Burning The Planet For Profit

[Guest guest]

Burning The Planet For Profit

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

Corporate Lobbying, A Lapsed 'Ecowarrior' and Compromised Media

After 4.6 billion years of planetary history, we may become the first

species to monitor our own extinction. In impressive detail, humankind

is amassing evidence of devastating changes in the atmosphere, oceans,

ice cover, land and biodiversity.

And yet mass media, politics, the education system and other realms of

public inquiry demonstrate a stunning capacity to focus on what does

not really matter. Meanwhile, the truly vital issues receive scant

attention to the point of invisibility: the parlous prospects for humanity's

survival and the root causes underlying the global environmental

threat.

Current patterns of 'development' and consumerism, fuelled annually by

billions of advertising dollars, are unsustainable. Huge corporations

and powerful investors have governments and societal institutions in a

stranglehold, delivering policies that demand endless 'growth' on a

finite planet.

 

The Corporate Killers

Take the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the most influential

business lobby group in the UK. Friends of the Earth (FoE) note that

the core objective of the CBI, and other "corporate lobby groups who

favour short-term profit over sustainable development", is to promote

endless opportunities for business 'growth', and to do so by bending the ear

of the UK government. (Friends of the Earth, 'Hidden Voices: The CBI,

corporate lobbying and sustainability', June 2005)

FoE reported: "many companies are using their influence over Government

to promote public policies that are bad for communities and the

environment." As years of New Labour in power have shown: "the Government

seems to readily accept the CBI arguments at face value." A major

consequence is that the government "is failing to reach its targets to reduce

greenhouse gases because it is promoting policies that encourage more

pollution, such as significantly expanding airports following intense

lobbying by big business lobby groups."

Tony Juniper, head of FoE in England & Wales, observes that the "CBI

agenda is a simple one - to increase deregulation and reduce business

taxes." There are "serious concerns about how the CBI uses the threat of

potential damage to UK business and job losses to oppose regulations

that would improve workers' rights, benefit the environment and deliver

economic benefits." (FoE, ibid.)

Thus, Sir Digby Jones, CBI director-general, criticised even the

government's modest target to reduce carbon dioxide as "risking the sacrifice

of UK jobs on the altar of green credentials." (Andrew Taylor, 'Jobs

warning over tough move on emissions', Financial Times, January 20,

2004). Note the standard rhetorical device of expressing concern for "jobs"

when the focus of business worries is, in fact, "profits."

The CBI not only has a discernible influence over state policies, the

government is "in thrall to the CBI." FoE explains why:

"There is a clear 'alignment of values' between the CBI and many

similar figures in Government [in] that they broadly agree in minimising

Government intervention in the market (ie neo-liberal economics)."

Moreover, the CBI is able to get "critical comments on Government

policy put out through the media, which obviously attracts Government

attention. This is further entrenched by many business journalists who simply

do not challenge the CBI claims and accept them as representing totally

the views of business." (FoE, ibid.)

As we have noted before, the corporate media industry is a vital

component of the business world. It is therefore not surprising that

journalists working in the business sections of the media - indeed, throughout

the news media as a whole - promote corporate aims.

 

Corporate Defenders of Climate Myths

There are other corporate groups which, like the CBI, are determined to

prioritise short-term greed. One of them is the Cato Institute, a US

"non-profit public policy research foundation" which "seeks to broaden

the parameters of public policy debate" to promote the "traditional

American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets

and peace."

This perspective satisfies the Institute's sponsors who mainly consist

of "entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations

such as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that

abhor government regulation." ('"Evidence-based" research?

Anti-environmental organisations and the corporations that fund them', October 19,

2005; www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2099)

Among Cato's sponsors are ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, Tenneco gas,

pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc. and Merck, Microsoft, Proctor &

Gamble, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and many others, including those with

business interests here in the UK. Shell Oil Company, a sister company of

Shell in Europe, is a past sponsor of the Cato Institute.

One of the Institute's "adjunct scholars" is Steven Milloy who

publishes a website devoted to exposing "junk science." Milloy has a background

in lobbying for the tobacco industry. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton,

analysts of the 'spin' industry, explain that "junk science" is the

term that "corporate defenders apply to any research, no matter how

rigorous, that justifies regulations to protect the environment and public

health. The opposing term, 'sound science,' is used in reference to any

research, no matter how flawed, that can be used to challenge, defeat,

or reverse environmental and public health protection." (Corporate

Watch, ibid.)

The Institute has published reports with titles such as 'Climate of

Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming', and 'Meltdown: The

Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and

the Media.' In May 2003, in response to a report by the Worldwatch

Institute which linked climate change and severe weather events, Jerry

Taylor, the Cato Institute's "director of natural resource studies"

retorted:

"It's false. There is absolutely no evidence that extreme weather

events are on the increase. None. The argument that more and more dollar

damages accrue is a reflection of the greater amount of wealth we've

created." (www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=21)

Another major US-based lobby group whose tentacles of influence extend

across the Atlantic is the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful

trade association for the US oil industry - an industry which has sister

companies in many other countries, including the UK. Among the API's

members are Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, BP Amoco and Shell.

