bare female bodies – that ought to stir a few pots.)

Even lower risk, there is always the option of sending a letter to a newspaper, magazine or journal playing the “representative” card. Most publications don’t follow up on letters, so you can use the published addresses of the mainstream group you are choosing to (I was about to use the word “defame”, but in the circumstances I reckon you are simply showing them the light, as it were) undermine. Friends of the Earth have conveniently produced a guide to getting your letter printed – just remember the salient points that civilization is what is destroying the planet, and no amount of pandering to the system is going to change things; and away you go!

Medium Risk

This article cannot hope to cover more than a tiny number of the possible actions, so please take some time to read this list for more ideas – and send me some more if you have them. But now it is time to move on to a few higher-risk actions, that aren’t for the faint-hearted, but which could really undermine the mainstream message.

One such type of action – a logical step on from pretending to to work for mainstream groups – is actually working for them, then turning the cards. It’s dead easy to volunteer to work at a Group and get involved in small scale public-facing activities like street stalls and leafleting – in my experience, though, because such activities are so ineffective, it is likely that simply telling the public the truth about campaigns (i.e. they are just making people think the Groups are on the case, when they are not) will be even more ineffective. The real undermining as a volunteer is to be done in group meetings or at conferences – which you will need to work at to get invited to – when you will have the opportunity to strike at the heart of the “activist” community, and lead a few people to a better place. The risk comes if you get a chance to speak on behalf of a local branch – and will therefore make quite a few people upset – and then tell the truth about the way the group is operating. If you want to really speak on behalf of the Group itself at conferences etc., with bona fide credentials, then you will almost certainly need to already be working for that group: trust takes a long time to build up. Once in a position of trust, though, the opportunities for telling both the people inside the Group and the public in general the truth about mainstream “activism” are considerable. If you want to hang around for a while, then you might be best concentrating on subtle messages or “accidental” slip-ups in press releases and speeches; but if you are already sick and tired of working for the Man, in the guise of an NGO, then you can be as blatant as you like.

You may only have one shot at this before being unceremoniously dumped, and be unlikely to ever work for such a Group in the future; but then why would you want to work in the environmental mainstream if you consider them to be acting hypocritically? Then again, your bona fide newpaper article, or radio / television interview could completely change how the environmental mainstream is viewed by both the corporate and political world (“One of us”) and those people who really want a future for humanity (“Not one of us”).

Many mainstream Groups work with, and get money from, corporations. The largest groups like WWF, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy take money from large companies as a matter of course, and there is no doubt at all that such a relationship has a deeply adverse effect on the modus operandi of the groups themselves. Johann Hari puts it like this:

The green groups defend their behavior by saying they are improving the behavior of the corporations. But…the pressure often flows the other way: the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core. As MacDonald says, “Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them.”

It has taken two decades for this corrupting relationship to become the norm among the big green organizations. Imagine this happening in any other sphere, and it becomes clear how surreal it is. It is as though Amnesty International’s human rights reports came sponsored by a coalition of the Burmese junta, Dick Cheney and Robert Mugabe. For environmental groups to take funding from the very people who are destroying the environment is preposterous – yet it is now taken for granted.

I went through a period of masquerading as corporations in order to find out what steps NGOs would be prepared to take in order to get finances with which to continue their operations. What I found was often revealing and disturbing. Up to now I have not linked directly to a phone call that I made to The Woodland Trust, but feel it is time to demonstrate how easy it is – by nature of the cosy relationship with corporations – to get such information from hypocritical NGOs. The recording can be found here:

http://www.archive.org/details/WoodlandTrustAcceptDubiousCorporateSponsorship

There is something exhilarating about getting such blatant admissions from what is apparently a “green” group; and if you are able to carry out such subterfuge from the comfort of your telephone (the techniques are described here) then I can assure you, you will remain hooked. If you are not willing to publish your findings to the wider world, then you can always send the recordings to me and I will publish them on your behalf, with as much negative publicity for the Group as I can muster.

Finally, you might have noticed that a number of activities listed in “100 ways” go beyond what most of the Mainstream Groups are willing to do; but that doesn’t mean these actions cannot be carried out “on behalf of” such Groups. We are talking about the kind of things they would not condone themselves, such as barracading shopping malls, or send out radio or TV blocking signals during advertising breaks – to undermine the consumer society. If you can leave a relevant “signature” in the course of your action, then two advantages come into play: first, you are less likely to be found out (it won’t incriminate the group as there won’t be sufficient evidence) and, second, it will force the group to admit they wouldn’t do such a thing, thus undermining their own credentials as activists*. The risk of this area of activism depends on the action being carried out, and is only limited by your own imagination.

