Hi Chris
hi, keith.
i have my own 'issues' with the big enviro groups.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/projects/environment/index02.html
Environment, Inc.
http://counterpunch.org/donnelly05242005.html
Michael Donnelly:
May 24, 2005
Behind the Green(back) Curtain
http://counterpunch.org/donnelly05102005.html
Michael Donnelly: From Roadless to Clueless
May 10, 2005
From Roadless to Clueless...
The Great Stillborn Eco-Victory
From John Stauber:
"Big environmental organizations, socially responsible investment
funds, and other groups perpetuate the myth that if we just write
checks to them, they'll heal the environment, reform the corrupt
campaign-finance system, protect our freedom of speech, and reign in
corporate power. This is a dangerous falsehood, because it implies
that we don't have to sweat and struggle to make democracy work. It's
so much easier to write a check for twenty-five or fifty dollars than
it is to integrate our concerns about critical issues into our daily
lives and organize with our neighbors for democracy.
"Many so-called public-interest organizations have become big
businesses, multinational nonprofit corporations. The PR industry
knows this and exploits it well with the type of co-optation
strategies that Duchin recommends. ...
"E. Bruce Harrison, one of the most effective public-relations
practitioners in the business, knows that all too well. He's made a
lucrative career out of helping polluting companies defeat
environmental regulations while simultaneously giving the companies a
"green" public image. In the industry, they call him the "Dean of
Green." As a longtime opponent of the environmental movement,
Harrison has developed some interesting insights into its failures.
He says, "The environmental movement is dead. It really died in the
last fifteen years, from success." I think he's correct. What he
means is that, in the eighties and nineties, environmentalism became
a big business, and organizations like the Audubon Society, the
Wilderness Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the
Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council
became competing multi-million-dollar bureaucracies. These
organizations, Harrison says, seem much more interested in "the
business of greening" than in fighting for fundamental social change.
He points out, for instance, that the Environmental Defense Fund
(whose executive director makes a quarter of a million dollars a
year) sat down and cut a deal with McDonald's that was probably worth
hundreds of millions of dollars in publicity to the fast-food giant,
because it helped to "greenwash" its public image.
"After years of being hammered by grass-roots environmentalists for
everything from deforestation to inhumane farming practices to
contributing to a throwaway culture, McDonald's finally relented on
something: it did away with its styrofoam clamshell hamburger
containers. But before the company did this, it entered into a
partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund and gave that group
credit for the change. Both sides "won" in the ensuing PR lovefest.
McDonald's took one little step in response to grass-roots activists,
and the Environmental Defense Fund claimed a major victory.
"Another problem is that big green groups have virtually no
accountability to the many thousands of individuals who provide them
with money. 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.
It's getting even worse, because now corporations are directly
funding groups like the Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, and
the National Wildlife Federation. Corporate executives now sit on the
boards of some of these groups. PR executive Leslie Dach, for
instance, of the rabidly anti-environmental Edelman PR firm, is on
the Audubon Society's board of directors. Meanwhile, his PR firm has
helped lead the "wise use" assault on environmental regulation."...
-- WAR ON TRUTH The Secret Battle for the American Mind An Interview
with John Stauber
http://www.whale.to/m/stauber.html
He's right, as usual, but as I said, you can't paint it with such a
broad brush, you have to take it case-by-case.
but i have been quite
impressed with one group as i learn more about them. that would be
'the nature
conservancy'. (although, i should point out there was some sort of unsavory
business a few years back wherein certain members of their board profited in
some way from a particular land set-aside; but i gather they instituted more
rigorous auditing/oversight procedures as a result).
i bring this up because i wondered, have there been any critiques of this
group?
I'm glad you like them. I don't know much about them. There are some
snippets in the archives, none of them very good:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg29713.html
[biofuel] Road to ruin
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg50746.html
[biofuels-biz] Blood, Oil, Guns And Bullets
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30881.html
[biofuel] The Troubled Marriage of Environmentalists and Oil Companies
Best wishes
Keith
-chris b.
In a message dated 7/6/05 9:45:21 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< We don't hold any brief for the big environment groups and we've said
so quite often. >>
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