climate change, corporations and PR
December 11th, 2005
Why did it take so long for people to realise climate change was already happening? What can we do about it?
Indymedia activists put the blame squarely on the mainstream media and their devious global corporate buddies.
Consensus is nearly unanimous amongst the world’s scientists that climate change is happening as a result of our use of oil, coal and petroleum. Yet only recently have politicians come to the party. George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard have finally conceded the fact.
Yet, under the guise of ‘unbiased reporting’ the mainstream media have too often given voice to the climate critics. Many of them financed by big oil, these so-called climate scientists have created a skewed debate on climate that put sufficient doubt in the minds of readers to allow governments to continue to do nothing to mitigate climate change.
The connections of climate sceptics with mining corporations and big oil is so dazzling, one wonders that they even got a serious hearing in the media. One notable Australian example is Hugh Morgan. Morgan was CEO of Western Mining Corporation from 1986 to 2003, and director of Alcoa from 1977 to 2001. He launched his own ‘think tank’ (the Lavoisier Group) in 1999 to legitimise his claims that climate change is the product of green extremists and ‘nazi propaganda’, and that they Kyoto protocol is a challenge to Australia’s sovereignty. The Lavoisier Group continues to publish and promote the interests of his CO2 emitting mining business. Alcoa’s aluminium smelter is the single biggest emitter of GHG in Queensland. His corporate buddies include Rupert Murdoch and John Winston Howard. Morgan is now President of the Business Council of Australia, through which he continues to criticise attempts to get industry to reduce emissions. Morgan is but one of a handful of vocal and well-financed climate critics who have gotten more than their fair share of publicity. Morgan’s former company Alcoa still proclaims on their website that the science of climate change is ‘incomplete’.
Another Australian organisation notable for it’s climate scepticism is the Institute for Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank with an avowed goal to prevent the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The IPA often get published in the Murdoch rags in Australia, boasting former members like publisher and journalist Michael Duffy and commentator Ron Brunton. Their members include and some former Liberal party and industry heads like Tim Duncan formerly of Rio Tinto. One of the IPAs other main goals is to “defund the left” by undermining their charity status and removing government funding of environment groups, the latter the Howard government has already done in 2004. In 2005 the IPA launched a front group, The Australian Environment Foundation, to protect the interests of the timber industry. It includes former TV presenter Don Burke, who says, “The greatest threat to the world’s environment is the conservation movement.”
With such powerful and influential friends like Murdoch and mining money on their side, one wonders also why the US oil industry needed to spend millions of dollars on the services of PR giants. In the late 80s corporations including Amoco, the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Shell Oil, Texaco, Chevron, Chrysler, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Exxon, General Motors, Ford Motor Company and more than 40 other corporations formed the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). The GCC’s objective was to create positive publicity for big oil and create doubts about climate change to prevent reform.
Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton at PR Watch note that,
“The GCC recognized early on that Australia would play a key role in its campaign against global warming reform. Rapid economic growth in the Australasian region has seen Australia emerge as an important regional staging post for the PR industry. Most major US firms–Edelman’s, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & Knowlton, Ketchum, Shandwick and others–have established a presence there to work on local issues and the regional implementation of international issues….
Australia also accounts for more than 30 percent of world trade in coal, and has major metal smelting industries which also belch out greenhouse gases. As a result, it has Asia’s highest per capita emission of greenhouse gases, even though its population comprises only one percent of the region’s 2.5 billion people.
In 1988, when Australia held a Greenhouse ‘88 conference, there was great public interest in the issue. At the time, Australia had one of the “greenest” governments in the world. Since then, however, corporations and their front groups have systematically manipulated public opinion through frequent pronouncements in the media by (Patrick) Michaels and other industry-funded scientists.” PR Watch 1997.
In 2002 the GCC disbanded. All that money spent, so little success.
Governments are now talking action on climate change. In 2005 British PM Tony Blair said that climate change was the biggest challenge facing humankind and that action was necessary. Even George Bush has admitted they must act, despite his loyalties lying with his oil funded family. However, he never went so far as to say he’d do anything about it: “A government report to the UN says that global warming exists, that it is man-made, and that it will transform the environment - all points that the current US government, while never actually denying, has been reluctant to accept. However, the report suggests that the country will have to accept the changes, rather than take any action to try to avert them” reports the Guardian.
So now corporations are concentrating on getting their lobbyists into government positions to weaken decisions, adulterate policy and influence personnel postings. PR Watch report that the Bush administration, Exxon-Mobil and other energy companies successfully connived in 2002 see climatologist Robert Watson rejected as leader of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2003 Paul Harris reported “government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue.” In June 2005 the New York Times reported that “U.S. government climate research reports had been edited by a White House official, Philip A. Cooney, to emphasize doubts about climate change. According to the memo Cooney, a former “climate team leader” and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, changed one 2002 document to “create an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about climate change and its implications.” (PR Watch 2005). There are so many more examples of the covert manipulation of data, and the democratic process as to boggle the mind with the lengths big oil will go to, to protect their profits even at the price of the world through climate change.
While lobbyists and science critics continue to try to undermine the science of climate change, some corporations are embracing it. The Nuclear industry thinks it’s renaissance lies in promoting itself as a solution to climate change. Power provision from coal-fired power stations creates 15% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But the nuclear industry are not letting facts stand in their way. And they’ve sold themselves to Australia in particular, because of the big uranium deposits here. And it seems it was an easy sell. Dollar signs light up in the eyes of PM John ‘It’s all about the Economy’ Howard, and his pro-nuclear cronies including Foreign Minister Alexander ‘We Know Our Uranium Isn’t Being Used for Bombs’ Downer, Defence Minister Robert ‘Jabiluka Uranium Mine’ Hill and Science Minister Brendan ‘Australia is Open for Business on Uranium Mining’ Nelson.
Australian Activists and citizens have a big task a head of us. With so much bias in government and media on the side of corporations, we need to be the voice of reason and solutions to climate change. If we leave it up to the media to deliver the facts, skewed by PR companies, oil and nuclear lobbyists and profiteers, we won’t survive.
It’s already happening. No climate meeting anywhere goes without grass roots protests and alternative conferences often accompany the biased and selfish money-making decisions of government convened events. The D3 International Day of Action is one of these, timed to provide an alternative to the COP meetings of late November, the common people have had enough of the lies, the bias, and the inaction of governments colluding with rich bastards with vested interests. The vested interests of all of us lie in the survival of the planet and it’s people.
Indymedia have been providing an alternative news forum for activists since the 1999 Seattle protests. This November an international group of media activists have come together to create a forum for sane solutions and critique of the behaviours and policy of governments and corporations on the subject of climate change. Climate Indymedia hope to provide that forum. Climate Indymedia will be launched in support of the D3IDA. If you’re interested in the issue, have been involved in constructive grass roots action or just want to tell your story, visit us at www.climate.indymedia.org
Further Reading:
www.exxonsecrets.org
www.prwatch.org
www.corpwatch.org
Categories: environment | Tags: climate change, corporations, fossil, greenwashing, oil, spin
