RE: [biofuel] Corporate enviros
Keith I apologize if I have insult you. Keith, I was not directing any of this venting towards you directly. All my working life I have worked for only big companies. Not by design, but that is just how it worked out. My working history has been in the maintenance area. I have worked from a repair mechanic position to plant engineering, and everything between.No body wants to poison the air or land that our grand children will be inheriting.Even though I am not an Environmental engineer, I have worked on the outer edges of some of the environmental issues. I have dealt directly with people with wild accusations, and I have become desensitized. I have dealt with some of the following: Chemical dumping into cemented over sewer drains. Disconnected smoke stacks pumping out to much smoke. Too much vibration city blocks away from the plant. All of the parking lot are covering chemical dumpsites, and must be dug-up. Using too much electricity because a personâs air conditioning was not working. And of course the famous the non-existing company helicopter is making to much noise. I have tried to honesty deal with the complaints, but most of the time. It is like talking to a wall. They know the company is doing something wrong. Most of them watch TV news media, and know how Big Companies are always doing something wrong. Why is being big, equals something bad. Big oil, big business, big government. I cannot speak for any company, but most are not as bad as you may perceive them to be. In the future I will finish reading before going off in a direction. Harley [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Corporate enviros
Same old thing - small is beautiful (maybe because it's usually local). ... Meanwhile, the grass-roots environmental groups are starved of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are raised every year by these massive bureaucracies. Over the past two decades, they've turned the environmental movement's grass-roots base of support into little more than a list of donors they hustle for money via direct-mail appeals and telemarketing. Keith Eat the State! Vol. 7, Issue #8 18 dec. 02 NATURE POLITICS Adios, Jay Hair: a Corporate Flunky Passes On On November 15, Jay Hair, former boss of the National Wildlife Federation, died of cancer at the age of 56. The New York Times eulogized Hair as a passionate defender of the environment. But the Times' wistful cruise through Hair's career managed to glide right by his real significance: he established a corporate model for environmentalism that thrives to this day. Whether the Hair approach amounts to a defense of the environment from plunder is another question altogether, a question that Hair himself didn't seem that troubled about. For grassroots greens, Jay Hair came to personify nearly everything that's wrong with the mainstream environmental movement: elitist, PR-driven, politically calculating, and cautious. In fact, Hair helped to shape many of the more odious excesses: the plush offices, obese salaries, and cordial affiliations with big business. Hair was an environmental executive for the go-go 90s. He didn't see unfettered capitalism as a threat, but an opportunity to cash in on the bonanza. Hair perfected the art of environmental triangulation long before Dickie Morris showed up at the backdoor of Bill Clinton's White House with his black bag of trickery. He never lost an opportunity to stab the knife in the back of an environmental group (or idea) that he considered too radical or impolitic--even the middle-of-the-roaders at the Sierra Club got tongue-lashings from Hair, their policies on wilderness and trade publicly ridiculed as unrealistic. Hair was an insider and a powerbroker. Usually, he got entre to politicos such as Al Gore by giving ground. It was the only thing he had to offer. Hair wasn't an organizer. He didn't lead a mass movement of outraged greens. In fact, there's every indication that he despised grassroots environmentalism. He even tried to suppress the independence of the chapters within his own federation, sparking a rebellion of sorts that was put down forcibly by Hair's lieutenants. Hair embraced corporations without question. He stocked his board with corporate honchos from companies with dirty reputations, such as Waste Management. He took their money, greenwashed their crimes, and then often did their bidding on the Hill. His first big moment of betrayal came when he offered to lobby his fellow executives in the DC environmental caucus about the virtues of NAFTA. Not once, but twice. First he hawked the trade pact for Bush, then for Clinton. Unlike many of his colleagues, who operate as adjuncts of the Democratic Party, Hair wasn't a partisan. He worked for whoever was in power and for whoever paid the bills. And they were big bills. Hair believed that if he was going to hang out with corporate execs, he should be paid like them. He was the first environmentalist to crack $200,000 a year in salary and benefits, setting a high bar that others have rushed to match. (When he left NWF in 1995, his salary was $293,000.) He once attended a press conference in DC addressing the issue of global warming. As Hair pontificated about hydrocarbons and SUVs inside, he ordered his chauffeur to keep his limo idling outside the building, with the air conditioner blowing full-blast so that the great man wouldn't break a sweat on the drive back to NWF's