Environmental Activists Target Big “Greens” For Link to Corporate Polluters

For Immediate Release:

April 1, 2010

CONTACTS:

Brihannala Morgan (415) 341-7051

Matt Wilkerson (828) 622-9525

Environmental Activists Target Big “Greens” For Link to Corporate Polluters

Fossil Fool’s Day Protests Set for 30 Cities; Target Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Big Banks

SAN FRANCISCO—More than 30 cities throughout North America have organized demonstrations against the fossil fuel industry, corporate banks and big environmental organizations for April 1’st national Fossil ‘Fools’ Day. Demonstrations are being coordinated by Rising Tide North America , which has also launched an online campaign targeting “Big Green” groups that have taken money from the worst corporate polluters. Key targets of the campaign include Conservation International, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), National Wildlife Federation and Environmental Defense.

The National Day of Action – organized by Rising Tide North America, Mountain Justice, a coalition of Canadian climate activists and others – will feature clownish parades, flyering, subversive advertising, creative street theater, and non-violent direct actions targeting the coal, oil, natural gas and banking sectors. Cities where actions will take place include Asheville, Boulder, Chicago, Edmonton, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Ottawa, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto and Washington D.C. Corporations targeted will include Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, NW Natural Gas, Pepco and Shell.

“Extractive industries are holding our climate and our communities’ hostage,” said Lacy MacAuley, an organizer of the Washington D.C. actions. “I am participating in this Day of Action to tell fossil fools, like JPMorgan Chase and Pepco, that their destructive investments are threatening our homes, our communities, and our climate.”

In conjunction with protests across the country, Rising Tide North America is launching an online campaign targeting environmental NGOs criticized for taking donations from some of the worst corporate polluters. Groups like the National Wildlife Federation, Conservation International, Environmental Defense, and NRDC are being accused of allowing their financial and political relationships with Corporate America to compromise their positions on climate change. Beginning in the 1980’s, the National Wildlife Federation pioneered fundraising strategies based on taking money from polluters like Shell and BP in exchange for forestalling real critiques of the companies behavior. This practice has become systemic amongst the Big “Green” groups and Thursday’s online action will demand an end to it.

“In Dec. 2009, we received a wakeup call in Copenhagen where the world’s governments failed to enact effective climate legislation and many large players in the environmental movement were neutralized by decades of compromise and corruption,” said Matt Wilkerson of Rising Tide North America. “A grassroots movement of environmental justice groups, climate justice groups, Indigenous peoples, frontline communities and energized activist networks are mobilizing to counter the toxic influence of industry and their proxies in big environmental NGOs over policy and public opinion. Professional environmentalists have sold us out to greedy corporations and it’s time regular people took the lead in solving this grave ecological crisis.”

In the past decade, climate change and climate justice have gone from issues discussed amongst scientists and policy experts to being the impetus for a growing international movement that has stopped dozens of proposed coal fired power plants, directly challenged entrenched interests in the Canadian tar sands and Appalachian mining industry and worked in solidarity with frontline communities. After Copenhagen, the grassroots climate movement will shift its attention from negotiations and compromise to more frontline and anti-corporate struggles.

Fossil Fools Day began in 2004 with coordinated actions across the United States and Canada. Events are held in many cities around the world. These events oppose energy derived from fossil fuels, promote education about alternative sources of energy, and encourage support for climate justice, sustainable communities, corporate responsibility and a clean renewable energy future.

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Rising Tide North America’s Online Action calling on the “Big Green” groups to stop taking corporate polluter’s donations – http://bit.ly/aVhTGH

Rising Tide North America recently released a new publication called “The Climate Movement is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement” critiquing the relationship between the green groups and Corporate America.

For more information, visit fossilfoolsday

Rising Tide North America is an all-volunteer decentralized network with over 50 local chapters and contacts throughout Canada, Mexico and the United States challenging the root causes of climate change.

Conservation Refugees

The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples

Mark Dowie

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story.

This is a “good guy vs. good guy” story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples’ movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal—to protect biological diversity—and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve species and ecosystem diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or “assimilated” but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the economy.

Dowie begins with the story of Yosemite National Park, which by the turn of the twentieth century established a template for bitter encounters between native peoples and conservation. He then describes the experiences of other groups, ranging from the Ogiek and Maasai of eastern Africa and the Pygmies of Central Africa to the Karen of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. He also discusses such issues as differing definitions of “nature” and “wilderness,” the influence of the “BINGOs” (Big International NGOs, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy), the need for Western scientists to respect and honor traditional lifeways, and the need for native peoples to blend their traditional knowledge with the knowledge of modern ecology. When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.

About the Author

Award-winning journalist Mark Dowie is the author of Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century, American Foundations: An Investigative History (both published by the MIT Press), and four other books.

