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Agnotology anti-reflexivity Greenwash Predatory delay Propaganda United States of America

Jan 15 1971: greenwash before it was called greenwash #propaganda

On this day in 1971, at the conference of the “Economic Council of the Forest Products Industry” in  Phoenix Arizona some chap called Richard W. Darrow gave a speech “Communication in an Environmental Age”

“We will do those things that earn us attention and gain us understanding, or we will live out the remainder of our professional lives in the creeping, frustrating, stultifying, stifling grasp of unrealistic legislative restraints and crippling administrative restriction. A public that ought to understand us – and thank us for what we are and what we do – will instead clamor for our scalps.”

There was, as you can see, a real panic in business circles. The fear was that previously quiescent ‘citizens’, at first cowed by so-called “McCarthyism”[it pre-dated that drunk] and then stupefied by consumerism – might actually get up on their hind legs. If they demanded real regulation, real control, so the planet didn’t get turned into an uninhabitable slagheap, then the fun times (for business) would be over. In 1971, before neoliberalism, before pervasive computing, before all the other wonders that the last 51 years have brought us, such fears were legit.

What has happened since? The kinds of “public relations” “professionals” Darrow represented have honed their game. Seven months later, the Powell Memorandum and the rise of the neoliberal think tanks. The crushing of labour unions, the spectacularisation of everything (to go all Debord for a minute). Greenwash, the constraining of imagination, the destruction of hope. Yeah, it’s not looking good for our species, is it?

“Source: Conley, J. (2006) , ENVIRONMENTALISM CONTAINED: A HISTORY OF CORPORATE RESPONSES

TO THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM. PhD thesis   

Conley, 2006: p69-70.  

Conley continues – “Having established a special unit to provide services on environmental health issues in 1966, Hill & Knowlton became a leading advocate and provider of environmental PR in the 1970s and beyond.”

See also

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky

Taking the Risk out of Democracy by Alex Carey

Global Spin by Sharon Beder

This isn’t just a battle of “ideas”: this gets very ‘kinetic’

The War against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence by David Helvarg

FT 12th January 2022  Activists target public relations groups for greenwashing fossil fuels

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Agnotology United States of America

1964, Jan 11: The Merchants of Doubt have work to do

On this day, January 11, in 1964 the  Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther Terry, M.D., published the landmark report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States

It sparked national and worldwide anti-smoking efforts.  But of course, as documented in the “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Stephen Conway, the tobacco industry was waaay ahead of the curve, having started highly effective campaigns to cast doubt on the science, and then to reframe it all as “personal responsibility”. Sound familiar? It should: the subtitle of the must-read Oreskes and Conway book is “How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”.
Why it matters. This “agnotology” (the creation of ignorance) has been a staggeringly successful tool of predatory delay.  And “education” is no defence.  In fact, those who’ve received “good” educations are often more vulnerable to insidious propaganda and careful framing than those who did not have the right clothes, accent, habitus to get through the obstacle course and win the prizes. If educated people (including the author of this blog) had gotten off – and stayed off – their asses in the early 90s, we might – just might – not be looking down the business end of 4 degrees by the end of the century. Oops