On February 17, 2010, there was an article posted on a Greenpeace sponsored Web site named PolluterWatch.com. The article, “Polluters Charles and David Koch don’t deny it: they fund front groups to deny climate science,” dealt with Greenpeace’s ongoing battle with Koch Industries over the company’s reported financing of various research organizations who, according to Greenpeace, “deny” climate change and “obfuscate the truth about climate science.”
Well, I don’t want to insert myself into the battle over climate change and who or what causes it. I don’t have the scientific background or the technical qualifications to represent myself properly in that fight. But in that fight, I’m of the opinion that Greenpeace, and many other environmental NGOs, don’t have the background or qualifications to make a proper argument. I say that because in my research on these organizations, I’ve noticed that many of them periodically take great liberties with how they present information, and thus represent “truth.” It is into that fight that I want to insert myself because I have the background and the qualifications to represent myself in this “battle for meaning,” and how semantics is used as a weapon in that battle. My qualifications are strong here. In fact, I’ve written a book about that battle.
In my analyses of how various NGOs conduct this battle for meaning, I’ve noticed that Greenpeace, among others, is often “semantically-challenged” and this post on PolluterWatch.com represents at least one example of these challenges with which they deal.
The article, which I reference above, begins with these two paragraphs:
On Friday, I had the pleasure of receiving a surprising e-mail from the head of communications for Koch Industries, a massive oil and chemical corporation and the second-largest privately held company in America.
The e-mail was from the chief spokesperson for Koch Industries, a woman named Melissa. To my shock, Melissa didn’t deny that the corporation does in fact pay an industry front group millions of dollars to perpetuate the dirty energy economy and obfuscate the truth about climate science.
My first issue with this article is who is “I?” This article is written in the first person. Yet, nowhere in the article, or on the page, is the author’s name. Why not? However, identification can be made, although the author doesn’t make it as simple as it should be. In the article’s fifth paragraph, the author discusses an op-ed article that he posted on CapeCodToday.com, and links to that article. Once the link is followed, the reader can determine that, apparently, this post on PolluterWatch.com is made by David Pomerantz, a Greenpeace field organizer based in Boston.
The anonymity of this “byline-less” PolluterWatch.com article doesn’t significantly impact the battle for meaning. There are more important issues here, like my second issue with this article which is semantics. Specifically, I’m talking about conceptual semantics which deals with the construction of meaning. In this PolluterWatch.com article, what impacts that fight for meaning is the phrase, “Melissa didn’t deny that the corporation does in fact pay an industry front group millions of dollars to perpetuate the dirty energy economy and obfuscate the truth about climate science.”
Huh?
It seems very odd that a company, any company, would not deny such a claim.
The way that sentence is phrased made me continue reading. (That was probably David’s intent.)
The PolluterWatch.com article continues and explains that, in her email, the Koch spokesperson engaged David over another issue posed within the CapeCodToday.com article, an alleged Koch association with an organization called Freedomworks. In the PolluterWatch.com article, David “concludes:”
The larger point is that while Melissa took great pains to dissociate her bosses from Freedomworks, she took no issue with my description of the Kochs’ “providing millions of dollars designed to perpetuate the dirty energy economy and obfuscate the science of global warming.
Well, I’m glad that’s settled! The first step is always admitting you have a problem, so it’s good that Koch Industries has officially acknowledged that they fund front groups to deny climate science.
First, if Melissa took “great pains,” she wouldn’t have emailed David. She would have called him. But let’s put that semantical exaggeration aside and get to the second semantical issue which is that not addressing something is not an acknowledgement. If you look up “acknowledgement” in the dictionary, you will see that, in its various definitions, an acknowledgement requires the performance of an action. For an acknowledgement to occur, there must a positive action, not a lack of action. There was, at least according to the PolluterWatch.com article, no action here in the form of an admission. And to represent the lack of an active acknowledgement as an acknowledgement is a clear obfuscation of “facts,” a behavior of which Greenpeace accuses Koch Industries within the PolluterWatch.com article itself. Such representations only serve to weaken the argument that David is trying to win.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw bricks. And if they do, what does that say about them?
To me, it says that, in addition to being hypocritical, behaving in this manner simply makes Greenpeace appear that they are trying too hard. If Greenpeace has a good case, a sound argument, then that case will make itself without the semantical histrionics.
