Rainforest Action Network Expands Misleading Greenwashing of Primary Forest Logging

EI PRESS/SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASE
Rainforest Action Network Expands Misleading Greenwashing of Primary Forest Logging

RAN’s recent “rainforest safe” book and luxury shopping bag campaigns show they value greenwashing primary forest logging and sustaining old growth timber markets more than ecological science showing without primary forest logging ban biosphere collapses. Ecological Internet renews demand that RAN stops promoting primary forest logging as a false solution to rainforest loss and diminishment, and resigns from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) immediately.

June 12, 2010
Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry

Despite escalating international protest, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) continues to promote Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of first time industrial logging of primary forests. RAN’s new “Rainforest Safe Summer Reading List” [1] and “Gucci Shopping Bag” [2] campaigns falsely claim FSC certified paper products are free of rainforest destruction. In fact, most FSC products come from the first time industrial logging of primary forests or from toxic, industrial monoculture plantations which displace old forests. Virtually all of FSC’s tropical timbers and fibers come from such sources.

“The world’s rainforests, biodiversity, ecosystems, climate and biosphere are in a state of severe crisis and are collapsing; and the best Rainforest Action Network can do is continue lying regarding where FSC certified products come from, and shilling for primary forest books and shopping bags? As America’s largest rainforest protection group, RAN raises and expends more monies on behalf of rainforests than any organization, yet continues to insist FSC logging of primary forests ‘protects’ rainforests. This old forest logging appeasement will continue to be challenged by biocentric ecologists. Unless this NGO greenwash ends, and we join forces to end primary forest logging, the future of Earth and all life are at stake,” states Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet President.

After years of protest against RAN’s support of FSC, and several broken promises to address the matter, RAN is still unable to answer the question of how logging 500 year old trees in millions of year old ecosystem – in this case for children’s books and high-end Gucci shopping bags – meaningfully protects rainforests. RAN’s “market campaigns” completely miss the point that over-consumption in general and paper in particular is the problem. Having co-founded, been long-time active members, and being one of the leading radical supporters of FSC; RAN and FSC are unable or unwilling to state publicly the exact percentage or even an approximation of FSC certified products which come from primary and old growth forest loss and severe ecological diminishment when selectively logged for the first time.

“With FSC having certified over 133 million hectares, Ecological Internet stands by our analysis – using the national certification figures, the only information FSC provides on the matter, and what is known about forestry practices in each country – to estimate 60% of FSC timber comes from first time industrial primary forest logging. This means that FSC and RAN’s past and planned certification is destroying for throw-away consumption an area two times the massive state of Texas,” says Dr. Barry.

“This is greenwash of an unmatched immensity, and all RAN (and Greenpeace [3]) supporters are responsible for this destruction of the last primary forests to make Gucci bags, books and toilet paper. Ecological Internet understands this campaign makes some conservationists feel uneasy, yet this is ecological skullduggery of unimagined magnitude. This behavior by any other segment of society would be held to account as well. All environmental groups – and their members and donors – supporting FSC primary forest logging must stop their policy of promoting logging of 500 year old trees for throw away consumer items.”

### MORE ###

Primary rainforests have tremendous species numbers, carbon stores and provide ecosystem services – water, nutrient and energy cycling – required for a habitable Earth. When primary rainforests are lost or diminished through first time industrial harvest – be it outright deforestation or ‘selective’ first time logging – local ecological and social conditions deteriorate, regional weather and species distributions change, and the global biosphere and its ability to maintain conditions for life are weakened. Recent ecological science makes clear old forests continue to sequester new carbon, and that selectively logging primary forests leads to more forest fires.

All global ecological indicators show Earth and humanity have surpassed the amount of primary, old growth and other intact terrestrial ecosystems that can be lost and still maintain a habitable planet. RAN’s lack of primary forest protection vision and minor market campaign tinkering would be laughable if it wasn’t greenwashing industrial primary forest logging of the ecosystems necessary for humanity’s shared survival. These books and shopping bags promoted by RAN are likely from clearcut FSC certified primary boreal forests, or from industrial tropical tree plantations displacing native forests and peoples.

### ENDS ###

Please join Ecological Internet’s campaign to get “Greenpeace and RAN Out of FSC Primary Forest Logging Now!” on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/oldforests and Ecological Internet at http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet

[1] RAN’s “Rainforest Safe Summer Reading List” – http://ran.org/content/rainforest-safe-summer-reading-list . Falsely states” “FSC certified or recycled paper [allows] parents the assurance of knowing that their childrens’ books are not contributing to the loss of Indonesia’s or other endangered rainforests.”

[2] “Gucci’s Luxury Packaging Gets a Green(er) Makeover” http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/gucci-luxury-packaging-gets-a-greener-makeover.php

[3] “RELEASE: Greenpeace Partners with Industry Logging Canadian Boreal Forests”
http://forests.org/blog/2010/05/release-greenpeace-partners-wi.asp

DISCUSS THIS RELEASE: http://www.rainforestportal.org/blog/ and http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet

In response Johann Hari’s the ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’

The Nation

In response Johann Hari’s the ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’

04/07/2010 – 11:51

I would like to echo Professor Brulle’s commendation of Hari’s article and also suggest a few modifications of his excellent overview of the current state of professionalized "environmental" organizations in the United States and what we must do to mobilize for scientifically sound and equitable climate policy.