lush headquarters. After Hair was finally run out of NWF, he landed in Seattle, where he got a gig doing PR for the Plum Creek Timber Company, a logging outfit so rapacious that a Republican congressman deemed it the Darth Vader of the timber industry. [Editor's note: Plum Creek is notorious for attempting, a few years back, to do a land swap in the Cascades that would have traded heavily-logged private lands for unspoiled public lands with old growth timber. Fortunately, the deal fell through when local, grassroots environmental groups organized against it.] When the great David Brower at age 84 was on the streets of Seattle during the WTO's confab in late 1999, cheering on the protesters and cursing the police, Jay Hair was cashing in whatever remained of his green credentials for hackwork with the World Mining Congress and the World Bank. Gold mining may be the most destructive and toxic industry on the planet, often involving the use of cyanide and other poisons. But that didn't stop Hair from fronting for the elites of Newmont Gold, one of the industry's biggest and nastiest outfits. Mining gold can be a pretty
RE: [biofuel] Corporate enviros
And you wonder why we are skeptical when one of the environmental groups jumps up and down, and wildly pointâs a finger. Without any proof, or even any secret email or two. They condemn a big business, and with the same breath ask for money. Only they can save you from that nasty big business. All big companies had to do something wrong. Right! I getting tired of the damage that these environmental groups are leavening in their wake. I have worked for a few big companies, and maybe I found just the good companies. But the ones I have worked for were constantly accused of wrongdoing. Time and time again the accusations where false. But they never received a sorry about that. It cost money, and a lot of it to stay current with environmental policies. You never hear from any group go out of their way to praise all the good companies out there. I think it is wrong to condem a person or group without any proof. Harley -Original Message- From: Keith Addison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:40 AM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: [biofuel] Corporate enviros Same old thing - small is beautiful (maybe because it's usually local). ... Meanwhile, the grass-roots environmental groups are starved of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are raised every year by these massive bureaucracies. Over the past two decades, they've turned the environmental movement's grass-roots base of support into little more than a list of donors they hustle for money via direct-mail appeals and telemarketing. Keith Eat the State! Vol. 7, Issue #8 18 dec. 02 NATURE POLITICS Adios, Jay Hair: a Corporate Flunky Passes On On November 15, Jay Hair, former boss of the National Wildlife Federation, died of cancer at the age of 56. The New York Times eulogized Hair as a passionate defender of the environment. But the Times' wistful cruise through Hair's career managed to glide right by his real significance: he established a corporate model for environmentalism that thrives to this day. Whether the Hair approach amounts to a defense of the environment from plunder is another question altogether, a question that Hair himself didn't seem that troubled about. For grassroots greens, Jay Hair came to personify nearly everything that's wrong with the mainstream environmental movement: elitist, PR-driven, politically calculating, and cautious. In fact, Hair helped to shape many of the more odious excesses: the plush offices, obese salaries, and cordial affiliations with big business. Hair was an environmental executive for the go-go 90s. He didn't see unfettered capitalism as a threat, but an opportunity to cash in on the bonanza. Hair perfected the art of environmental triangulation long before Dickie Morris showed up at the backdoor of Bill Clinton's White House with his black bag of trickery. He never lost an opportunity to stab the knife in the back of an environmental group (or idea) that he considered too radical or impolitic--even the middle-of-the-roaders at the Sierra Club got tongue-lashings from Hair, their policies on wilderness and trade publicly ridiculed as unrealistic. Hair was an insider and a powerbroker. Usually, he got entre to politicos such as Al Gore by giving ground. It was the only thing he had to offer. Hair wasn't an organizer. He didn't lead a mass movement of outraged greens. In fact, there's every indication that he despised grassroots environmentalism. He even tried to suppress the independence of the chapters within his own federation, sparking a rebellion of sorts that was put down forcibly by Hair's lieutenants. Hair embraced corporations without question. He stocked his board with corporate honchos from companies with dirty reputations, such as Waste Management. He took their money, greenwashed their crimes, and then often did their bidding on the Hill. His first big moment of betrayal came when he offered to lobby his fellow executives in the DC environmental caucus about the virtues of NAFTA. Not once, but twice. First he hawked the trade pact for Bush, then for Clinton. Unlike many of his colleagues, who operate as adjuncts of the Democratic Party, Hair wasn't a partisan. He worked for whoever was in power and for whoever paid the bills. And they were big bills. Hair believed that if he was going to hang out with corporate execs, he should be paid like them. He was the first environmentalist to crack $200,000 a year in salary and benefits, setting a high bar that others have rushed to match. (When he left NWF in 1995, his salary was $293,000.) He once attended a press conference in DC addressing the issue of global warming. As Hair pontificated about hydrocarbons and SUVs inside, he ordered his chauffeur to keep his limo idling outside the building, with the air conditioner blowing full-blast so
