Greenwashing

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The appropriation of good causes by establishment elites has a long, rich history. Given the historical precedent, would it be surprise anyone that big financial interests and corporate elites would co-opt the environmental movement and its ethos in order to gain access to global natural resources, both domestically and abroad, greenwashing big industry in the process? In a March, 2012 article entitled, Way Beyond Greenwashing: Have Corporations Captured "Big Conservation?, Jonathan Latham, executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, states; (2)

"Imagine an international mega-deal. The global organic food industry agrees to support international agribusiness in clearing as much tropical rainforest as they want for farming. In return, agribusiness agrees to farm the now-deforested land using organic methods, and the organic industry encourages its supporters to buy the resulting timber and food under the newly devised “Rainforest Plus” label. There would surely be an international outcry.

"Virtually unnoticed, however, even by their own membership, the world’s biggest wildlife conservation groups have agreed to exactly such a scenario, only in reverse. Led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, still known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States), many of the biggest conservation nonprofits including Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy have already agreed to a series of global bargains with international agribusiness. In exchange for vague promises of habitat protection, sustainability, and social justice, these conservation groups are offering to greenwash industrial commodity agriculture."

Latham goes on to point out that the Roundtable for Responsible Soy (RTRS) "was founded in 2005 by the WWF, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill and a few other parties. Its goal is a label for 'responsible' soy. In 2009 the RTRS declared Monsanto's genetically modified Roundup Ready soy to be 'responsible'. Membership "includes WWF, Conservation International, Fauna and Flora International, the Nature Conservancy, and other prominent nonprofits." Corporate membership includes "repeatedly vilified members of the industrial food chain. As of January 2012, there are 102 members, including Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, Nestle, BP, and UK supermarket ASDA." He follows with the question; "Are 'Responsible' and 'Sustainable' certifications indicative of a genuine strategic success by WWF and its fellows, or are the schemes nothing more than business as usual with industrial-scale greenwashing and a social-justice varnish?" adding that the standards of the Roundtable for Responsible Soy are "far lower than organic or fair-trade standards; for example, they don’t require crop rotation, or prohibit pesticides" and that "key terms such as 'pollution,' 'minimized,' 'responsible,' and 'timely' are left undefined. This chronic vagueness means that both certifiers and producers possess effectively infinite latitude to implement or judge the standards. They could never be enforced, in or out of court" and that "removing existing occupants from the land" via "private armies and bribery" seems a somewhat dubious distinction for these groups. And regarding RTRS, "More than 250 large and small sustainable farming, social justice, and rainforest preservation groups from all over the world signed a 'Letter of Critical Opposition to the RTRS' in 2009. Signatories included the Global Forest Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Food First, the British Soil Association and the World Development Movement."

According to David Morine, former head of land acquisition for The Nature Conservancy, "Business got in under the tent, and we are the ones who invited them in. These corporate executives are carnivorous. You bring them in and they just take over." (3) The Washington Post reported on a study that "found that many Conservancy members felt a relationship with an oil company was 'inherently incompatible.' And to a minority of members, accepting cash from these types of companies was viewed as 'the equivalent of a payoff." (4) and that one of the Conservancy's own science directors, Jerry Freilich, was threatened with termination by his superior regarding the signing of some documents he didn't feel comfortable signing as a scientist.

"Freilich and other Conservancy scientists have questioned the organization's stated commitment to science. Some complain that science is trumped by other concerns, including a focus on fundraising, according to a 2001 study commissioned by the Conservancy to review its science." ... and that the "Report of the External Science Review Committee" included results of a poll of Conservancy scientists and an accompanying analysis. The document, obtained by The Washington Post, cited low morale, a 'disturbing level of concern and frustration' and worries that the Conservancy 'may have drifted from its original foundation in strong science.'" (5)

In 2003, according to the Post, The Senate Finance Committee;

"opened a wide-ranging inquiry into easement practices at the Nature Conservancy, the world's largest environmental group. The committee's investigation followed a Washington Post series that revealed the Conservancy had repeatedly bought scenic properties, added development restrictions, then resold the land at reduced prices to Conservancy trustees and supporters. The buyers, some of whom retained the right to build houses on the land, in turn gave the Conservancy cash donations that supplied them with hefty tax write-offs. After the series, the Conservancy board banned such sales." (6)