First, even groups that Professor Brulle would seem to approve of–RAN and Greenpeace–have been supporting "politically realistic" as opposed to grassroots and scientifically necessary policies and practices. Witness their support for the Forest Stewardship Council, a disastrous industry/environmental movement partnership that allows industrial logging of old growth forests under the guise of market incentives for "well-managed" forests (see FSC Watch); also consider the consideration to hire Tzeporah Berman as the climate policy director–above and despite the desires of and without consultation with the many grassroots environmental organizations in Canada whose advocacy has been excluded and sidelined by Berman’s corporate-friendly model of secret deal-making (see "Stop Tzeporah Berman").

Second, one need only look at the role of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute as founding members of the United States Climate Action Partnership to recognize that more will need to be done for us to "help the general public to connect the dots between personal, local concerns and the dramatic, global threats." These corporate environmental organizations (with many conflicts of interests on their polluter-friendly boards of directors) worked shoulder to shoulder with the worst polluters (hydrocarbon industry, nuclear corporations pushing a nuclear renaissance and banks investing in the carbon-trading sham) in drafting a blueprint for what would have been a catastrophic piece of legislation (the Waxman-Markey bill).

See for yourself. Here are the members of USCAP.

These large "environmental" membership outfits who have lobbied (and continue to do so) for US climate legislation with unsound targets and timetables for reductions of atmospheric GHG, continued use of coal for the foreseeable future and new nuclear plants have combined budgets that allow them to drown out the voice of science, the environment and grassroots groups pushing for what is needed. The USCAP is pushing for 450-550 ppm, when the science tells us that 300 ppm is the outer limit at which the climate might be stabilized; they declare the coal should be part of the US energy mix for the foreseeable future; and they are pushing pie-in-the-sky nuclear technology that would take decades to implement.

Environmentalists can’t allow these organizations’ self-serving misrepresentation of the environment, combined with the fear and urgency that many of us feel about the future of our planet, to trump science and ethics by promoting false solutions in US climate policy.

The website of the Mobilization for Climate Justice has a useful page exposing many of the conflicts of the Board of Directors of just one of these organizations: the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Responsible environmental advocacy based in science (let alone ethics) would suggest to most environmentalists that we should not gamble on the future viability of entire ecosystems, biodiversity or life on the planet for human civilization by letting the loud voices of these compromised organizations remain unchallenged.

Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity has their number. As he says in Hari’s excellent piece, these organizations "have no bottom line, no interest in scientifically defensible greenhouse gas emission limitations and no willingness to pressure the White House or Congress."

We must not only connect the dots between personal issues and global threats, as Professor Brulle suggests, but also challenge these organizations publicly–at their fundraisers and events–to expose them and educate and mobilize their well-meaning members to the anti-environmental positions for which they lobby.

Only then will we be able to shape climate policy (in the United States and the world) within a new political reality, instead of conceding the powerful battle field of the US Congress and administration to these organizations without censure.

Because, as we know, as goes the US, so goes the planet.

Robert Jereski

New York, NY

04/07/2010 – 11:51

http://www.thenation.com/web-letters/24831

GREENWASHING | Analysis of Boreal Forest Agreement Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Forest Ethics

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/images/3455

FOREST RELEASE: Greenpeace Partners with Industry Logging Canadian Boreal Forests

EI PRESS/SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASE

Greenpeace Partners with Industry Logging Canadian Boreal Forests

Along with ForestEthics and other foundation-dependent primary forest logging apologists, Greenpeace negotiates weak agreement that legitimizes continued old growth forest logging in exchange for vague promises of possible future protections. Old forest greenwashing must end.

May 21, 2010

Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry

(Canada) – In what they gratuitously herald as the ‘world’s largest conservation agreement’, twenty Canadian forestry companies and nine environmental organizations including Greenpeace has announced an agreement that will temporarily suspend for three years any new logging in 29 million hectares of forest – about the size of Montana – to plan for possible protections of woodland caribou. In return the nine environmental groups have vowed to stop protesting the companies involved (listed below), including ending their ‘Do Not Buy’ campaigns.

More troubling, the agreement provides much needed legitimacy to timber and pulp industry efforts to log much, if not all, of the remaining 43 million hectares of Canada’s old growth Boreal forests, and ultimately much of the caribou habitat after the moratorium lapses. The agreement uses fancy, meaningless worlds like “ecosystem-based” and “sustainable forest management” to describe first time industrial logging of primary forests for toilet paper and other throw-away consumer items.

Ecological Internet (EI) President, Dr. Glen Barry, labeled the agreement “disgraceful”, saying it “traded temporary, vague protections for business as usual industrial forestry across huge expanses of primary and old growth forests.” Ecological Internet advocates a global permanent ban on industrial-scale logging in primary forests both in temperate and tropical forests, and will continue the campaign to end these practices in Canada’s ecologically priceless Boreal forests.

“Greenpeace’s commitment to ‘sustainable’ and ‘ecosystem based’ forest management—for consumer items including toilet paper and lawn furniture from old forests—is an ecological crime, as we know we have already lost more primary forests than necessary to maintain global ecosystems and the biosphere. The agreement accepts not only FSC, but industry’s own certification of antiquated logging practices. This will not stand, and local communities, provincial governments and First Nations are encouraged to reject this forest greenwash.”

