The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-environmental Organizations

Abstract

Review by Dale Wharton Retired Computer Programmer, Montreal QC Canada Deal, Carl. THE GREENPEACE GUIDE TO ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS. Berkeley: Odonian Press, 1993. 95 pp. US$5 paper ISBN: 1-878825-05-4. Why do citizens let industries corrupt the biosphere? Greenpeace argues that fifty organizations hinder or defeat efforts at conservation. Here it catalogs addresses, officers, and backers (e.g., transnational corporations which provide financial support) of these organizations. The fifty usually claim they, too, care about Nature. So don't be fooled by a green facade, warns Deal (p. 6). He arranges them into six types. 1. PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS. In manipulating events, public relations (PR) firms may coopt or neutralize activists. The largest PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, branches through twenty-eight countries. It does damage control and issues management for the likes of British Columbia Forest Alliance, MacMillan Bloedel, Exxon, Union Carbide, General Motors, Hydro-Quebec, Procter & Gamble, and the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Other firms in environmental communication include Hill & Knowlton of New York, Shandwick of London, and E. Bruce Harrison Co. of Washington DC. 2. CORPORATE FRONT GROUPS. They lull consumers, pretending we can keep destroying the environment without severe consequences. They lobby lawmakers to roll back regulations. The message: conservancy is unreasonable and extreme, stems from bad science, and ignores social and economic outcomes. (They neglect the loss of forestry jobs, for instance, owing to mechanization, overcutting, and exports of raw logs.) 3. THINK TANKS. Citizens for the Environment urges deregulation. Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute deny evidence of environmental crises. Science and Environmental Policy Project spun off from a Rev. Sun Myung Moon think tank. (See type 6 for more about Moon). 4. LEGAL FOUNDATIONS. Mountain States Legal Foundation (original president, James Watt), Pacific Legal Foundation, and National Legal Center for the Public Interest (which serves as an umbrella for scattered locals), among others, use the courts to fight both government regulations and citizen lawsuits to protect the environment. Foundations have been effective. In 1992 they won a major Supreme Court decision (Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Commission). It held that government regulation of a developer's private property was unconstitutional because it amounted to a government seizure. 5. ENDOWMENTS AND CHARITIES. Philanthropies pipe in corporate money and underwrite attacks on the conservation community. In 1991, four of the largest disbursed $150 million for this purpose. These four were Lilly Endowment (pharmaceuticals), John Olin Foundation (munitions), and two outposts of the Mellon steel empire: Carthage Foundation and Sarah Scaife Foundation. 6. WISE USE AND SHARE GROUPS. The Wise Use movement links contrived grassroots locals in the western USA. Founder Ron Arnold got seed money in 1988 from American Freedom Coalition, an affiliate of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Backing now comes from timber, mining, ranching, chemical, and recreation interests. Arnold boasts that Wise Use ... can do things the industry can't. It can stress the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community. And it can turn the public against your enemies . Canada's Share movement mirrors the US Wise Use movement.