John Echeverria, former general counsel of the National Audubon Society, who describes conservation easements as "a gross fraud on the U.S. taxpayer," adding that;

"Land trusts say easement donations have helped many cash-poor families retain farms and ranches they otherwise might have sold to developers. But some of the biggest and best-known easements have been linked to major corporations and some of the nation's richest individuals, from Ted Turner and David Letterman to the Rockefellers and DuPonts." (7)

The Post has also reported that the Nature Conservancy's hailing of a complex real estate transaction involving environmentally sensitive lands near Martha's Vineyard "an important victory for conservation," but then went on to sell half of it, "paving the way for Gatsbyesque vacation houses on pristine beach and grasslands." (8). Further, in 2000, a

"survey of 18 New England land trusts and easement-holding public agencies, for example, found that 14 acknowledged that they had discovered one or more easement violations. Most said they had agreed to alter restrictions in one or more existing easements. Another study, in 1999, discovered that almost half of the protected tracts examined in the San Francisco area were not regularly monitored to make sure the restrictions were being followed. "There are no reliable figures on the total value of the conservation tax breaks. But legislation to expand allowable deductions that passed the Senate this year would sacrifice more than $1 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade, according to the Senate Finance Committee." (9)

New York journalist, Brendan Borrell, who has written for Nature, Smithsonian, Scientic American, writes of conservationists using threats and bribery to get indigenous people to "leave forests, watersheds and wildlife intact", as well as marketing carbon credits without the "consent from indigenous communities living in the forests and has no mechanism to distribute revenues." (10).

In 2002, Jeffrey St. Clair, who has worked as an environmental organizer and writer for Friends of the Earth, Clean Water Action Project, and the Hoosier Environmental Council, writes of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF);

"Last week, WWF announced that Linda Coady, now a senior executive at Weyerhaeuser Co, will become vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund’s newly created Pacific regional office in January.

"Weyerhaeuser is the great behemoth of the timber industry, which has rampaged through the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest leaving ruin and extinction in its wake. Weyerhaeuser has operated in Canada for many years, but in the last decade it has dramatically picked up the pace of its clearcutting in British Columbia– partly because it has largely liquidated its vast holdings in Washington and partly to flee the constraints of US environmental laws and lawsuits."

"Neither company has ever shown the least regard for the rights of the First Nations of Canada, who lay claim to much of the remaining coastal forests of British Columbia. And the Canadian government has chosen to allow the timber companies to clearcut those lands before the claims have been settled. Indeed, Weyerhaeuser is now being sued by the Haida Nation for illegally clearcutting their land in the Queen Charlotte Islands,"

"But the panda cash machine isn’t the group’s only source of money. The World Wildlife Fund also rakes in millions from corporations, including Alcoa, Citigroup, the Bank of America, Kodak, J.P. Morgan, the Bank of Tokyo, Philip Morris, Waste Management and DuPont. They even offer an annual conservation award funded by and named after the late oil baron J. Paul Getty. It hawks its own credit card and showcases its own online boutique. As a result, WWF’s budget has swelled to over $100 million a year and its not looking back."

"This self-induced moral blindness is par for the course. The World Wildlife Fund is one of those outfits that believes capitalism is good for the environment. It has backed nearly every trade bill to come down the pike, from NAFTA to GATT. WWF has also sidled up to some very unsavory government agencies advancing the same neo-liberal agenda across the Third World, including US AID." (11)

A 2011 film by German investigative reporter, Wilfried Huismann, "The Silence of the Pandas", also corroborates the trend, asserting that the WWF works to "greenwash industries that are destroying the environment as well as indigenous cultures." (12)

"Among other things, he cites the massive, often forced displacement of native peoples in India and Indonesia, who had coexisted for centuries with the wild animals that they venerate as holy. Huismann traveled to India, where one million aboriginal inhabitants are to be displaced, allegedly for the protection of tigers."

"And these few big cats are followed around their tiger reserve for eight hours a day by eco-tourists brought in by the WWF's own travel company in its 155 jeeps. According to research, the well-heeled guests must pay about $10,000 for the privilege, while local activists complain that in the name of eco-tourism the original forest is being destroyed."