### MORE ###

The Canadian Boreal Forest is North America’s largest primary forest, holding massive amounts of water, threatened wildlife and migratory birds, and containing 25% of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests. It is also the largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon on the planet, storing the equivalent of 27 years worth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Globally 60% of boreal forests have been diminished and fragmented, largely from logging resulting in more fires.

Ecological Internet and allies vigorously condemn Greenpeace Canada’s greenwash endorsement of continued ancient boreal forest logging, largely to make throw away paper items. They completely fail to understand that all primary and old growth forests are endangered and of high conservation value. Instead they perpetuate the ecologically criminal myth that old forests can and should be industrially logged for the first time in an environmentally acceptable manner.

Old forests must be protected and restored for global ecological sustainability. Forests logged industrially for the first time are permanently ecologically damaged in terms of composition, structure, function and dynamics. Real solutions to the Boreal forest/paper crisis require shrinking demand, increasing recyclables, and only accessing new fiber from regenerating secondary forests and mixed species, non-toxic, locally supported plantations.

EI calls upon Greenpeace to immediately cease and desist globally from negotiating agreements with industry that continue the production of throw away consumer items from Earth’s dwindling old forests. Ecological Internet calls upon Greenpeace to work for full protection of primary forests, restoration of old growth forests, and dramatic reduction in paper and timber use globally. Ecological Internet’s message remains end primary forest logging. Expect further protest urging Greenpeace to realize the forest protection movement has moved past claims of sustainable forest management in primary and old growth forests.

### ENDS ###

Environmental organization that signed to the agreement include: Canadian Boreal Initiative, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Canopy (formerly Markets Initiative), the David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics, Greenpeace, Ivey Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

The companies that signed the agreement include: AbitibiBowater, Alberta Pacific Forest Industries, AV Group, Canfor, Cariboo Pulp & Paper Company, Cascades Inc., DMI, F.F. Soucy, Inc., Howe Sound Pulp and Paper, Kruger Inc., LP Canada, Mercer International, Mill & Timber Products Ltd, NewPage Port Hawkesbury Ltd, Paper Masson Ltee, SFK Pulp, Tembec Inc., Tolko Industries, West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd, Weyerhauser Compnay Limited?all represented by the Forest Products Association of Canada.

DISCUSS THIS ALERT: http://forests.org/blog/ and http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet

LEAKED DOCUMENT: Greenpeace, ENGO’s, Foundations cutting secret deals, greenwashing all forestry

Read the leaked document here:

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/sites/mediacoop.ca/files2/mc/CBF_leak.pdf

Greenpeace, ENGO’s, Foundations cutting secret deals, greenwashing all forestry

The key quote in this article is here:

A spokesperson for Greenpeace said: “There is no agreement, but we will let you know when there is an agreement.”

MS: Who gave them such authority? How on earth can they claim that the public– or even their own sustainers– gave them such a mandate? How can this possibly be a positive bent, when it essentially has the PR gain for industry of being “green” right when we should be ramping UP the fight against what is happening to our forests?

Does anyone have a shred of an idea as to what democracy is? Will those in Greenpeace who oppose this kind of backroom deal, greenwashing garbage actually stand for what is right?

We need help from GP activists and employees to stop this nonsense, and we need it NOW. Stand up and be counted, those of you with a conscience! We need you! The forests need you!

–M

http://oilsandstruth.org/greenpeace-engo039s-foundations-cutting-secret-deals-greenwashing-all-forestry

Canada’s Boreal Forest Conflicts Far From Over

Mainstream enviros, timber industry shut First Nations out of “historic” deal

http://climatevoices.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/boreal-forest-conflicts-far-from-over/

Tree-huggers and loggers bury hatchet

will manage woods together Canadian forest products can bask in glow of new-found eco-approval

By CASSIDY OLIVIER, Canwest News Service
May 14, 2010

A truce appears to be at hand in the long-running war in the woods.

Canada’s largest forest firms and most outspoken environmental groups are in the final stages of a precedent-setting deal to co-operatively manage a massive swath of boreal forest that has sections in Quebec, Alberta and, to a lesser extent, British Columbia.

The initial three-year deal will effectively freeze all logging in selected regions in exchange for a halt to international marketing campaigns against Canadian products by environmental groups such as Greenpeace.

Environmentalists also would give their green stamp of approval to Canada’s logging practices.

The land in question is an estimated 70 million hectares of boreal forest.

The land mass equals the total amount of forest lost globally between 1990 and 2005.

Sources close to the landmark talks say the Forest Products Association of Canada, whose members are responsible for 66 per cent of certified forest lands in the country, are in negotiations with senior members of environmental groups with the aim of reaching a deal by the end of the month.

Association members include Cariboo Pulp & Paper Company, Tolko Industries Ltd., Weyerhaeuser, Howe Sound Pulp and Paper Ltd. Partnership, and Kruger Inc.

Canwest News Service has learned a draft agreement is expected to be voted on today, the result of which is expected to set a blueprint for a green revolution in the country.

If passed, the deal would effectively bring to an end the battles in forests that have raged in parts of the country since the late 1980s.

It also could boost the attractiveness of Canadian products on the global market, as they bask in the glow of new-found eco-approval.