I suppose it is fortunate that there are no truly high risk undermining actions that can be taken against mainstream environmental groups – assuming that you are not dealing with psychopathic supporters – but in the event that the combined efforts of Underminers does lead to the downfall of such organisations as wish to see the burgeoning power of corporations and their political puppets continue; to anyone still in awe of the Sierra Clubs and WWFs of the world this is a hugely risky strategy. As far as I’m concerned, it’s about bloody time millions of genuinely caring people stopped being relentlessly asked to carry out pointless tasks on behalf of these groups: it’s about time we decided for ourselves what real change looks like.

*Make sure the action is effective, not just symbolic: hard-core activism that does not have a useful outcome is no better than softly-softly symbolic action.

A couple of weeks ago I – or rather our house – received a letter from an organisation called the National Centre for Social Research, inviting us to take part in an annual survey called British Social Attitudes. I like filling in surveys when I have time because it lets me think more about what I believe, and also provides a nice opportunity to screw up systems of categorisation, having found out some time ago that I neatly fitted into not a single one of the geodemographic categories that corporations and governments like to believe we should all be defined by.

This letter contained a little surprise, though; and not a very pleasant one. From the envelope fell a voucher for £5, going by the name of “Love2shop“. This voucher, like all gift vouchers, specifies precisely where the face value can be redeemed, and the range of outlets is ok…if you can see past the gruesome “Love2shop” monicker.

I hate shopping.

But personal opinions aside, what is far more worrying is that the British Social Attitudes survey is meant to be an objective and robust record of British attitudes (at least of those people who have mailing addresses). The letter states:

British Social Attitudes is the most respected and accurate guide to what people in Britain think about a range of issues, so you may have come across facts from our reports in the newspapers or on television. For 27 years our findings have been used by government, top universities, charities and the media to inform policy and insight.

By my reckoning, if such a survey is to fulfil all that then nothing can be allowed to skew the randomisation of the subjects, nor their mindset when answering the questions. The problem is that even though the addresses selected for survey, and the person selected for interview in that address, is statistically random, no one is obliged to take the survey. The questionee has to accept the invitation, so there is a significant element of self selection involved in the survey. Now, who do you think is more likely to be persuaded to take part in a survey upon receipt of a Love2shop voucher: someone who considers themselves to be a “Consumer” or someone who does not?

If this outcome was intentional then I would say that someone was trying to doctor the survey in favour of a consumer society.

I contacted NatCen to find out why, given the apparent objectivity of the survey, someone had thought it would be a good idea to include a shopping voucher as an incentive. The nice researcher I eventually spoke to seemed keen to listen, and indeed took what I said quite seriously; but also said categorically – as far as she knew – that there were no extenuating circumstances: the voucher just seemed like a nice idea at the time and, as far as she was concerned wouldn’t affect the outcomes of the survey. I begged to differ, pointing out that the methodology was already bound to account for the likelihood of different types of people to take surveys, and therefore if the effect of the shopping voucher had also not been accounted for then the survey would be void.

She promised to let someone know.

As an aside, I was also very keen to know the contents of the survey itself, ostensibly to find out whether the questions and the way in which they are asked skewed the outcome towards any particular outcome – one, for instance, that may be desired by a society obsessed with industrial and economic growth. Surprisingly, she not only sent me a link to the survey (you can download the PDF here) but, on first glance, it seemed to be a fairly well conducted survey – albeit something that might have been commissioned by the Daily Mail.

So what of the voucher? Well, sadly it seems to reflect the blanket attitude that everyone in public life seems to have smothered humanity with: we all want to shop.

Sitting in my inbox for four months, one would expect a story to go stale, but despite coming at a particularly hectic time of my life, and being revisited just this morning, it seems that some stories are destined to keep going simply because the parties involved are in such deep denial. One such story is that of the cosmetics giant Avon, long-time vivisectionists, and brainwasher of millions of civilised housewives into thinking that their lives could be inestimably better if only they slapped some chemicals on their face, are running a campaign known as “Hello Green Tomorrow”.

