Category: Greenwash

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Australia Business Responses Greenwash Uncategorized

April 9, 1990 – Australian business launches “we’re green!” campaign

 Thirty three years ago, on this day, April 9, 1990, Australian business tried to get ahead of the ‘green debate’

1990  “Launching its first policy on the environment in Sydney yesterday, the Business Council of Australia lamented the standard of the green debate.”

Lane, B. 1990. Business hitches a ride with green bandwagon.  Australian Financial Review, 10 April.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Business had been caught flat-footed and/or complacent about resurgent interest in green issues. They had also perhaps thought that the Liberal National Party would be back in power in 1990 and take care of them, so why make a big effort?   It didn’t turn out like that  – Labor scraped back in at the March 1990 Federal Election.

So, led by the at-that-time newish and dominant “Business Council of Australia”, industry said all the right platitudes about ecologically sustainable development etc.

What I think we can learn from this

Business is often slow off the mark when facing a new threat, because so many new threats evaporate on their own, (or rather, the problem is real but isn’t turned into an issue.)  Combatting advocates of an issue at an early stage may only help turn it into an issue. Better to watch greenies exhaust themselves even getting an issue onto the agenda, and then rely on structural “luck” to contain/constrain/corral it, no?

What happened next

The Hawke Government tried to keep everyone happy, through the promised “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process, with its working groups etc.  But in the end, push coming to shove, the ESD was watered down and watered down to the point of nothingness (see here and here and here).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia Coal Greenwash Propaganda

January 12, 2008 – Australian mining lobby group ups its “sustainability” rhetoric #PerceptionManagement #Propaganda   

 

Fifteen years ago, on this day, January 12, 2008,

NEW South Wales Minerals Council CEO Nikki Williams (later to head up the Australian Coal Association)  called on the industry “to get on the front foot in selling its sustainability message.” (see here)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was that Australia was in the grip of another awareness of its fragility and of serious trouble ahead.  Mining companies were understandably looking to burnish their images with the usual bag of tricks – sponsorships of sports teams, tree planting and the like. Doing it as individual companies is expensive and open to easy sneering. Getting your trade association to do it helps you a) spread costs and b) gain more “respectability,” at least in the eyes who choose not to see what their eyes can see.

What I think we can learn from this

We live in a propaganda-ised society. A major function of trade associations is to pump out propaganda when it is needed, to deflect, slow or soften the actions of the state.  See that Chomsky fella, or Alex Carey.

What happened next

Lots of propaganda.  Lots of lobbying. The Rudd government spent two years faffing and selling its arse. Its “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” was a farce. Then the Gillard government had to try to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, the emissions climbed and people got (rightly) cynical about how much politicians would prance and preen while doing nowt.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Carey, A. 1997 Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Corporate Progaganda versus Freedom and Liberty. University of Illinois Press.

Categories
Greenwash United Kingdom

April 20, 2006 – David Cameron does “hug-a-husky” to detoxify the Conservative “brand”

On this day, April 20 2006, David Cameron, newly-minted opposition leader in the UK, the head of the Conservative and Unionist Party, had his photo op with a husky in the Arctic. The context was that Cameron needed to detoxify the Conservative brand. And he’s chosen environmentalism as the way to do that, in much the same way that Kevin Rudd would use climate and environment as a wedge issue against John Howard a year or so later in Australia.

Why this matters. 

We really, really really need to learn not to take anything a politician, any politician says at face value. And we need to help other people understand that – or rather, we need to get beyond information deficit and deference, to a sense of the power that (potentially) rests in social movements. Or did. Probably too late to do anything now.

What happened next?

Gordon Brown became Labour Prime Minister, and bottled calling an election in 2007. The global financial crisis hit and then there was an air of inevitability around Cameron becoming Prime Minister which he did, thanks to the Liberal Democrats in May of 2010. In 2012

In January 2012 the Guardian reported that

“The head of the charity that helped to arrange David Cameron’s memorable husky photoshoot in the Arctic, launching the Conservatives’ rebranding as the nice-not-nasty party, has warned that the PM’s lack of leadership on environment issues risks “retoxifying” their image.”

In 2013, Cameron infamously commanded “get rid of all the green crap”. Which is costing ordinary people money now.

History does not record what happened to the husky.

Categories
Fossil fuels Greenwash United States of America

March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez vs Alaska. (EV wins)

On the March 24 1989, the Exxon Valdez, ran aground in Alaska. Another of the consequential oil spills like the Torrey Canyon (1967) , and the one in the March 1978 (the Amoco Cadiz).

 And that was followed, of course, by Deepwater Horizon. 

And the thing to remember is that it’s not the accidents that are the problem, itt’s the normal operating of the system. So here Imma point you at the Onion article about “Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe”

What’s interesting about the Valdez is it was probably the last time we thought things could be better. It spurred in the short term, Exxon to run a very effective publicity campaign about people scrubbing individual rocks and birds. And there was more loose talk about double hold oil tankers. In the longer term, they fought a successful ish rearguard action via the legal system and academia. And here we are. 

Then in 1997, one of my favourite references to this disaster is the Exxon is the movie Good Will Hunting where as part of his monologue about the dots between the National Security Agency and everyone getting fucked over, Matt Damon makes reference to a drunk captain who wants to slalom with the icebergs.

Check out the post for the 26th March, btw

Categories
Agnotology anti-reflexivity Coal Fossil fuels Greenwash Predatory delay Propaganda

February 26, 2014 – Advanced Propaganda for Morons

On this day, eight years ago, Peabody Coal started an advertising campaign called “Advanced Energy for Life.” Because as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal had a serious image problem, and therefore needed to conflate itself with notions of energy poverty.

Why this matters

What they’re trying to do when they do this is insinuate that anyone who is opposed to the burning of ever more coal somehow wants people in Africa to die young, after a miserable impoverished life.

What you’ll find, of course, is that the many of same people who are protesting about environment also would like debt relief (cancellation), democratisation technology transfer and all the rest of it.

But Peabody would rather have you believe that all environmentalists are racist Malthusian assholes all the time. Now, it is indisputable that some environmentalists historically and down into this present day, racist assholes, and explicitly and unashamedly others, confused or ignorant, and of course, most buy into the myths of it being possible to have everything for everyone and there being no trade offs.

What happened next

One of Australia’s briefer Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott, used the “coal is good for humanity” line when opening a coal-fired power station later that year.

Peabody is making money at the mo’, because gas prices have spiked and so coal is competitive. For now.

Further reading.

The truth behind Peabody’s campaign to rebrand coal as a poverty cure | Coal | The Guardian

I’d recommend an article by James Meek in the London Review of Books about Scottish offshore wind energy and who is building the towers and the kits and under what conditions. But I digress. 

What happened next

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s later that year when opening a coal mine, use one of the Peabody talking points. Coal is good for humanity. So that’s When for pee buddies, PR people, 

Peabody has, of course, entered bankruptcy proceedings chapter 11, I think. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not that some people aren’t making money. It just means that times are tough for call my heart’s bleeding.

Categories
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