Sources said logging companies will stay out of the protected areas in exchange for environmental groups embracing logging practices in other areas.

The environmental groups also will gain access to caribou habitat for study as part of the deal, which will include large sections of forest in Alberta and Quebec, sources said.

The Forest Products Association of Canada declined to offer details of the pending deal other than to confirm talks were under way.

“There are currently talks under way related to numerous complex areas of mutual interest between forest-industry companies and a number of environmental non-governmental organizations,” the association said in a statement.

“We hope to have a joint statement in this regard within the next two weeks.”

Bruce Lourie, president of the Ivey Foundation, a Toronto-based charitable foundation that offers funding to conservation groups, said he was unable to discuss details of the talks.

He did, however, confirm conversations were under way. “We are really not supposed to be talking about it in any detail,” he said. “If all goes well, it will be a positive outcome for forest conservation.”

A spokesperson for Greenpeace said: “There is no agreement, but we will let you know when there is an agreement.”
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

http://oilsandstruth.org/greenpeace-engo039s-foundations-cutting-secret-deals-greenwashing-all-forestry

Earth Day, Paying Dues and Shades of Green

Published on Thursday, April 22, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Earth Day, Paying Dues and Shades of Green

by Rachel Smolker

It’s Earth Day and oh how my heart aches.

Yesterday it came to my attention that Environmental Defense Fund, an organization my own father cofounded, is supporting the construction of several new coal plants in Texas! Environmental Defense is supposed to Defend the Environment as I understood it. Haven’t they heard James Hansen the climate scientist repeating ad nauseum his message that eliminating coal is the single most important step we can take to address global warming? Did they fail to even notice the noisy protest outside EPA offices a week or two ago, demanding that Lisa Jackson see firsthand the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining in Southern Appalachia that has resulted in clear-cutting thousands of acres of some of the world’s most biologically diverse forests, burying crucial headwaters streams (nearly 2000 miles already) and contaminating the groundwater with lead and mercury?

EDF’s Jim Marsten reassures us that these new coal plants will be “models” of “green-ness” because they will capture the CO2. Oh good…. Then they are going to use that CO2 for “enhanced oil recovery” — pumping it into nearby oil wells to create pressure that will push the last stubborn bits of oil out.

Hmmmm… burning coal and capturing the emissions to get more oil out of wells… Is that good for the environment, or a little less bad, or perhaps worse?

The plants will also waste less water. That’s good, I think.

But instead of using water to cool the plants, they will use fans run off electricity, which will require more coal burning.

They will also have to burn more coal because it turns out that capturing carbon and pumping it into the oil wells, requires a lot of energy.

So after we burn more coal in order to capture the carbon and cool the plant, what will happen to the more CO2 after it is pumped into the ground to squeeze out more oil? Will it leak out of the wells and into the sky in the end there to mingle with the CO2 from all the other coal burning, and enhanced oil recovery to wreak further havoc on earth? The Greenpeace report “False Hope” says CCS is unproven (a few demonstrations but not likely ready until 2030 at earliest), expensive (nearly doubling plant costs), energy intensive (using 10-40% of the energy produced), risky (CO2 could well leak out slowly or abruptly with severe consequences for human and ecosystem health and climate).

It’s hard to figure how EDF considers this a “victory” for the environment. Maybe board member Stanley Druckenmiller can explain it for us — he knows a few things about coal, what with 200 million shares in Massey Energy.

Massey Energy. They own the mine that exploded a week ago, killing 29 miners and they are responsible for blasting in Coal River next to the Brushy Fork impoundment containing 8.2 billion gallons of toxic slurry waste that, if it were to break, would obliterate an entire community. Somehow EDF’s Earth Day “victory” just doesn’t feel very inspirational. I think I can hear my father rolling over in his grave again.

Johann Hari’s recent piece in The Nation spelled out how the big greens have either prostituted themselves to corporate foundation funders, or become so paralyzed by the constraints on political feasibility within the DC beltway culture (again, a construct of corporate influence), that they have been rendered inert. Hari’s piece was followed by another recent article in Common Dreams by Gary Houser, who passionately implores the big greens to regrow their spines and actually BE green. Maybe that’s possible…

Or maybe it’s up to us once again. Just as the failure of Copenhagen stimulated the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, going on now in Bolivia, perhaps we can light the fires of an alternative environmental movement in the U.S.. Real environmental groups abound — groups like Indigenous Environmental Network, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, WEACT, Energy Justice Network, Global Justice Ecology Project, Rising Tide and a host of others don’t have the big bucks, nor the “ties that bind” that come along with corporate sponsorship. Nor do they have the Big Green “branding” and name recognition. What they have is the guts and integrity to fight for what is right and to know green when they see it.

I know where my membership dues will go!

Let’s hope next Earth Day offers real reasons to celebrate.

