Cheerleading The Climate Criminals - Part 2

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Fri, 2 Sep 2005 10:01:56 UT

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Cheerleading The Climate Criminals - Part 2

 

 

 

 

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

 

September 2, 2005

 

 

MEDIA ALERT: CHEERLEADING THE CLIMATE CRIMINALS - PART 2

 

 

 

The Independent: As Good As It Gets?

 

The Independent - like the Guardian, a newspaper with supposed

progressive credentials - noted blandly in a recent editorial that

" Global

warming is given little coverage by the US media. " (Leader, `The American

consensus of denial is crumbling,' August 19, 2005). True enough. But

look at our own doorstep; at the wholly inadequate coverage of climate

change in the British media, the Independent very much included.

 

Effusive praise for the Independent's climate coverage appeared

recently in the paper's letters page from a reader in the United

States who

wrote:

 

" The Independent has been a cut above the rest. The frequency with

which you address global warming is entirely appropriate to the

seriousness

of the problem. " (Lead letter, `US still in denial over global

warming,' The Independent, August 20, 2005)

 

One can imagine the glow of satisfaction felt by the letters page

editor on being able to print those remarks.

 

Is Media Lens being too critical? Surely, the Independent does address

climate change quite frequently, even providing occasional front-page

coverage. Yes, but look at the +content+ of this coverage. In leaders

and news reports, the paper's editors and reporters ignore the

unsustainable nature of endless economic growth on a finite planet.

They overlook

the links between climate catastrophe and the damaging core practices

of global corporations and investors.

 

Where are the leading articles or news reports highlighting the

insidious efforts of big business to obstruct the rational policies on

energy,

transport, food production and trade that we need so urgently? Where

are the news stories addressing the billions spent annually by business

and the public relations industry on promoting unsustainable consumer

consumption?

 

Where are the editorial denunciations of the British government's

active role in this madness, driving humanity inexorably towards the

climate

" tipping point " and into the abyss beyond? Why, instead, do the major

news media so often uncritically channel propaganda from the number 10

Downing Street press office about Blair being 'passionate' about and

'committed' to tackling the climate challenge?

 

The reason, of course, is that the corporate media are themselves very

much ad-packed, consumer-driven parts of the problem.

 

 

Profligate Consumption = Doomed Children

 

Tackling climate change rationally would also reduce global poverty.

The great Gleneagles G8 jamboree, and its attendant media circus, ignored

this dangerous truth. The London-based New Economics Foundation (NEF)

conservatively estimates that global fossil fuel subsidies, paid to rich

corporations out of the public purse, amount to $235 billion annually.

Just one year's worth of these subsidies could wipe out all of

sub-Saharan's entire international `debt', with billions to spare.

(NEF, `The

price of power,' 2004, downloadable report from www.neweconomics.org)

 

Will the new UK `Climate Movement' – which includes Greenpeace, Friends

of the Earth, Christian Aid and Oxfam - launched on September 1 with

the slogan `Stop Climate Chaos', speak such uncomfortable truths? Will

the campaign point to the astonishing collusion of leading politicians in

corporate criminality in blocking effective action on climate? Will the

Climate Movement critically appraise the media's role in perpetrating

climate crime? Or, looking at the campaign's new website

(www.stopclimatechaos.org), as well as judging by the past performance

of several

large NGOs in the new coalition, will it instead pull a veil over such

crucial matters? (`Silence is Green,' Media Alert, February 3, 2005;

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050203_silence_is_green.php)

 

Aside from the massive public handouts given to fossil fuel dinosaurs,

there is also the enormous damage to the planet associated with burning

oil, coal and gas. According to NEF, the costs of natural disasters

mostly linked to global warming have now reached $60 billion annually.