The press release went like this:

Avon Hello Green Tomorrow

Avon Products, Inc. has launched Hello Green Tomorrow, a unique global grassroots mobilization in over 65 countries worldwide. The first goal of this environmental movement is to restore trees in the Atlantic Rainforest, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. Avon started the campaign by donating $1 million to replant 1 million trees in this critically-endangered region.

a.. With just $1 per tree, you can join this unique global mobilization and help save the Atlantic Rainforest for today and for the next generation.
b.. You and your readers can join our environmental movement by visiting hellogreentomorrow.com, our Hello Green Facebook Tab, and following conversations on Twitter, using the #hellogreentomorrow hashtag.
c.. Imagine breathing with only seven percent of your lungs. The Atlantic Rainforest in South America helps serve as the “lungs of the earth,” but only seven percent remains, making it one of the world’s most critically endangered ecosystems. This is important to all of us, wherever we live.
d.. As the “lungs of the earth”, tropical forests such as the Atlantic Rainforest are vital to our survival. Rainforests help reduce pollution, mitigate climate change, and support a vast array of wildlife, including many species found nowhere else. Already 93% of the Atlantic Rainforest has been destroyed, but with just one dollar, you can help us restore it.

So, let’s just assume that Avon genuinely want to protect and even restore the Atlantic Rainforest, and the “Hello Green Tomorrow” campaign will play a major part in this important effort; they are claiming, as I write, to have planted 2 million trees using donations from people visiting the website. These trees are being managed by The Nature Conservancy, a major friend of corporations, and the project is endorsed by UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign, a project that is so fraught with corporate corruption that it shames the whole of the United Nations Environment Programme simply by virtue of its catalogue of ecocidal corporate partners.

So far, so bad.

The press release wasn’t sent in isolation, though. Here is the rest of it…

From: Jennifer Duval
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 7:13 PM
To: keith@theearthblog.org
Subject: Avon Launches Hello Green Tomorrow: $1 Plants a Tree in the South American Atlantic Rainforest

Hi,

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

Wanted to keep you abreast of Avon’s inspiring cause initiative helping to create a greener tomorrow. Avon’s Hello Green Tomorrow campaign empowers your readers to make real changes by supporting the endangered Atlantic rainforest. I have provided details on the initiative below, and would be happy to send more information your way!

[press release]

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Jen

—
Jennifer C. Duval

Attention!
411 Lafayette Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

I thought I’d try a trick I learnt in the days when I used to negotiate contracts – when asking a difficult question, also make a point that would immediately put the subject on the back foot, and thus be more forthcoming.

Dear Jennifer

Could you please tell me if Avon use palm oil in any of their products?

Thank you

Keith

P.S. I am not Irish, why would I be interested in St Patrick’s day?

That sort of worked; Jennifer passed the query on to, presumably, her superior, who responded:

Hi Keith,

I hope this finds you well. Hello Green Tomorrow is a cause initiative to help rebuild the Atlantic Rainforest – there is no product tie-in. Sorry if you found the St. Patty’s reference to be offensive.

Hope this clears things up. Please do let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Ruth
________________
Ruth E. Kallens
Attention
411 Lafayette Street
5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
M: 908.433.2183
F: 212.625.1300
rkallens@attentionusa.com
www.attentionusa.com

No product tie in! What about the Avon brand being splattered all over the press release? I get the feeling that there is some issue with showing the dissonance between Avon’s use of palm oil and their apparent concern for the Atlantic Rainforest. Could it be that this is greenwashing?

Hi Ruth

You cannot separate the initiative from the sponsor – not only are Avon involved in this, they founded Hello Green Tomorrow, so any hypocrisy lies squarely on their doorstep. It appears that HGT is being advertised as a “grassroots” campaign (http://shop.avon.com/shop/assets/images/landing/hgt_faq_en.pdf) even though it is clearly an “astroturf” (a corporation masquarading as grassroots – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)

If it turns out that palm oil is used in Avon products then that will be disastrous for Avon’s public image, given that there is no such thing as sustainable palm oil, and that the production of palm oil is the fastest growing cause of tropical deforestation on the planet.

Yes, it appears Avon do use palm oil: http://www.avon.com/1/1/512-mark-dew-drenched-moisturlicious-lip-color.html

“contains shea butter and palm oil to help moisturize and protect”.

Gosh, rainforest destruction so lips can be kept nice and moist!