Rachel Smolker is codirector of Biofuelwatch, and an organizer with Climate SOS. She has a Ph.D. in behavioral ecology from the University of Michigan and worked as a field biologist before turning to activism. She is the daughter of Environmental Defense Fund cofounder, Robert Smolker, and she engaged in direct action at EDF offices to oppose their advocacy for carbon trade. She has written on the topic of bioenergy, carbon trade and climate justice. She was arrested protesting outside the Chicago Climate Exchange in November as part of the Mobilization for Climate Justice day of actions, which she wrote about for CommonDreams.org.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/22-10

With Climate Chaos on the Horizon, the Environmental Movement Needs Traction

Published on Thursday, April 22, 2010 by The Indypendent (New York)

Reclaiming Earth Day: With Climate Chaos on the Horizon, the Environmental Movement Needs Traction

by Brian Tokar

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day April 22, many seasoned environmentalists are left wondering how, in recent decades, so little has actually been accomplished.

As we celebrate, or contemplate Earth Day, we should remember the ‘central element of what has made environmentalism such a compelling counter-hegemonic worldview ever since the 1970s: The promise that reorienting societies toward a renewed harmony with nature can help spur a revolutionary transformation of our world.'(Image: Gino Barzizza)

While environmental awareness has seeped into mainstream U.S. society since the 1970s — the era when 20 million people hit the streets on Earth Day to demand action — the structures of power remain largely the same. The mass mobilizations around the original Earth Day helped spur then-President Richard Nixon to sign a series of ambitious environmental laws that helped to clean contaminated waterways, saved the bald eagle from the ravages of pesticides and began to clear the air, which in the early 1960s was so polluted that people were passing out in cities across the country. Most environmental victories since then have benefited from those changes in the law, but more fundamental changes seem as distant as ever.

Today’s environmental movement is floundering, even though the stakes are even higher. While local grassroots environmental campaigns continue, the bestknown national organizations can point to few recent victories. And they have failed to demonstrate meaningful leadership around what climatologist James Hansen calls the “predominant moral issue of this century”: the struggle to prevent the catastrophic and irreversible warming of the planet.

As British journalist Johann Hari reported in The Nation in his “The Wrong Kind of Green” in March, this is partly the result of a legacy of corporate-styled environmental organizations teaming up with the world’s most polluting companies.

In response to the climate crisis, we have seen unprecedented collaboration between large environmental organizations and corporations seeking to profit from new environmental legislation. For example, the Climate Action Partnership (known as USCAP) has brought Alcoa, DuPont, General Electric and General Motors together with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy to push for the “market-based” approach to climate legislation known as “cap-and-trade.” This policy would put a cap on the total amount of pollution, then allow businesses limiting their carbon dioxide emissions to sell “permits to pollute” to dirtier companies. This would create a vast, highly speculative market in carbon credits and offsets, with gigantic perks for corporations and little benefit for the planet.

It begs the question — where has the environmental movement gone wrong?

THE FIRST EARTH DAY

It turns out that the original Earth Day on April 22, 1970, was initially a staged event. Politicians like Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) and Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA) took the lead in crafting the first Earth Day celebration that unexpectedly brought millions of people out around the country. The events, however, were supported by establishment institutions like the Conservation Foundation, a corporate think tank founded by Laurance Rockefeller in 1948. Nixon even began the year with a proclamation saying that the 1970s would be the “environmental decade.”

Anti-Vietnam War activists argued that Earth Day (originally the Environmental Teach-In) became a devious attempt to divert national attention away from the war and from efforts to raise awareness of the common causes of war, poverty and environmental destruction. An editorial in Ramparts, the most prominent activist journal of the period, described Earth Day as, “the first step in a con game that will do little more than abuse the environment even further.”

The April 1970 Ramparts featured a striking exposé on “The Eco-Establishment,” which focused on the corporate think tanks that were helping to shape the emerging environmental legislation. “[T]oday’s big business conservation,” Ramparts editorialized, “is not interested in preserving the earth; it is rationally reorganizing for a more efficient rape of resources.”

Journalist I.F. Stone wrote in his famous investigative weekly, “[J]ust as the Caesars once used bread and circuses, so ours were at last learning to use rock-and-roll idealism and non-inflammatory social issues to turn the youth off from more urgent concerns which might really threaten the power structure.”

To everyone’s surprise, Earth Day turned out to be the largest outpouring of public sentiment on any political issue to date. It drew public attention to environmentalism as a social movement in its own right. And it set the stage to pressure Congress to pass 15 major national environmental laws over a 10-year period and establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A RUSH OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

The origin of those 1970s environmental laws also has an underappreciated back story. Throughout the 1960s, people were responding with horror to the increasingly visible effects of smog, oil spills, pesticide contamination and other environmental assaults. Local governments responded by implementing their own, sometimes farreaching programs of environmental monitoring and enforcement. Creative environmental lawsuits established important and unanticipated precedents.

This proved costly for business, and corporate interests came to view federal intervention as a possible solution. “[T]he elite of business leadership,” reported Fortune magazine on the eve of Earth Day in 1970, “strongly desire the federal government to step in, set the standards, regulate all activities pertaining to the environment, and help finance the job with tax incentives.”

Far from an interference with business prerogatives, environmental regulation by the federal government became a way to allay public concerns while offering corporate America a menu of uniform and predictable environmental rules. The new federal rules often preempted states and localities from enforcing regulations more stringent than those advanced at the national level.

