Category: Predatory delay

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Australia Predatory delay

Jan 16, 1995: There’s power in a (corporate) union #auspol

On this day 27 years ago corporate interests met in Canberra (political capital of Australia) in their ongoing struggle against a dreaded (although tiny) proposed carbon tax. The business press had the story – 

Callick, R. 1995. Industry forces gather to slow carbon tax momentum. Australian Financial Review, 16 January, p.8.

REPRESENTATIVES of a substantial group of Australian industries meet in Canberra today to draft a joint response to invitations issued by the Minister for the Environment, Senator Faulkner, for separate talks over the next fortnight on his carbon tax proposal.

I could go on and on about this (in fact, I once did).

What happened next – Faulkner withdrew his proposal. The idea of a tax in and of itself mostly died (though see the Greens’ proposal in the aftermath of Kevin Rudd failing to get the CPRS through). Australia still doesn’t price carbon.

Why this matters. It’s good to see how business interests combine and co–ordinate their efforts.  It turns out, that, as the song goes, “there’s power in a union.” Especially a union of corporate giants. Who knew.

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

Categories
Australia Politics Predatory delay

1995, Jan 9: “Efficiency” promises vs hated and feared regulation/taxation #Predatory Delay #auspol

On this day in 1995, as part of its war to head off a carbon tax, the fossil fuel lobby released a report claiming that Energy Efficiency would be a better better bet than the (dreaded, to them) carbon tax being proposed by the Australian Environment Minister John Faulkner.

1995 Gill, P. 1995. Energy efficiency outstrips gains of carbon tax: study The Australian Financial Review 9th January

It was part of a flurry of “the sky will fall” reports that said even the mildest of carbon taxes would cause untold economic devastation to the Australian economy (a tactic still being used, because, well, it works).

Why this matters – we need to remember that the rhetoric of “efficiency” and clean green growth to head off even the mildest of reformist measures and regulation is a favoured and time-honoured tactic of those who don’t want anyone to get between them and their supply.  See Jeremiah Bohr’s 2016 Environmental Politics article for how the alleged “free-marketers”  square that circle.

What happened next: The carbon tax proposal was defeated, and morphed into “emissions trading schemes”. These waxed and waned, and a national one was finally introduced in July 2012. It was promptly axed by the next government and down (under) to this day, the very mention of it is enough to send shadow climate change ministers into a whiter shade of pale.  

Further reading

Bohr, J. (2016) The ‘climatism’ cartel: why climate change deniers oppose market-based mitigation policy. Environmental Politics, Vol. 25, 5.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2016.1156106


See also

Jevons Paradox

Ecological Modernisation

Categories
Economics of mitigation Predatory delay United States of America

1971, Jan 6: the whiff of sulphur (taxes) and 20 more years of #PredatoryDelay

On this day 51 years ago the idea of – gasp –  putting a tax on something that was causing environmental damage (cuh-razy communist idea) was kicked around within the Nixon administration.

We know this thanks to a really great book called Behind the Curve, by Joshua Howe, which looks at the climate issue before it became famous (see review in Environmental Politics here [paywalled]).

“As early as 1970 the Nixon administration considered levying a tax on SO2 tied to energy production from coal.”

(Howe, 2014:148)

And the footnote has it – John C. Whitaker to Ken Cole, memorandum, Jan 6 1971 “Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Charge,” memo for John B. Connally [sic] Jr. secretary of treasury, Nov. 11 1971. The tax was never implemented, in part because the Office of Management and Budget showed that it would work too well, taxing SO2 emissions out of existence before the program could generate enough revenue to meet Nixon’s pro-business political goals. (Howe, 2014:244) 

Why this matters – we are told that this is all impossible to do anything about – over-emphasised complexification, as part of the predatory delay.  Of course, climate is a much bigger/wider issue than acid rain, and carbon (in the form of fossil fuels) is far harder to replace in the production chain than CFCs or sulfur.  But the basic point – that you can put up taxes on things you are trying to discourage, as long as you think about/do something serious about  the distributional effects on the poorest and most vulnerable – should be entirely uncontroversial. As we will see, this has not been the case.

What happened next?

It would be another 20 years before anything substantive got done about sulphur in the US, with the 1990 Clean Air Act.  The question  of whether emissions trading mattered, or whether technological developments independent of a price-on-sulphur has given academics, activists and policymakers something to write and talk about too. 

Further reading

Bohr, J. (2016) The ‘climatism’ cartel: why climate change deniers oppose market-based mitigation policy. Environmental Politics, Vol. 25, 5.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2016.1156106

Brigham Daniels, Andrew P. Follett, and Joshua Davis, The Making of the Clean Air Act, 71 HASTINGS L.J. 901 (2020). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol71/iss4/3

Gabriel Chan, Robert Stavins, Robert Stowe, and Richard Sweeney (2012) THE SO2 ALLOWANCE-TRADING SYSTEM AND THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS OF 1990: REFLECTIONS ON 20 YEARS OF POLICY INNOVATION. National Tax Journal, 65 (2), 419–452


Lohmann, L. 2006. Carry On Polluting: Comment and analysis in New Scientist. The Cornerhouse, 2 December.