Researcher Robert Blackhurst has described how the API has "sustained a

long guerrilla campaign against climate scientists." A memo leaked to the

New York Times in 1998 exposed its strategy of investing millions to

muddy the science on climate change among "congress, the media and other

key audiences." (Blackhurst, 'Clouding the atmosphere', The

Independent, September 19, 2005)

The API recently funded a scientific paper in the journal Climatic

Change denying that 20th century temperatures had been unusually high,

giving well-publicised ammunition to climate sceptics. After finding the

paper's methods and assumptions had been flawed, six of the journal's

editors resigned.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Amsterdam-based research and

campaign group, notes that "Shell and BP Amoco, both formerly ardent

critics of global warming theory, have shifted their strategies

dramatically." CEO continues:

"These masters of climate greenwash have undergone expensive corporate

makeovers and now present themselves as leaders in reducing CO2

emissions and supporting renewable energy."

(www.corporateeurope.org/greenhouse/greenwash.html)

Shell and BP Amoco employ a sophisticated public relations approach:

"Expensive TV and newspaper advertisements portraying an

environmentally-friendly image are at the heart of this strategy. In many cases,

small-scale environmental projects which the companies fund are used to

justify the green credentials of the corporation as a whole – projects

which often cost less than the advertisements used to showcase them to the

general public... Both Shell and BP Amoco continue to increase oil

production year after year and have no intention of changing that in the

next decades." (CEO, ibid.)

Corporate news media rarely report the influence of corporate lobby

groups on governments, or expose their expensive PR campaigns, and how

detrimental these business activities are for the climate stability of the

planet.

The news media also take capitalism as a given, much like the laws of

physics. What rare discussion there might be is only permitted to

reinforce the corporate prejudice that the system is irreplaceable.

 

The 'Ecowarrior' and the War Criminal

For instance, the Independent recently granted extensive space to Sir

Jonathan Porritt, formerly a great green hope in Britain, to promote his

new book, 'Capitalism: As If The World Matters'.

He believes that "the emerging solutions [to the climate crisis] have

to be made within the embrace of capitalism." (Porritt, 'How capitalism

can save the world', Independent Extra, 8-page supplement, Independent,

November 4, 2005)

Porritt, Blair's top environmental adviser, fails to see that current

government policies are almost wholly opposed to social justice and

environmental health. Instead, he claims that "almost all key policy

processes continue to move slowly in the right direction" and that "the

benefits of today's globalisation process still outweigh the costs."

For Porritt, once leader of the Green Party in England & Wales, this:

"means working with the grain of markets and free choice, not against

it. It means embracing capitalism as the only overarching system capable

of achieving any kind of reconciliation between ecological

sustainability, on the one hand, and the pursuit of prosperity and personal

wellbeing, on the other." As for current ecological activism: "Unless it

throws in its lot with this kind of progressive political agenda,

conventional environmentalism will continue to decline."

We are to believe that Tony Blair - forever bending to the will of

business and exposed as one of the most cynical and dishonest politicians

in living memory - is at the vanguard of this "progressive political

agenda":

"I admire a lot about him [blair]. I do, genuinely. I have to keep

saying this because people forget it: on climate change, if he hadn't done

what he has done, we would be looking at a world in which there was no

political leadership on this agenda." (Marie Woolf, 'Jonathon Porritt:

The constant ecowarrior', The Independent, November 6 2005)

The Independent, owned by billionaire Sir Tony O'Reilly, can manage to

provide an eight-page supplement for a former 'ecowarrior' to explain

why environmentalism must throw in its lot with capitalism. But there

are no multi-page supplements to present community initiatives and

grassroot debates around the world on alternatives to the present disastrous

system. We await the day when the Independent, or any other mainstream

newspaper, publishes a major supplement on, for example, participatory

economics, a radical vision detailed by ZNet's Michael Albert (see

Albert, 'Parecon: Life After Capitalism', Verso, London, 2003; and

www.parecon.org).

Tony Blair has put down his corporate cards on the table, declaring

bluntly:

"The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption

substantially because of a long-term environmental problem." (Andrew Balls

and Alan Beattie, 'Insurance for terror risk is "key to Gaza"',

Financial Times, September 16, 2005)

But Ross Gelbspan, author and journalist, points to the essential truth

that economics is subservient to nature, not the other way around:

"...nature's laws are not about supply and demand. Nature's laws are

about limits, thresholds, and surprises. The progress of the Dow does not

seem to influence the increasing rate of melting of the Greenland Ice

Sheet; the collapse of the ecosystems of the North Sea will not be

arrested by an upswing in consumer confidence." (Gelbspan, `Boiling Point',

Perseus Books, 2004, pp. 128-129)

 

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and

respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge

readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to one or more of the editors below. You could ask them to report

the impact of corporate lobbying and greenwashing on government climate

policy; and to report on the worldwide justice movement campaigning for

alternatives to global capitalism. It is more effective to write in

your own words.

Write to Tristan Davies, editor of the Independent on Sunday:

Email: t.davies

Write to Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent:

Email: s.kelner

 

Write to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian:

Email: alan.rusbridger

Write to Roger Alton, editor of the Observer:

Email: roger.alton

Please also send copies of all emails to Media Lens:

Email: editor

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