This sum excludes the human misery resulting from global warming related

death, illness, injury and loss. Consider, too, that the US has spent

around $300 billion in the last three years of war in Afghanistan and

Iraq - wars in which oil is a major motivating factor. (Ted Glick,

'Needed: A Global Survival Movement,' Future Hope column, August 17,

2005, via

email)

 

As the authors of the NEF report conclude:

 

" t doesn't have to be like this. Clean renewable energy sources have

huge, barely tapped potential. Not only can they provide all the energy

needed for human development, they can also abate the pollution that

adds to climate change and kills countless people every year. They can

supply +power+ to communities, but where the technology is developed,

implemented and maintained by local people, they can also +empower+

communities who have in other ways been marginalized. " (NEF, ibid.)

Why can't Blair, Brown and the rest of our corporate leaders see this?

What would it take to make them change course? Would the system of

corporate capitalism, whose goals they project, even +permit+ them to

change course? Quite literally, what are they thinking? Psychologist

Oliver

James, author of `Britain on the Couch', hints at the truth:

" Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are utterly committed to economic

growth and for that to keep happening, we have to keep on consuming new

products. I have talked to two of Blair's key advisers at some length,

and the fact is that the Treasury refuses to countenance any ecological

legislation that threatens affluence... [blair and Brown] know

perfectly well that unless we call a halt to our profligate

consumption, their

children or children's children are doomed. " (James, `Heat: Heads in

the sand,' The Guardian supplement on climate change, June 30, 2005)

Blair and Brown may indeed know that this is the case. Both have

expressed concern about climate change. They are clearly not wholly

blind to

the dangers; dangers that do, of course, represent a threat to

entrenched power. After all, even the mighty system of global

capitalism is not

immune to the chaos of climate instability.

But the fundamental point is that, to reach their powerful positions in

society, Blair, Brown and other western leaders have had to subordinate

the planet's future to the prerogative of global economic " growth " ; or,

to put it more honestly - to the bottom-line corporate expediency of

endless profit benefiting privileged sectors of society. Any would-be

political leader determined to change the current patterns of production

and consumption would barely get out of the starting blocks, never mind

reach the finishing tape of real political power.

As Canadian philosopher John McMurtry once shrewdly observed of the

prime minister:

" Tony Blair exemplifies the character structure of the global market

order. Packaged in the corporate culture of youthful image, he is

constructed as sincere, energetic and moral. Like other ruling-party

leaders,

he has worked hard to be selected by the financial and media axes of

power as `the man to do the job'. He is a moral metaphor of the system. "

(McMurtry, Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy, Pluto

Press, London, 2002, p.22)

The same filtering process applies to the vast majority of leaders in

positions of authority. They have all risen to the top in a hierarchical

society that is shaped largely by the intertwined requirements of

corporate interests and geostrategic power.

If current trends continue, the consequences for humanity could well be

terminal.

SUGGESTED ACTION

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

respect for others. When writing emails to journalists, we strongly urge

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

You could ask questions along the following lines: Why do you rarely,

if ever, address the disaster of global economic " growth " for climate

stability? Why not report more critically on the gap between government

rhetoric and climate reality? Why do you not undertake more

investigations into corporate lobbying of governments – lobbying that

is designed

to minimise +any+ enforced legislation of activities that are

detrimental to climate stability? Where are your reports and

editorials on

business and political opposition to sane climate policies, including the

redirection of fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy?

Write to Michael McCarthy, environment editor of the Independent:

Email: m.mccarthy

And to his editor, Simon Kelner:

Email: s.kelner

Write to Geoffrey Lean, environment editor of the Independent on

Sunday:

Email: g.lean

And to his editor, Tristan Davies:

Email: t.davies

Write to Charles Clover, environment editor of the Daily Telegraph:

Email: Charles.Clover

And to his editor, Martin Newland:

Email: Martin.Newland

Write to John Vidal, environment editor of the Guardian:

Email: john.vidal

And to his editor, Alan Rusbridger:

Email: alan.rusbridger

Write to Roger Alton, editor of the Observer:

Email: roger.alton

Write to Andrew Gowers, editor of the Financial Times:

Email: andrew.gowers

Please also send all emails, particularly any replies from the media,

to the Media Lens editors:

Email: editor

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