Just a decade later, President Ronald Reagan packed the new regulatory agencies’ staffs with corporate hacks who were openly hostile to their agencies’ missions. (President George W. Bush replicated this strategy in the early 2000s.) Reagan’s first EPA administrator resigned after two years in office, facing charges of contempt of Congress after replacing the agency’s senior staff with officials from companies like General Motors and Exxon and mercilessly slashing the budget. Reagan’s cartoonish Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, “introduced policies aimed at transferring control of public lands and resources to private entrepreneurs at a rate that had not been seen since the great giveaways of the 19th century,” according to former New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS QUO

Meanwhile, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, representatives of the largest national environmental groups became an increasingly visible and entrenched part of the Washington political scene. As the appearance of success within the system grew, organizations from the National Wildlife Federation to the Natural Resources Defense Council restructured and changed personnel so as to more effectively play the insider game. Large environmental groups worked to sustain the smooth functioning of the system, rather than challenge it. The Sierra Club grew from 80,000 to 630,000 members during the 1980s, and the conservative National Wildlife Federation reported membership gains of up to 8,000 a month, totaling nearly a million. The total budget of the 10 largest environmental groups grew from less than $10 million in 1965 to $218 million in 1985 and $514 million in 1990. Those advocating a more corporate-style or-ganizational model invariably won internal battles within the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and even Greenpeace. They increasingly avoided issues and tactics that might prove alienating to wealthy donors. By the early 1990s, even the thoroughly mainstream former editor of Audubon magazine would lament that “naturalists have been replaced by ecocrats who are more comfortable on Capitol Hill than in the woods, fields, meadows, mountains and swamps.”

Environmental groups also began their flirtation with corporate sponsorships, so aptly summarized by Hari in The Nation. In the lead-up to the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, activists (including this author) revealed ties between groups such as the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, and a rogue’s gallery of major oil, chemical, utility and banking corporations.

THE RISE OF GREEN CONSUMERISM

By 1990, everyone seemed to want to be an environmentalist. President George H. W. Bush proclaimed himself a defender of the environment and briefly aimed to distance himself from the anti-environmental excesses of the Reagan years by adopting the first national cap-and-trade system to address the problem of acid rain. Sen. Al Gore (D-TN), the 1988 presidential primary campaign’s leading Democratic war hawk, began speaking out about global warming and other environmental threats. Britain’s reactionary Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called herself a “green.” Even the president of the World Bank won praise from environmental publications for voicing concerns about the bank’s role in environmental destruction. The Environmental Defense Fund led the way in pushing for a more aggressively “market-oriented” approach to environmental policy.

So, it was not a huge surprise when the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990 became the coming-out party for a more overtly corporate brand of environmentalism. Earth Day celebrations became a virtual extravaganza of corporate hype, and “green consumerism” was the order of the day. The official overriding message was simply “change your lifestyle,” by recycling, driving less and buying green products. And while the national Earth Day organization turned down some $4 million in corporate donations that did not meet its rather “flexible” criteria, celebrations in several major U.S. cities were supported by notorious polluters such as Monsanto, Peabody Coal and Georgia Power. Corporations “greenwashed” their image, from the nuclear-power industry to the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association, by purchasing full-page advertisements proclaiming that, for them, “Every day is Earth Day.”

Some activists responded by organizing local Earth Day anniversaries of their own, focusing on local environmental struggles, urban issues, the nature of corporate power and a host of other problems that were systematically excluded from most official Earth Day events. Left Greens and Youth Greens in the Northeast initiated a call to shut down Wall Street the Monday following Earth Day and were joined by environmental justice activists, radical Earth First! organizers, ecofeminists, New York City squatters and many others. In the early morning of April 23, just after millions had participated in polite, feel-good Earth Day commemorations all across the country, hundreds converged on the New York Stock Exchange with the goal of obstructing the opening of trading on that day. Journalist Juan González, in his Daily News column, decried the weekend’s “embalming and fire sale of Earth Day,” and told his 1.2 million readers, “Certainly, those who sought to co-opt Earth Day into a media and marketing extravaganza, to make the public feel good while obscuring the corporate root of the Earth’s pollution, almost succeeded.”

The 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action reflected the flowering of grassroots environmental activity that had emerged throughout the 1980s, partly in response to the compromises of the big environmental groups. The popular response to toxic chemical pollution — launched by the mothers of sick children living near the severely polluted Love Canal in New York — grew into a nationwide environmental justice movement that exposed the disproportionate exposure of communities of color to toxic hazards. During the lead-up to Earth Day 1990, a hundred environmental justice activists signed a letter to the eight national environmental organizations criticizing the dearth of people of color on those groups’ staffs and boards, along with their increasing reliance on corporate funding.

The Clinton-Gore administration of the 1990s perfected the art of channeling environmental rhetoric while simultaneously encouraging increased resource extraction — prefiguring Barack Obama’s recent overtures to the nuclear, oil and coal industries. As the decade ended, environmental activists made a strong showing in Seattle, as a key part of the broader coalition of social justice, labor and green groups that successfully challenged the World Trade Organization in 1999. While many of the grassroots initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s continued through the early 2000s, (see Douglas Bevington’s new book, The Rebirth of Environmentalism), others felt dismayed by the ineffectiveness of large environmental groups. This led to the continued evolution of Earth First! and other radical environmental groups that focused on direct-action tactics, rather than lobbying and policymaking.