And here are another 392 products*: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22palm+oil%22+site%3Aavon.com

This is not going to look good for Avon if this gets out.

Best

Keith

And now it is out.

—-

*at the time of writing this was 153, suggesting that someone has been carefully re-editing ingredients pages.

Sorry for all the reposts recently, but it’s been a very busy time at Unsuitablog HQ, and I also can’t top this bit of news from The Guardian covering an excellent example of Undermining. Emissions Trading, like all forms of offsetting, is a method of ensuring that the industrial system can keep operating.

Anti-carbon trading activists shut down the website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), over the weekend, replacing the site with a spoof page lampooning the industry.

The website of the London-based carbon credit trading platform was hacked at close to midnight on Friday and showed the spoof homepage for around 22 hours. It then took technical staff another day to restore the official homepage.

Instead of its normal rolling ticker data listing bids for carbon credit futures, the ECX website blared: “Super promo – climate on sale: Guaranteed profit!”

Explaining the “carbon trade scam”, the spoof site decried how the EU’s flagship environmental policy is “susceptible to corporate lobbying,” offers industry “licences to pollute so they can continue business-as-usual,” and “generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders.”

On Saturday, shortly after the ECX website went down, activists announced their handiwork on a number of environmental discussion groups, saying: “In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with our message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to the climate crisis.”

One of the activists responsible, from the online activist group, Decocidio, told the Guardian: “We feel the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is not well understood by the general public or even within the environmental movement. It is a major fraud touted by the mainstream media, politics, industry and lobbyists as the main solution.” The group is part of Earth First, a radical environmental protest organisation.

“Attempting to cause as much inconvenience, economical loss and image damage as possible, we deliberately tried to maximise the virtual damage,” said the hacker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for the European Climate Exchange, Kelly Loeffler, said: “We have no comment relating to the incident as there is nothing to report publicly.”

The exchange was also targeted by activists from Climate Camp last summer. They dubbed it a “climate change casino”.

Damien Morris, of Sandbag, a self-described “critical friend” of the EU ETS said: “It’s very unfortunate that this sort of infighting over emissions trading has developed within the environmental movement, especially on the radical end,” he said. “There seems to be a large grassroots following and public presence of these sorts of ideas, but not at the more technical and realistic, solutions-focussed part of the movement.”

“There is certainly a place for criticism of the ETS, but the problem with those who disagree with carbon trading is that they oppose it in principle, not in practice. It’s a good idea when done properly. There are many problems with the ETS, but there is a clear pathway as to how it can be made more effective and robust.”

The weasel words of Sandbag reflect their mainstream credentials; clearly Earth First! and Decocidio are so far outside their awareness bubble that anyone who opposes emissions trading must have some kind of theoretical issue, rather than the far more obvious fact that it’s all part of the ecocidal global economy…

Another winning post by David at The Good Human, exposing a magnificent example of Astroturfing. I suspect one reason these things keep turning up is because of “Fluorescent Tabard Syndrome”: the psychological oddity that allows anyone wearing an extremely bright item of work clothing to go virtually unnoticed by the general public. Essentially, if the lie is big enough, or the company greenwashing is so obviously trying to cover up their ecocide, then people will accept this as OK.

Thankfully, some of us aren’t falling for it…

I have written about some whoppers on this site and in the Greenwash of the Week series (Sustainable Brands was one of my favorites), and this is right up there with some of the best. The Sustainability Consortium, an “independent organization of diverse global participants who work collaboratively to build a scientific foundation that drives innovation to improve consumer product sustainability through all stages of a product’s life“, would seemingly be a place you would see companies truly dedicated to the environment and sustainability, right? However, you would be wrong…as you can see from this small sample of members, along with some examples of how much they care about sustainability:

* Walmart – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $27.6 million to settle claims of improperly handling and dumping hazardous waste at stores across California.
* Monsanto – Monsanto’s RoundUp “May Have Dire Consequences for Agriculture” and “Monsanto Fined $2.5 Million for Misleading Farmers About GM Cotton Seed”
* Cargill – Cargill leaves a palm oil mess in Papua New Guinea and all 83,000 hectares of Cargill’s five directly owned oil palm plantations have been carved out of lowland rainforests, causing massive deforestation. As of 2009, Cargill is actively clearing forest in Borneo at their PT Harapan Sawit Lestari plantation without an environmental impact assessment.
* Clorox – Chlorine bleach releases dioxin, furans and other organochlorines into the air, can cause sore throats, coughs, wheezing, shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs and studies have shown a relationship between dioxin exposure and cancer, birth defects, and developmental/reproductive disorders.
* Colgate – Makers of “plastic, one-time use toothbrushes (called WISP’s) so that you can freshen up multiple times throughout the day. Which is why I find Colgate’s supposed environmental stewardship to be such an insult. It’s called “Respect for our Planet.” Um, yeah. If respect for our planet means throwing up a web page and then manufacturing utterly useless products that will sit in our landfills until the Sun burns out, you guys have it nailed.”
* Disney – Too much to even list here, but my friends over at EcoChildsPlay have a ton of good stuff about their “concern”.
* Kimberly-Clark – Kimberly-Clark’s new policy is to ensure that 40 percent of its North American fiber is either recycled or certified by FSC, but in order for Kimberly Clark products to be environmentally preferable, the company needs to announce meaningful targets for increasing recycled and post-consumer recycled fiber in their products. The current policy does not guarantee that Kimberly-Clark will in fact increase recycled content in any of its at-home products, most of which do not currently contain any recycled content at all. Their at-home tissue products are not guaranteed to improve. Also, check out their Pure & Natural diapers which are anything but.
* SC Johnson – Makers of Pledge, Ziploc, Off!, Glade, Raid, Windex, Scrubbing Bubbles, and Drano. What a collection of sustainable products they have! I have featured them as a Greenwash of the Week before, Treehugger has added them to their Greenwash Watch series, and Seventh Generation wonders when Drano became “non-toxic and environmentally friendly”.
* Unilever – Although not directly related to the environment, it is a human-rights issue: “Unilever Builds a Facebook App To Help Indians Whiten Their Skin”
* Tyson – Tyson Foods on trial for polluting Illinois watershed and Tyson Fined $2M For Mucking Up Missouri River
* Waste Management – Federal authorities have given a toxic waste dump (owned by Waste Management) near a Central California farming community plagued by birth defects 60 days to clean up soil contaminated with carcinogenic PCBs.

Are there some members of the Consortium who actually do care to be sustainable and are not only interested in a little “purchased greenwash”? Yep. But many of them are well-known polluters, human rights abusers, and purveyors of genetically-modified foods and goods.

So much for “Sustainability”…

Full background information with links available at David’s fine site.

It’s always good to refresh your skills, and that opportunity came to me a couple of days ago when a reader sent me a nice example of subtle but very detailed greenwashing in the shape of Redleaf Bottled Water. Straight away the shields are up because we are talking about an entirely commercial product, as opposed to something that in very many parts of the world is either provided as a perfectly drinkable service with relatively low charges, or available naturally for free.

I’m sure almost everyone reading this does, from time to time, find themselves in the situation where they are forced to buy a bottle of water, there not being any other source available (in my case it’s basically when the bottle is in too bad a state to be refilled with tap water). I’m also sure that most people reading this would balk at describing commercial bottled water as “environmentally friendly”, yet go to the Environment page of the Redleaf web site and we hit this interesting statement:

At redleaf, we believe in making the world a better place, one sip at a time. We take our responsibility to the earth and our community very seriously and we’ve developed business practices and a production process that minimizes the impact we have on both. Not only do we source our water from a naturally renewable artesian aquifer but we also bottle at a ratio of 1:1 so that not a drop of water is wasted. These are just two of the reasons we think redleaf is the world’s most environmentally friendly water.

The opening sentence makes me a bit sick in my mouth, to be quite honest – replace the word “redleaf” with “BP” and “sip” with “slick” and you can see my point: now I’m not saying that Redleaf are necessarily as bad as BP, but bottling, transporting and selling water is not a good thing. It can’t be, so why suggest so?

Then we get into the main blurb and the greenwash words stack up: “naturally”, “artisan”, “renewable”, topped off with “not a drop is wasted”. Are you quite sure about that? What about the water used in the manufacture of the aquifer tapping equipment, or the production of the bottles, or the extraction of the oil to power the transportation of the end product? The company may claim to reduce the impact of all these aspects, but to make the claim that “not a drop is wasted” is just plain lying.