RE: [biofuel] Corporate enviros
Harley wrote: And you wonder why we are skeptical You mean me? Seems you missed the first line, and much besides. Anyway, if you mean me, I've often criticized the big enviro groups here, as I just did in posting this message. But I don't dismiss them out of hand like you're doing - while attacking others (maybe me as well?) for dismissing big business out hand, which they don't do, and neither do I. You also completely missed the essential distinction between the big centralized environment groups and small, local ones. There's rather more to the environmental movement than the National Wildlife Federation and its ilk. Did you read the message at all? One major point you seem to have missed is that all the stories I reffed are saying that many of the big enviro groups have become big businesses themselves, and criticizing their chumming up with corporations and doing their greenwashing for them, not attacking them as you say, quite the opposite. So what exactly do you want me (us) to agree to be sceptical about? Seems there's a bit of a disconnect either way. when one of the environmental groups jumps up and down, and wildly pointâs a finger. You're not being just a little emotive, now are you? Have you ever actually seen an environmentalist jumping up and down and wildly pointing a finger, let alone a group doing it? That's the language of prejudice. Without any proof, or even any secret email or two. They condemn a big business, and with the same breath ask for money. Only they can save you from that nasty big business. All big companies had to do something wrong. Right! I have never heard of any environment group saying that or behaving like that. I getting tired of the damage that these environmental groups are leavening in their wake. You really do believe that environmental groups do more damage than the corporations do? And later you talk about proof. Hm. Where's your proof? I have worked for a few big companies, and maybe I found just the good companies. But the ones I have worked for were constantly accused of wrongdoing. Time and time again the accusations where false. According to whom? You mean that's what the management told the staff? Or just the talk round the coffee machine? Or were they actually proven to be wrong accusations, with evidence that the company could take to the media and/or the courts? Big companies do not usually take such false accusations lying down, they very often spend a great deal on their PR image and will protect it from slander, and they have the resources and often the legal departments to do so. Of which the environment groups are not unaware. Apocryphal myths, I think. But they never received a sorry about that. It cost money, and a lot of it to stay current with environmental policies. You never hear from any group go out of their way to praise all the good companies out there. Maybe you're deaf to it. It says exactly that right below, and more of it in the refs I gave. You've demonized the enviro groups and that's that. Constantly, never, any, all... you think life's like that? It's A versus B thinking, the common bipolar disorder. Do yourself a favour and read the thing properly, and the following refs, and give a reasoned response instead of this black-and-white stuff that has no basis. Or not. I think it is wrong to condem a person or group without any proof. No proof? You're certainly very selective with what you see and don't see. These were in my previous message, maybe you're a victim: http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/clear/on_wise/greens.html The War Against The Greens The Wise Use Movement, The New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/clear/players/players.html CLEAR Resources The Enemies of Democracy http://journeytoforever.org/fyi_previous3.html#070701 Quite a lot of this discussion about forests has been on the difference between big, centralized enviro groups and the small, local groups, and also between big, centralized logging companies and small, local companies, as well as the bureacracy's role. I posted this message further to that. You sure missed the point. Never mind. Keith -Original Message- From: Keith Addison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:40 AM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: [biofuel] Corporate enviros Same old thing - small is beautiful (maybe because it's usually local). ... Meanwhile, the grass-roots environmental groups are starved of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are raised every year by these massive bureaucracies. Over the past two decades, they've turned the environmental movement's grass-roots base of support into little more than a list of donors they hustle for money via direct-mail appeals and telemarketing. Keith Eat the State! Vol. 7, Issue #8 18 dec. 02 NATURE POLITICS Adios, Jay Hair: a Corporate Flunky Passes On On November 15