Johann Hari, journalist for "The Nation," writes; (13)

"As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters — and burying science-based environmentalism in return …"

Eerily reminiscent is the Kyoto Accord, which bestows an air of legitimacy to the cutting of indigenous people off of their ancestral lands to create things like "clean development mechanisms" (eg; hydroelectric dams) and "carbon sinks" to generate "offsets" so that the giant corporations can purchase the right to continue polluting. How well does this bode for the credibility of the "environmental" movement if it promotes displacing third world peoples, who have some of the smallest carbon footprints in the world, to make way for big industry, who have some of the largest, so they can buy the right to continue polluting ... so we can "save the planet"?

Similarly, in global warming discussions, just about everyone acknowledges that big energy firms would love to continue polluting unabated and are more than happy to fund the requisite polluter friendly studies. But what about the gargantuan financial interests on the other side? It's amazing how often this is left out of "progressive" discussions. What about the carbon market and its potential? Often alluded to as a new fiat currency, and quite possibly the next sub prime bubble, carbon credits are expected to eclipse both gold and oil, possibly becoming a 10 trillion dollar market at maturity according to Richard Sandor, the founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange ("CCX") who is also known as the "father of carbon trading". (14) And Sandor is also a pioneer in the area of derivative financial instruments, credited with having "brought derivatives to the agricultural, insurance, and utilities sectors."

Sandor isn't alone in his advocation of the "market approach" to combating pollution and global warming. Another proponent of this is J.P.Morgan Chase's own Blythe Masters, who is "widely credited with creating the modern credit default swap." (15,16)

"Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases."

Derivatives ... and the largest commodity market the world has ever known ... what's not to like, right? James Cameron, writing for Time in 2007, hailed Richard Sandor a "genuine pioneer" who "harnessed the power of financial incentives." (17) CCX owes its existence in large part to two very generous grants from the Joyce Foundation; a $347,000 in 2000 and another $760,000 in 2001. (18, 19) Coincidentally, Barack Obama sat on the Joyce Foundation Board at that time. (20) It should also be pointed out that Al Gores Generation Investment Management also owns stakes in CCX, as does Goldman Sachs. (21). Gore has teamed up with quite a host of personnel from Goldman Sachs in the founding of GIM, including David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. In fact, Gore's primary founding partner in GIM was Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs Chief Executive. (22) A green version of The Carlyle Group, maybe? By the way, Goldman Sachs is currently morphing into an oil company, buying up oil fileds, tankers, and pipelines, and they own, along with other oil companies, the primary trading floor on which oil futures now trade, the intercontinental exchange ("ICE") which is unregulated by the US government. (23) Today, the Nature Conservancy is headed up by the former managing director of Goldman Sachs, Mark Tercek.

In 2011, the NAS (National Academy of Science) published a comprehensive report called "America's Climate Choices". (24) The "steering committee" which oversaw the entire report consisted of 23 individuals, only 5 of which have a Ph.D. in a field related to climate science. (25) Why? There is no shortage of qualified scientists within the NAS membership. They have an ample supply of highly qualified scientists within their ranks. (26) So why have most of these highly qualified National Academy scientists been excluded from this report when it was (presumably) issued by the National Academies? In fact, the chair of this committee, Albert Carnesale, also chairs two other committees at the National Academies: the Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability and the Committee on Nuclear Forensics. He is also on the Advisory Board of the RAND Corporation and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The four sub-committees also lack backgrounds in climate related science, easily verifiable on the aforementioned website (27) (follow the "site navigation" to the individual reports ...

This was reminiscent of the 2010 letter in the journal "Science" entitled "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science." (28). This letter had over 250 NAS signatories, many of whom lack the credentials to speak on climate change.

"However, an investigation into the professional backgrounds of the scientists finds that many do not work in climate science and some work in fields not even remotely related to it."

"Pediatric surgeons, an expert in the Maya and the Olmec civilizations, a chemist that studies bacteria, a ‘computer pioneer’ with Microsoft, an electrical engineer, the chairman of a biotechnology firm, and even an expert studying corn are but a few of the 255 ‘experts’ that signed the letter." (29)

Here are those NAS signatories listed, replete with links to biographical sketches. (30) Go through them yourself and see how many of them have any background in studying the climate. The author(s?) of the letter also made the unfortunate blunder of using a faked photo, which was subsequently exposed. (31) Is the highly respected NAS is being exploited by big industry to greenwash the carbon market? And NAS member Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has published more than 200 papers and books, has the answer as to why it has proved so difficult to produce a valid NAS statement on climate change, necessitating the greenwashing of the carbon market; because a compelling, scientific consensus on climate change does not exist. (32) That was in 2006.