What we get at the end is the classic “comparative statement”, analagous to the car manufacturer that claims model x is more economical than model y, or the energy company that claim their coal-fired power stations are more efficient than all the other (coal) energy companies. Redleaf, again, may well produce the world’s most environmentally friendly water, but…hang on, that’s a complete load of bollocks!

Go back to the statement I made at the start: we are talking about an entirely commercial product, as opposed to something that in very many parts of the world is either provided as a perfectly drinkable service with relatively low charges, or available naturally for free. I am pretty lucky to have a river close to my house but, regardless of this good fortune, I can unequivocally say that filling my hands with river water then transferring it to my mouth is a damn site more environmentally friendly than any bottled water.

Interestingly, when you look at the Environment page, the claims do – at first glance – seem to be subtle, modest even; but take a closer look with open eyes and the greenwash really does pour off the pages. For instance, I’m not sure how it is possible that “no chemicals are used in [the] bottling process” given that absolutely everything is made from chemicals, but such mealy-mouthed statements are so easy to drop into the mix to convince the reader that so-called Ultra-Premium Water really is something special.

It would be good to open this up to you all: take a look at this page and tell readers of The Unsuitablog what greenwash you can see, in the comments section below. When I have a few comments then I’ll send the link off to the company…or maybe they would like to comment themselves, after all, they are the ones doing the greenwashing.

And that’s how brainwashing works…

Here is a picture of a cat in a deckchair, probably relaxing as cats are wont to do from time to time. The cat could be anywhere but I can bet you anything that the cat didn’t travel thousands of miles to wherever it is relaxing in the deckchair especially in order to relax in a deckchair; that cat is just chilled, in the deckchair, being a cat.

I know why many people take vacations (holidays, vacances…), and it’s for a reason that would be absurd if it weren’t so tragically true: it’s to get away from the place where they live. Not to go somewhere else – although that is often cited as the reason – but, to put it another way, to be in a place other than that where they spend most of their lives so as not to be reminded of what they do for the rest of the year. Oh, there are plenty of people I know – myself included – who go on vacations solely to see other places and/or meet other people, but they are in the minority.

You see, the vast majority of people living in the civilized world are stuck (so it seems) with a life that only releases them from its industrialised grip for a very short time once every year; or maybe twice if you can arrange things that way. Weekends, for most people, are spent doing the things that couldn’t be managed during the rest of the week because there wasn’t the time or energy to do them. Stuck in the spin-cycle of sleep-work-eat-watch-sleep-work-eat-watch…sleep-shop-clean-eat-watch-sleep… then the vacation becomes that slowly brightening light at the far end of a long, long shift that the industrialised and their families pinpoint as one of their few realisable aspirations.

What a bloody hopeless existence!

A few years ago I authored an essay called “The Problem With…Tourism” that set out the basic environmental and humanitarian issues of this pernicious industry. Here’s an extract:

As with many large-scale commercial ventures, the users of tourism are being promised a dream. That dream comes with few strings attached. That dream can be expensive, but the potential returns are good memories for life. And we are addicted to that dream; the one fantastic holiday that we want to repeat over and over again; the sense of “getting away from it all”, enjoying better weather, great entertainment, a chance to meet different people, and the cachet that goes with having done all this; all essentially selfish things, but none of them harmful as such.

As we continue to be enchanted by the riches that tourism has to offer, we fail to see the stream of people coming with us that grows ever wider, feeding on the same dream, taking advantage of the richly polluting cheap flights that deposit the hoards of people who engulf delicate habitats with concrete and suck dry the natural riches that so attracted them in the first place.

Does it have to be this way?

Do we ever stop and think of the reasons we go where we do? Do we actually consider the impact that our travelling, accommodation and entertainment are having on planet Earth?

The impact of tourism on the natural environment is huge, and growing at an enormous rate. With a current annual growth rate of about 5% in the western world, the emissions from flying are expected to triple in less than 25 years – far more if you consider the potentially enormous growth expected from China and other rapidly developing nations.

And on the surface, it is the act of tourism that seems to be the real problem – the pollution of travelling and the seasonal populations of travellers, along with the concentration camp-like existance of tourists, shut off from the outside world, economically unreachable by the people who are supposedly set to “benefit” from this tide of humanity. But as becomes clear when you analyse the way the civilized world is run – for the benefit of the corporate elites and their toadying political makeweights – tourism is even more sinister than this: it is a way of screwing every last drop of humanity from civilization’s willing slaves in return for a few weeks in the sun and, if you’re really unlucky, more opportunities to hand your money over to the corporate world.