CLIMATE ACTIVISTS TURN UP THE HEAT

Over the last few years, it appeared that the climate crisis might be ushering in a renewed wave of grassroots environmental action in the United States. A 2009 student environmental conference attracted some 3,000 participants to Washington, D.C., and the event was followed by a symbolic blockade of the city’s large coal-fired power plant. On the tenth anniversary of World Trade Organization protests in Seattle on November 30, 2009, climate justice actions across the United States included the lock-down of an intersection outside the Chicago Climate Exchange (home of the corporate-driven “voluntary” carbon market), a blockade of a major component for a new coal-fired power plant in South Carolina, protests of large banks that finance the coal industry and other mega-polluters and a rally outside the Natural Resources Defense Council’s offices to protest their aggressive advocacy for carbon markets. People in West Virginia and across southern Appalachia have stepped up resistance to the ravages of mountaintop-removal coal mining, while others across the country — from Vermont to the Navajo Nation — have redoubled their efforts against Obama’s planned expansion of the nuclear industry.

Most of 2009’s climate actions, however, were aimed at trying to influence U.N. member countries to reach a comprehensive agreement at the December U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen. The failure of diplomacy in Copenhagen deflated the energy of many activists, and the post-Copenhagen resurgence of climate actions has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, although Earth Day has become an annual ritual in some communities, as well as on many college campuses, the upcoming 40th anniversary has brought a notable scarcity of attention. One event this year highlights just how quickly corporate environmentalism has evolved from tragedy to farce. On the eve of Earth Day on April 21, participants in a “Creating Climate Wealth Summit” will attend a glitzy gala event hosted by the Carbon War Room, an exclusive alliance of elite environmentalists and financiers headed by the notorious multibillionaire Richard Branson of the Virgin Group. Branson is most celebrated these days for his experimental biofueled airplanes, along with a venture to promote outer-space tourism and public advocacy for geoengineering the climate. For only $450 (a third less for nonprofits), participants can have dinner with Branson, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and founding Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes at the new Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, just around the corner from the White House.

Meanwhile, the green marketing of products is alive and well, from clothing to Priuses to luxury ecotourism. The U.K.’s Guardian reported from a “green business” conference in London last year that “as much as 70 percent of future advertising would have an environmental focus.”

Today, right-wing pundits depict environmentalism as an elite hobby that threatens jobs, while many progressive environmentalists cite the potential for “green jobs” to help reignite economic growth. Both views are sorely missing a central element of what has made environmentalism such a compelling counter-hegemonic worldview ever since the 1970s: The promise that reorienting societies toward a renewed harmony with nature can help spur a revolutionary transformation of our world.

This outlook has helped inspire antinuclear activists to sit in at power plant construction sites, forest activists to sustain long-term tree-sits, and environmental justice activists to stand firm in defense of their communities. People around the world are acting in solidarity with indigenous peoples fighting resource extraction on their lands. With climate chaos looming on the horizon, such a transformation is no longer optional. Our very survival now depends on our ability to renounce the status quo and create a more humane and ecologically balanced way of life.

© 2010 The Indypendent

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/22-0

Secret Meeting Planned, then Cancelled, between ENGOs and Tar Sands Companies

Secret Meeting Planned, then Cancelled, between ENGOs and Tar Sands Companies

Invitees included Tzeporah Berman, World Wildlife Federation, ForestEthics

by Dru Oja Jay

April 7, 2010 // The Dominion

MONTREAL— A secret meeting between top Canadian Environmental

Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) and tar sands corporations was

cancelled after word of the meeting spread beyond the initial invitees,

according to two emails leaked to The Dominion.

Billed as a "fireside chat" and an opportunity for "deeper dialogue" in a

room at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the invitation was sent by Marlo

Raynolds of the Pembina Institute on behalf of himself and Gord Lambert of

Suncor. Suncor is the fifth-largest oil company in North America, and the

Pembina institute is a high-profile advocate for sustainable energy in

Alberta. The invitation was marked "confidential."

Ten representatives each from tar sands operators and high-profile

environmental groups were invited to the "informal, beer in hand"

gathering. The David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence Canada,

Forest Ethics, Pollution Probe and Tides Canada were among the invited

environmental groups. Merran Smith of ForestEthics was listed without

affiliation, as was Tzeporah Berman, who worked to privatize BC’s rivers

as director of PowerUp Canada, and who is slated to start work this month

as Greenpeace International’s Climate Campaigner. Among invited oil

companies were Shell, ConocoPhilips, Total and Statoil. Leading tar sands

investor Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was also on the guestlist.

The event would be, the invitation explained, "an opportunity for a few

ENGOs and a few companies to share their thoughts on the current state of

relations and explore ideas on how a deeper dialogue might occur."

Three days later, Raynolds sent a second email, cancelling the gathering,

owing to "the level of tension" between "a subset of companies and a

subset of ENGOs." The followup email specified a legal dispute. Sources in

Albertan environmental circles suggested pressure to cancel came from

threats to expose the meeting publicly.

"I personally believe we all need to find a way to create the space and

conditions necessary for deeper and meaningful conversations to find some

solutions," wrote Raynolds, explaining the cancellation. "I do hope that

in the coming months, we can work to create those conditions."

The invitation to the secret meeting came as several of the invited groups

had signed on to an open letter to Enbridge, asking it to cancel the

Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would pipe tar sands crude to BC’s

central coast, to be put on oil tankers. The letter was published as a

full page ad in the Globe and Mail.