Reviews

“A beautiful balance of critique and sympathy.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Unlike a fine wine, Mark Dowie has not mellowed with age. This book proves it.”
—John Passacantando, former Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

“Mark Dowie is, pound for pound, one of the best investigative journalists around.”
—Studs Terkel, author of Working

“As a journalist, Mark Dowie has always been a few steps ahead of the pack, and with Conservation Refugees he’s once again staked out a difficult and fascinating terrain: the indigenous peoples that, all the way back to the founding of Yosemite, have been invisible or worse to the conservation movement. A vision of wilderness that makes no place for people has long held sway in environmental circles, but there are signs it is coming to an end—and not a moment too soon. Dowie’s book advances the critical work of developing a new, more encompassing vision of nature, which makes it one of the most important contributions to conservation in many years.”–Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food

View All Endorsements

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11679

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=T9OVqyhVyy4C&lpg=PP1&ots=5ntSohsYfR&dq=mark%20dowie%20conservation%20refugees&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Communication to TckTckTck Partner: Conservation International – Feb. 21st, 2010

As of March 15th, 2010, we have received no response.

From: Canadians for Action on Climate Change [mailto:canadiansforactiononclimatechange@bell.net] Sent: February-21-10 2:49 PM
To: ‘tcohen@conservation.org’; ‘staei@conservation.org’; ‘ci-alotau@conservation.org’; ‘akirkman@conservation.org’; ‘ci-moresby@conservation.org’; ‘ci@solomons.com.sb’; ‘papua@conservation.or.id’; ‘sbanks@conservation.org’
Cc: ‘GlobalComplianceResearch@gmail.com’
Subject: TckTckTck Concerns | Time Sensitive – Your Response is Requested

Dear Conservation International,

We are writing to you because we are concerned about the corporate connections, and about the weak demands in the TckTckTck campaign. We are conducting a survey related to these aspects of the campaign. We will be posting the results of our survey to the web, as well as issuing a media release. We will be issuing the press release on March 15^th, 2010. For this reason could your organization please respond no later than February 28^th, 2010?  If we do not receive a response by this time we will state that your organization did not comment.

Corporate connections of TckTckTck

We note your organization is listed in as a partner or ally of the TckTckTck campaign initiative. We are very alarmed to learn various details about the campaign. The trademark TckTckTck was registered, on November 30, 2009, by the EURO RSCG firm, a subsidiary of Havas Worldwide, a public relations firm. Partners of this campaign include multinational corporations. Two of these are Electricity of France (EDF)  which now uses the TckTckTck logo, in TV commercials. EDF, the world’s leading nuclear power utility, operates a French nuclear fleet consisting of 58 reactors spread over 19 different sites. Havas also lists GDF Suez which affirms that there is a nuclear revival. With 45 years of involvement in the nuclear industry, GDF SUEZ confirms its intention to take an active part in developing a new generation of nuclear power worldwide.

In the Havas press release (attached) it also states “Havas Worldwide incorporates the EURO RSCG” whose clients include Novartis and Adventis – both biotech industries in genetic engineering and biofuel.  Both Nuclear and Biofuel are deemed to be ‘solutions’ that are equally bad, if not worse than the problem they are intended to solve.  Through your association with the TckTckTck campaign, your organization has created intentionally or unintentionally the perception that your organization is supportive of false solutions such as nuclear and biofuel.

When challenged over the inappropriateness of associating NGO partners with the corporate sector, (see EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé) the TckTckTck.org campaign organizer Jason Mogus claimed the two campaigns are different.  His argument is not convincing when one sees the press release issued in September of 2009 (screenshot attached). It clearly states that the North American TckTckTck.org is Havas Worldwide.  In the September 2009 press release the last paragraph states: “Havas Worldwide Web Site: http://tcktcktck.org”.  There is further information about this in an article by ‘Peace, Earth & Justice News’. See the news article here.

One of your partners listed is at tcktcktck.org is the ‘Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change’.  Signatories: can be found here. Of interest is the fact that on this page the multinational corporations ‘business verdict’ share your tcktcktck postCOP15 catch phrase ‘not done yet’.  This is perhaps one of the most truthful statements coming out of the entire tcktcktck campaign.  Partners in this group include Shell, Coca-Cola and RBC.  RBC is the number one financier of the most destructive project on the planet – the tar sands.  Over 1,000 corporate entities make up this TckTckTck partner group.

Furthermore, two of the same creators & partners (Havas & Euro RSCG) of TckTckTck were also initial partners of the infamous Hopenhagen campaign which was labeled a massive greenwash by the likes of Naomi Klein and others during COP15. (Farbman is reluctant to discuss what led to Ogilvy’s predicament or why previously enthusiastic partners were no longer involved.  See article here)

Many of us oppose, at least in principle if not vocally, the consumption of small community business into behemoth sized mega-corps.  We fear this is a growing trend with our NGOs.  We feel that we must work together to demand an end to this new strain of globalization which undermines and threatens our entire movement.