And they call this a holiday?

Do you know the simplest way to short-circuit this horrible facade? Simply refuse to do what you are told.

I don’t have a detailed list of Undermining tasks of varying risks to offer you this month: just a simple set of ideas. Only you can make your mind up how risky they are, and whether you want to do them. But if you do take them, you may find yourself escaping far more than just the Tourist Trap…

If you are being sold something, don’t buy it.

If there is a way, any way, to get out of the spin cycle, slow down and take control of your life then take it!

Enjoy time your way, not the way of the machine.

Which is your least favourite genocide?

I don’t know about you, but if I lived in Rwanda then the genocide of 1994 that took the lives of a million people in some of the most brutal ways imaginable would certainly be at the top (or is that bottom) of my list. Then again, anyone who follows the Jewish faith or, indeed, lived through World War II, would have no hesitation in selecting the Holocaust as their least favourite genocide. Then there is the “lost” genocide of Armenia, which modern day Turkey still refuses to acknowledge – certainly not popular in the Caucasus.

I think it’s probably time to stop, don’t you?

Way back in the prime of my naiveté I played a significant part in the Stop Esso campaign in my part of Britain. Also known in the USA as “Stop ExxonMobil”, the Greenpeace-led campaign was inspired by the fact that the then-President of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, refused to acknowledge the human element in global warming. Thus, it was reasoned that ExxonMobil / Esso was the “bad boy” of the oil industry and must be suitably chastised.

For about 5 years I, and thousands of fellow campaigners, were tied up in the myth that somehow boycotting and protesting against a single huge oil company would actually make a difference. This was wrong on three counts:

1) Not a single non-political boycott has ever been shown to have a significant impact on the activities of a large corporation. Aside from political trade sanctions or embargoes, the profit margins and sheer scale of these companies are large enough to absorb the impact of such activities. Campaigns that call for boycotts are even less likely to achieve any satisfactory outcome, simply because only a small minority of people ever heed such calls.

2) The aims of the boycotts are, almost without exception, about getting an existing corporation to change its ways. Now in the case of an oil company, what exactly is it that the company is expected to do? Stop selling oil? I’m no financial expert, but this sounds to me like requesting the company effectively ceases trading, which is certainly not what the vast majority of campaigns aim to do. The campaign line ends with accepting a moral compromise which, as anyone who has studied ethics will attest to, is a morally unstable position at best.

3) Single company boycotts are, in effect, condoning the activities of other companies in the same business. I’ll give you an example: when I organised a serial protest of 45 Esso service stations in one day, those taking part in the protests encountered lots of resistance even to such minor demands as getting an oil company to admit to anthropogenic global warming; but more than that, we also encountered a number of very well informed people, one of whom had experienced at first hand the brutal treatment of Nigerians in the Niger Delta by Shell sponsored thugs, and the appalling conditions suffered by people due to the constant flaring of gas and pollution of watercourses. We were asked why we weren’t protesting against Shell, to which the best we could muster was: “That’s not the focus of today’s campaign.” That may have been the case, but by making a single oil company (Esso) out to be the bad boy, as far as the public were concerned, any other oil company was ok.

You may take part in your single company protest, confident that in your heart of hearts you also despise any other company that operates in a similar manner; but unless you make that explicit, or widen your target to include the entire operational gamut, then you are also publicly giving the other companies the green light, in more senses than one.

“I dreamed early on in the BP crime-event that The Gulf Gusher could NOT be stopped. I woke up shaking, sweating, my heart pounding. I knew this was information more than merely a dream…I think we have a hole in our heads when we talk about effective action, and we’ve got to think more seriously about what effective action is to stop the destruction of the only planet we have and need…”
(Roxanne Amico)

Yesterday, myself and probably thousands of other bloggers and activists received a press release from New York PIRG, explaining what they would be doing about the horrors of the Gulf, the ravenous appetite of the industrial world for oil, and the continued scorched-Earth policy that all governments pursue in the search for wealth and continued economic growth.