In 2008, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Boreal Initiative

(financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts; see "Can Pew’s Charity be

Trusted?," November 2007) released a report proposing "conservation

offsets" as a way to mitigate the destruction of biodiversity by tar sands

operations.

According to Pembina, conservation offsets "allow resource companies to

compensate for the unavoidable impact to biodiversity from their

development projects by conserving lands of equal or greater biological

value, with the objective of having no net loss in biodiversity."

Pembina acknowledged a contribution of $44,000 from tar sands operator

Nexen for the "costs of the document."

Petr Cizek, a land use planner and long-time critic of ENGOs’ campaigns

because of their lack of transparency and accountability, said it is to be

expected that prominent environmental groups will meet in secret with oil

companies.

"Is this surprising? No. Is this blatant? Yes," Cizek said.

"The issue isn’t negotiation or compromise. I’ve done lots of both in my

time. The issue is whether the negotiations are transparent and the

organizations are democratic. Virtually none of these organizations are

democratic," he said.

Environmentalists invited to the secret meeting have come under fire by

grassroots environmental activists for their secretive, back-room approach

to negotiations with corporations in previous campaigns. Tzeporah Berman

and Merran Smith both acted as negotiators when ForestEthics and other BC

ENGOs accepted a deal that protected 20 per cent of the Great Bear

Rainforest.

Some grassroots organizations and First Nations were furious at the deal,

which settled for half the minimum protected area outlined in protocol

agreements signed by environmental groups and First Nations prior to the

negotiations. (The area protected by the Great Bear deal was later

increased to 30 per cent after First Nations’ land use plans forced

reconsideration of some of the concessions.)

Cizek said he is not bothered by the outcome of negotiations, but by the

lack of accountability and public oversight.

"My issue isn’t the fact that they protected only 30 per cent, or that

they protected the wrong 30 per cent. In some cases, maybe that is all

that you can achieve. These negotiations can be really ugly. I’ve been

there," he said.

"My issue is that they lied to and betrayed and broke a deal they had with

the smaller organizations."

In a 2009 interview published in the report Offsetting Resistance,

Valhalla Wilderness Society (one of the smaller organizations Cizek

mentioned) Director Anne Sherrod made the connection between the Great

Bear Rainforest agreement and the tar sands.

"These are greenwashing deals. I am speaking out about this because there

is evidence that the collaborative agreement industry may be moving to the

tar sands," said Sherrod.

"I want everyone to know that issues where people are dying of cancer from

serious pollution is no place for this kind of thing. Open public process

is your best friend in situations like this. Insist on it."

Dru Oja Jay is a member of the Dominion editorial collective. He is

co-author, with Macdonald Stainsby, of the report Offsetting Resistance:

The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the

Athabasca River.

Greenpeace’s Hosting: Not ‘Truly Green’

March 3rd, 2010 : Rich Miller

Finding renewable energy sources for huge data centers is a daunting challenge. It’s a far more complex issue than reflected in recent headlines, in which the environmental group Greenpeace International has bashed Facebook over its power choices for a new data center the social network is building in Oregon.

In its stinging critique of Facebook’s power sourcing, Greenpeace asserts that “the only truly green data centers are the ones running on renewable energy.” Given that stance, one might expect Greenpeace’s hosting operations to be housed in a “truly green data center” powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.

You’d be wrong. Although Greenpeace has taken steps to account for the carbon impact of much of its IT infrastructure, some of its servers are housed in data centers powered primarily by coal and nuclear power.

RECs, Offsets and Wind-Sourced Power (Mostly)
Greenpeace hosts its main web site in a Global Switch data center in Amsterdam. Gary Cook, a Climate Policy Advisor for the Greenpeace CoolIT Campaign, says Greenpeace chose the site because Global Switch bought renewable energy certificates (RECs) to offset the carbon output of its data center facility.

“We’re definitely trying to run the greenest operation we can,” said Cook. “We’re buying RECs because we want to put our money where our mouth is.” The organization’s U.S. operations include about 30 servers housed in its Washington D.C. office, which is supported by wind power purchased from West Virginia, Cook said.

But Greenpeace also has a number of servers in a colocation center in northern Virginia. “They’re using whatever the grid mix is in Virginia,” said Cook, who added that the colo deal was arranged about five years ago. “At that point in time, there weren’t providers that met our requirements (for renewable energy). We’re in the process of reworking some of our IT infrastructure, and we’ll clean that up.”

→

LISTEN: Greenpeace criticized for hiring Tzeporah Berman

By Mordecai Briemberg

March 30, 2010

• Artist: Dru Oja Jay
• Title: Greenpeace criticized for hiring Tzeporah Berman
• Album: Redeye: Vancouver Cooperative Radio
• Genre: Interview
• Year: 2010
• Length: 13:46 minutes (12.61 MB)
• Format: Stereo 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

Show Notes:

Dru Oja Jay is one of the people behind a new website raising concerns about the appointment of someone he sees as representing corporate attempts to weaken environmental activism. Berman was appointed as the new energy and climate campaign director for Greenpeace International earlier this year. Dru Oja Jay writes for The Dominion.

To find out more about Redeye, check out our website.

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2010/03/greenpeace-criticized-hiring-tzeporah-berman