Viridian Note 00193: Corporate Green Feud

Key concepts

Pew Center, Global Climate Coalition, public feuding, Viridians pulling up chairs and eating popcorn

Attention Conservation Notice: It's really not very seemly of us to gloat in this way.

Links

"The Rise and Fall of the Global Climate Coalition" http://www.worldwatch.org/chairman/issue/000725.html Pew Center on Global Climate Change: http://www.pewclimate.org Global Climate Coalition: http://www.globalclimate.org Greening Earth Society: http://www.greeningearthsociety.org Fredrick D. Palmer's root of all evil (featuring "scientist" Mark Mills!): http://www.fossilfuels.org Self-described "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices": http://www.balancedenergy.org/ The last we Viridians gloated over the GCC's misfortunes: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/00142_gcc_purge.html

(((The Pew Climate people are not Viridian Green or khaki green. They are NGO corporate green. Does this mean they are mere profit-centric greenwashers? An interesting question, but one quickly answered by the stark fact that the Global Climate Coalition fears them and hates their guts.

(((The Pew Center, which hosts 22 corporate powerhouses including BP, Shell and Enron, recently got some glowing, softball coverage in The Economist ("the British poet laureate of the WTO"). The GCC, sensing the challenge to their self-declared turf as "the leading voice for business in the climate debate," leapt swiftly to the counterattack in the magazine's letters page.)))

Source

The Economist, September 9, 02000 (((This would be The Economist's all-too-insightful "Is Oil Poised to Strike?" issue))) page 6

"Clearing the Air

"SIR == Your attempt to liken the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change to the Global Climate Coalition is like trying to compare apples and oranges. (((More accurately, it's like comparing an apple to a lump of coal.))) The Pew Centre has no membership dues and consists of 22 corporate members. The GCC is supportedly broadly by a cross-section of dues-paying American business groups and recently expanded to represent collectively over 6m large, medium and small businesses. (((What an amazing bold lie! The GCC is, of course, losing sponsorship right and left, as we have repeatedly detailed in Viridian Notes 126, 140, 144, 148, etc. The GCC's bald deceit takes your breath away both literally and figuratively.)))

"It also seems that the Pew Centre has actually decided that the GCC's long-held positions on the Kyoto treaty on global warming were right all along. Recently, the Pew Centre's executive director called for renegotiating the treaty because it is unworkable, as well as urging countries to 'go slow and do it right.' (((Of course they both hate Kyoto. That's a given: they're both corporate. The basic disagreement between GCC and Pew is that one is perfectly willing to fry the other's children in the reckless pursuit of cash.)))

"For years, the leaders we represent have remained at the forefront of research, design (((yes, just like us, the Global Climate Coalition is really a design movement))) development and deployment of the new technologies and voluntary actions that are already addressing the issue of greenhouse gas (((the GCC bottom line == we want much, much more greenhouse gas))) without massive mandated energy reductions. (((Short of European truckers on blockade, it's hard to find anybody in favor of "massive mandated energy reductions.")))

"The GCC will continue to play a central role in advancing common-sense solutions to climate policy." (((Three lies in a single sentence == no advance, no solution and no center! I gotta grant that the GCC has "policy," however == they'll always fire a wad of soft- money at anything that rises up over the parapet.)))

"Glenn Kelly, Executive Director GCC, Washington DC"

(((It's long been the Viridian Theory that the Global Climate Coalition, which has covered itself with Lysenko- style lies and ignominy, will eventually disband and start a new, fully-sanitized front. All their usual political operatives will be quietly re-employed, but their tactics will shift from straight-out greenhouse denial to new approaches such as "oilimony" and "carbon amnesty." These tactics basically parallel those of the tobacco industry and their lobbyists == "Tobacco won't hurt you; pay us to stop making it; don't blame us for that cancer."

(((This month has seen the sudden and remarkably well- financed arrival of a mysterious new entity calling itself "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices." This enterprise is run from a post-office box in Virginia and owns the website www.balancedpower.org. We'll call them "Balanced Power" for the time being, since they're clearly engaged in a serious power-struggle, and, besides, "Energy Choices" is a ridiculous name for them since they offer no choice but coal.

(((Balanced Power, very interestingly, is using their obviously very considerable funds to stalk and pre-empt the new BP "Beyond Petroleum" campaign. (BP is a Pew Centre supporter, and probably the world's loudest and richest corporate-green entity.) Whenever the computer- animated BP "Helios" ad appears, Balanced Power inserts a greenwash sunshine-and-daisy counter-ad, asserting that electricity from coal is a wonderful, life-giving thing.

(((The Balanced Power website has no data at all about who they are, where they come from, and who finances them, other than a post-office box in Virginia. However, there are clever Viridians around who might figure them out, if they could spare the attention. (For instance, our recent ability to spot utterly obscure, teenage Dutch fascists was really impressive.) We Viridians are therefore ardently looking for the coal-smoking gun that links this mysterious "Balanced Power" entity to (1) Global Climate Coalition, (2) Greening Earth Society, and last but by far most likely, (3) Fredrick Palmer of Western Fuels Corp, "the Andrew Carnegie of Climate Denial."

(((Please send in your evidence, enlighten the rest of us, and receive a lovely Viridian star!)))