MEDIA ADVISORY – For immediate release

Lauren Schuster, NYPIRG Staff Attorney
347.729.4729, LSchuster@nypirg.org

HUNDREDS TO DEMAND AN END TO OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING AND AN IMMEDIATE TRANSITION TO CLEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY WILL HOLD “HANDS ACROSS THE SAND” AT BRIGHTON BEACH

On Saturday, June 26th, hundreds of students, volunteers and members of NYPIRG’s 1Sky New York Campaign will gather on the shore at Brighton Beach to demand an end to offshore drilling and an immediate transition to clean, renewable energy sources. The activists, standing in silence, will clasp hands along the shoreline, in a stunning visual display of solidarity. The Brighton Beach Hands Across the Sand event is part of a national campaign with hundreds of events taking place in almost every state in the country. For more information about the nation event, please visit: http://www.handsacrossthesand.com.

Who: Hundreds of volunteers and activists from the NYPIRG/1Sky NY Campaign
What: Hands Across the Sand at Brighton Beach
When: Saturday, June 26th at 12pm
Where: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY
Visuals: Hundreds of volunteers clasping hands along the shore
Photos: Photos of the event will be made available for those who are unable to attend

This is part of a national (i.e. USA) event, currently being held in 26 states, which no doubt will be attended by hundreds of thousands of people who for some reason feel that forming chains of people across beaches will do the job, will make things all better again.

> What is the point of this, Lauren?

Keith

Hi,

Thanks for your question. The event is taking place in almost every state
in the country at the exact same time and we are standing together to show
solidarity with the Gulf Coast. We will send the message that we want an
end to offshore oil drilling and we want clean renewable, energy now. I
think that sums it up. If you have any other questions or would like more
information, please feel free to call or email. Thanks!

Warmest Wishes,

Lauren Schuster, Esq.
Staff Attorney
NYPIRG | The New York Public Interest Research Group
9 Murray Street | 3rd Floor | New York, N.Y. 10007
LSchuster@nypirg.org
p. 212.349.6460 | f. 212.349.1366
http://www.nypirg.org/enviro/1sky/

Thanks for replying, Lauren. I still don’t understand how this will actually change anything – who will get the “message” and what do you honestly except them to do with it?

Keith

Hi Keith,

That’s a fair question. So, we hope to and already have started attracting a fair amount of media attention, which is the first step. We are also collecting petition signatures at the event which demand comprehensive climate and clean energy solutions. We will deliver these petition signatures along with pictures of the event and a letter urging out leaders at every level of government to support climate and clean energy legislation next week. Hopefully, the force of hundreds of people from hundreds of organizations across the country doing this at the same time will demonstrate that we’re serious. Finally, bringing people together at an events like this makes everyone feel energized and engaged in the issue. We are going to need a lot of passionate people who are ready to help us move mountains to get climate and energy done. At the end of the day, it’s really about about bringing people together.

With that said, you should come out, see what it’s all about and then you can be involved with the follow up so you can see how a little hand holding can have a big difference.

Warmest Wishes,

Lauren Schuster, Esq.

I think the key word here is “hopefully” – which suggests that even the organisers give little chance of it actually achieving anything. Do you have any examples where such actions have created the kind of change you are asking for? I personally, cannot think of one. All successful actions I am aware of have involved some element of direct action, including sabotage and/or mass disobedience.

Best

Keith

(Cartoon courtesy of Code Green by Stephanie McMillan)

The dialogue continues below – please join in…

UPDATE: Just received this comment from Chandra (see below) who seems to have uncovered some interesting information about the founder of Hands Across The Sand, Dave Rauschkolb. I don’t have the resources to verify everything here, but if it is all true then the movement would seem to be walking on quicksand:

As for the mastermind behind this protest, Dave R., he’s recently announced to our local community that he has ordered the new Nissan Leaf to show his commitment to renewable energy. I once had a conversation with Dave about Peak Oil, of which he had never heard. That’s innocent enough, we were all there once. Dave has personally been invited to numerous sustainable forums over the last few years, of which I don’t recall him ever attending. He’s a very busy man. Dave is a three restaurant owner surf dude, who jet sets all over the world and has been known to indulge in poker excursions to Las Vegas. Dave lives in one of the most affluent developments in our county. I seriously doubt that Dave has evaluated any of his menus for sustainably acquired seafood, yet Dave claims to love the Gulf and care deeply for it’s inhabitants. Dave cut down a vital stand of old sand oaks from the dunes that were impeding the beach views from his latest restaurant endeavor. Dave is now regarded as a local hero and face of environmental stewardship and activism. Dave is planning yet another Hands Across the Sand event for next year. Be sure to get your T-shirt!