Conscious efforts to subvert or otherwise corrupt organizations and individuals who are concerned about social issues is a sadly long tradition. The environmental movement is no exception. Through many front groups, financial wranglings through contributions and outright blackmail, industries have tamed or corrupted many of the organizations who were once among their greatest critics and opponents. The corrupting influence on the politics of the environment has left us with, at times, a movement that has yet to address the needs of fighting climate change immediately-- instead, calling for the slow changing of emissions from various parts of industrial life-- and protecting the biggest contributions to their myriad organizations. When budgets and mainstream appearances with politicians become the order of the day, effective protest is muted and rendered toothless.
April 22, 2008
The Political Economics of Greenwashing
Green as a Blackjack Table
By STAN COX
Hard times are looming. And in their desperation to keep the American economy afloat, government and business will be tossing overboard any proposals for real environmental protection. No time for such romantic foolishness when there are investments to be protected. Get those tax refunds back into retailers' registers, quick!
Vancouver Sun April 3, 2008
Climate change ‘seriously underestimated’ by UN
Curbing emissions more daunting than panel reported: study
Margaret Munro
The United Nations' celebrated climate change panel has "seriously
underestimated" the challenge of curbing global CO2 emissions, say Canadian
and U.S. researchers.
Radical "decarbonization" of the global energy system is needed to stabilize
emissions -- a task that is much more daunting than the panel has led the
world to believe, the researchers report in journal Nature today.
Here's the real reason for Suncor's participation in the Pew/Sunoco funded Canadian Boreal Initiative -- allow for endless tarpit expansion while taking credit for some low-hanging fruit protected areas elsewhere in the boreal forest. An excellent business strategy indeed, especially given the fact that Pew/Sunoco actually *founded* Suncor in 1967. Though Pew/Sunoco sold off Suncor in 1995, they continue to refine large amounts of synthetic (mock) crude oil from the tarpits and desperately want more.
Tarpit Pete
The oil sands omerta
Norval Scott, March 12, 2008 at 3:58 PM EDT
According to oil executives speaking at the World Heavy Oil Congress
in Edmonton this week, a big challenge for the oil sands industry is
to overcome adverse public perceptions of their work. To a man, the
Canadian representatives speaking – including the chief executives of
Suncor Energy Inc. and Nexen Inc. – referred to the need to do better
in the PR battle, and emphasized that this was a priority.
It’s a fight that the companies aren’t winning, and it’s their own
Nothing new here really, as the multi-billion dollar US foundations along with the corporate environmentalists on their payrolls have been playing the low-hanging fruit greenwash strategy for decades, most recently in the Great Bear Rainforest deal and in the Mackenzie Valley. But in the mainstream media it takes the hard-nosed "Report on Business" to understand what's really going on, as the soft liberal left buys right into the greenwash game.
- Tarpit Pete
Why Big Oil discovered its love of trees
DEREK DeCLOET
Finally Canada's establishment newspaper gets it right! The proposed partial moratorium is indeed a PR greenwash smokescreen:
Nature
Nature 451, 866 (21 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/451866a; Published online 20 February 2008
Science in retreat
Canada has been scientifically healthy.
Not so its government.
Comparisons of nations’ scientific outputs over the years have
shown that Canada’s researchers have plenty to be proud of,
consistently maintaining their country’s position among the
world’s top ten (see, for example, Nature 430, 311–316; 2004). Alas,
their government’s track record is dismal by comparison.
When the Canadian government announced earlier this year that it
Former chief won't give up uranium mine battle
Posted By Sue Yanagisawa
A former chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nations yesterday told Justice Douglas Cunningham that he will continue to resist uranium prospecting on lands claimed by Frontenac Ventures Corp. north of Sharbot Lake, even if it means disobeying an order of the court.
Don't fight the Environmental movement-- Buy your own.
How to Avoid Action on Climate Change
The following is the text of Ian Angus’s keynote speech at “Smells Like Green Spirit,” a conference sponsored by the University of British Columbia Student Environment Centre, on January 19, 2008.
by Ian Angus, editor Climate and Capitalism
www.climateandcapitalism.com
Canadians are known for being modest and self-effacing. We don’t brag much, and sometimes we seem to have an inferiority complex, a belief that we do okay, but we seldom excel.