5 years after Lindzen's 2006 statement regarding a lack scientific consensus on global warming, Lindzen was one of the many highly qualified NAS scientists who were excluded from the 2011 "America's Climate Choices" report, even though he is a NAS member and is far more qualified to speak on climate change than the preponderance of the panelists who did participate, including various lawyers, public policy makers, many professors (of sociology, law, decision sciences, political science, applied economics, agricultural economics), various economists and economic advisors, a director from the RAND Corporation, a former FEMA director, industrial engineers, environmental engineers, a chemical engineer at DuPont, a mechanical engineer, the chief atmospheric scientist at DuPont, a DuPont CEO, a former chief economist and VP of General Motors. Is a truly scientific consensus on something as complex as the earth's climate even possible, let alone likely? And is that precisely why they have to go to such great lengths to fashion this so-called "consensus"?

The trappings of scholarship are being used and abused to put a scientific veneer on both sides of the global warming issue in some sort of a carefully guided Hegelian dialectic to bring this ship to port. Big energy firms funding polluter friendly studies are not the only ones guilty of this. There are enormous interests behind the carbon market, which is is widely recognized as having the potential to eclipse even gold and oil, becoming the largest commodity market in existence. Furthermore, the administration of it could give some global, bureaucratic entity the power to control all global industry which, as the UN and the League of Nations before it have shown us, is a slippery slope and one that has proven most useful for giant multinationals. If the global warming movement is going to do any good at all, it will have to reconcile the very inconvenient truths it has attracted which are hiding behind it, particularly the ushering in and administrating of what could easily become the largest commodity market the world has ever known; carbon.

Corruption in national governments, as well as global, intergovernmental, bodies like the UN, is pretty widely acknowledged or, to be sure, it's not exactly a secret. It isn't at all surprising to find this trend carrying through to our National Academies, which routinely liaise with other learned societies and government policy makers, also playing an important organizational role in academic exchanges and collaborations between countries. No doubt the US National Academies possess the credentials, and therefore the potential, to provide the valuable service of forming legitimate, scientific consensus on important issues, as do the national academies of other countries. Instead, a good cause is co-opted towards a bad end - to advance the usual realpolitik and oligarchic agendas.

Citizenry genuinely concerned about the environment, as many are, would like to see a legitimate effort here, not a corrupt one with obvious ulterior motives and curiously constructed scientific study panels whose findings are a foregone conclusion from the outset. In a more natural setting (that is, one not influenced by popular culture and mass media) most of us would likely have some conservative sensibilities about global warming and some progressive ones. Too bad we have largely been sold on the maladaptive notion that we must choose one, which in effect keeps public opinion (genuine public opinion ... ) out of the discussion. But then that's the point.

Not to pick on the WWF, as the problem of greenwashing goes far beyond just them, but they do seem to be emitting a particularly malodorous air, not just presently but historically, indeed from their very inception. Founding members include Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society and a member of the Nazi party who went on to co-found the Bilderberg group, and Julian Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, aka "Darwin's Bulldog." A lifelong internationalist, Huxley was also UNESCO's first Director General. In 1946, Huxley wrote "UNESCO - ITS PURPOSE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY", where he stated,

"That task is to help the emergence of a single world culture, with its own philosophy and background of ideas, and with its own broad purpose. This is opportune, since this is the first time in history that the scaffolding and the mechanisms for world unification have become available ... " (35)

It would be interesting to know what Huxley meant by "unification" and "single world culture", although it's becoming clearer everyday.

Next: Alcohol

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Notes:

1 - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/05-5

2 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/may/29/usa.oliverburkeman

3 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html?sid=ST2010052203644

4 - http://sovereignty.net/p/ngo/A10232-2003May3.html

5 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601176.html

6 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601176_3.html

7 - http://sovereignty.net/p/ngo/A17879-2003May5.html

8 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601176_2.html