The entire TckTckTck campaign has been created in partnership with major multinational corporations.  These are the same multinational corporations that activists and legitimate grassroots organizations all over the world challenge on a daily basis.  People are devoting and risking their very lives defending themselves, their children and their environment from exploitation by these corporations in the name of corporate profit.  To have the largest climate change campaign on the planet formed, funded and shaped by the same corporate interests destroying our planet is a grave injustice to those already suffering.  It destroys all of our credibility, undermines true climate justice and erodes public trust.

Weak Targets advanced by TckTckTck

SIGNIFICANT OMISSIONS IN TCKTCKTCK http://tcktcktck.org DEMANDS

In the TckTckTck (http://tcktcktck.org) campaign for COP15, the organizers, allies and partners were calling for developed states to reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020. While most developed and developing states were calling for developed states to use 1990 as a baseline, the TckTckTck campaign did not have a baseline. Consequently what they were calling for was way below what developing states were demanding. How could an NGO campaign have a percentage reduction without a base-line date? In the TckTckTck campaign demands it was stated: “Reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020”. Is that from 2009 levels? or Canadian 2006 levels, or US 2005 levels?  It is far from what most of the developing states wanted, at least 45% from 1990 levels. Apart for calling for stabilization by 2015, the tcktcktck campaign had no commitment for subsequent years, such as calling the reduction of global emissions by at least 95% from 1990 levels by 2050. The TckTckTck campaign was silent on a 2050 commitment. The Key issues at COP15 were i) the need for a common baseline such as 1990, and the need for developed states to commit to high percentage reduction of greenhouse gases from the 1990 baseline, and ii) the urgent demand to not have the temperature rise exceed 1degree above preindustrialized levels and to return to no more than 300ppm. The tcktcktck campaign seriously undermined the necessary, bold targets as advanced by many of the developing states.   The TckTckTck (http://tcktcktck.org) list over 220 NGOs. We ask for your response on the following questions:

1)     Was your NGO aware that the brand “TckTckTck” has deep corporate ties?

2)     If so, how do you understand this relationship?

3)     Do you see yourselves as part of a campaign alongside “corporate partners” such as nuclear energy, genetic engineering, biofuels, aviation, automotive and other problematic sectors?

4)     If so, do you see how this creates confusion?

5)     In a release from Havas Worldwide it states “the idea behind TckTckTck was to create a movement…rather than a campaign, but a movement with a deadline. …the objective of the campaign was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.”

Were you aware that your NGO’s name and credibility would be used as a commodity in this way? (and continues to be used)

6) Do you intend to remain a partner of TckTckTck even though there are corporate ties?

7) Would you like to be removed from the list of partners of TckTckTck?

If yes to number 7;

To be removed from the list, contact laura.comer@tcktcktck.org.

8) Would your organization endorse the proposed ‘Post Cop15 Declaration’ that unequivocally supports the needs of the developing states.  It can be read here.

There are further questions related to privacy of the fifteen million people who signed on to it. There is an absolute breach of trust.  Who has collected such vital information on citizens with concern for environmental issues is anyone’s guess.  Trusting individuals disclosed personal information with no idea the campaign was aligned with corporate interests.  This is a separate and distinct issue altogether.  It is most likely that of privacy violations which warrant further investigation.

We wish that it be clear that we send this message in solidarity – that we have grave concerns with this “coalition”.  We do not wish to be patronizing but only elaborate on the concerns we share in the hope that you will share our concerns and come to the conclusion others have reached – that such a campaign is no longer the right place for any organization who believes in real climate justice to invest energies. If we say nothing – then our silence lends us as being complicit.  Therefore, we feel that must ask of all our allies to be accountable for their actions.  If we remain silent – we effectively breach the trust of those we claim to represent – the billions suffering at the hands of exploitation in the name of profits.  Let us be clear – we do not condone such a campaign and will speak out against it.

We hope that this communiqué will bring about debate that can strengthen our common understanding of the threats and opportunities for true climate justice. Our first priority is the planet, and this can only be worthwhile if it is another strand in unmasking the lies surrounding “climate politics” that threaten us with climate injustice.

Sincerely,

Canadians for Action on Climate Change | Cory Morningstar

Joan Russow | Global Compliance Research Project | www.climatechangecopenhage.org | For further information:  see Joan Russow , TckTckTck Hoodwinked NGOs, www.Pej.org)

Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition | Aotearoa [New Zealand] | Sandy Gauntlett

Please send response to canadiansforactiononclimatechange@bell.net

The responses will be posted on the websites.