Imagine this.
You are running in the New York City marathon, the distance of which is 26 miles, 385 yards. Things are going along fine, and then around mile 12, somewhere on Nassau Avenue in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, you stop, catch your breath, look around, begin to jump up and down while exclaiming “I’ve won, I’ve won!”
The Brooklynites witnessing this insanity look at you, then they look at each other (with mouths agape), then they look back at you and shout “Hey, you meatball, you ain’t finished yet. You’re f_____g crazy!” (Remember . . . this is Brooklyn.)
And they would be right. They’d recognize that you were someone who was trying to claim victory when no victory was attained.
This is exactly what has happened in the latest Greenpeace declaration of victory. Greenpeace has declared victory in its “Unfriend Coal” campaign against Facebook. But is it a victory? You’re probably thinking “Well, Richard, if you’re writing about it, then it probably isn’t a victory.” You’re right. It isn’t.
Here is why it isn’t victory.
After Greenpeace launched this campaign against Facebook, Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. In the September 2010 letter, Mr. Naidoo asked Mr. Zuckerberg for five things:
Facebook should:
Commit to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity to power your (Facebook’s) data centers;
Use your (Facebook’s) purchasing power to choose locations that allow you to rely on only clean, renewable sources of electricity;
Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as the IT industry’s energy demand increases, so does the supply of renewable energy;
Disclosure (sic) your (Facebook’s) greenhouse gas emissions inventory (through mechanisms such as the carbon disclosure project);
Share this plan for environmental stewardship publicly on your (Facebook’s) website so your hundred of millions of users know that your company is a climate leader.
These five things were the goals of the Unfriend Coal campaign. So, if Facebook agreed to these Greenpeace goals, then Greenpeace could legitimately claim victory. Let’s look at to what Facebook actually agreed.
In a joint Greenpeace / Facebook statement (which was posted on the Greenpeace Web site by the way), Facebook agreed to:
Adopting a siting policy that states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy supply
Ongoing research into energy efficiency and the open sharing of that technology through the Open Compute Project
Ongoing research into clean energy solutions for our (Facebook’s) future data centers
Engaging in a dialogue with our (Facebook’s) utility providers about increasing the supply of clean energy that power Facebook data centers
How does this Facebook agreement compare to Mr. Naidoo’s goals as shown above?
Did Greenpeace achieve Goal #1? No. Facebook made no mention or commitment about the nature of the power running their currently operating data centers.
Did Greenpeace achieve Goal #2? Perhaps, although Facebook said that they would adopt a “preference” for a renewable energy supply. A preference is not the choice of locations that Greenpeace wanted, nor
Continue reading Greenpeace Victory Claim is a Sham
For some time now, Greenpeace has targeted Sealord, a New Zealand marketer of tuna products. The dispute has been over the fishing methods supported and employed by Sealord. Greenpeace claims that Sealord supports an unsustainable form of “purse seine” fishing, which is essentially throwing out a large net and pulling onboard anything that’s in the net, which can include tuna, turtles, dolphins, sea weed, the occasional submarine or what have you.
But in recent years, there have been improvements made to the purse seine method, and policies have been put in place to make this method more sustainable, limiting the endangerment of other species which result in the “bycatch.” (See the report that will be mentioned and linked shortly.)
Of course, Sealord says that they follow sustainable fishing methods while Greenpeace says that Sealord doesn’t. The dance continues.
But unlike many other companies targeted by Greenpeace, Sealord has chosen to respond directly to Greenpeace claims rather than just ignore them or capitulate to the demands, as do so many other companies. As part of this response, last summer Sealord asked that Greenpeace stop issuing misleading information about Sealord fishing practices. Greenpeace issue misleading information? Yes, and I was also shocked to learn that there was gambling at Rick’s Café Americain.
As you know from reading this blog, or some of my books, I am no fan of misleading information, which unfortunately is the basis of strategy for far too many activist groups, and unfortunately for some companies as well. Respond they did, but in one of the responses made by Sealord last summer, I’m afraid that they stretched a point.
In response to the Greenpeace campaign, on the Sealord Facebook page the company posted the following link:
Sealord Group Ltd
Earth Island Institute describes GP campaign as ‘Misleading in the Extreme’
http://www.sealord.com/docs/default-document-library/earth-island-institute—tuna-purse-seine-fishery.pdf
In this posting, Sealord is trying to enlist the help of a report issued by a third-party. This is always a good strategy, but only when it’s accurate. I read the May 2011 Earth Island Institute report referenced, a report entitled “Bycatch in the Pacific Tuna Purse Seine Fishery.” The EII report didn’t describe the Greenpeace campaign by name nor did it call the Greenpeace campaign by name misleading, a fact that was not lost on many of the commenters on the Facebook page, either.
What the EII did call “misleading” was the claim “that the purse seine fishery harms sea turtle populations” given the small number of sea turtles harmed as quoted in the EII report. This is in the report. What’s not in the report is the word “Greenpeace.” The word “Greenpeace” does not appear in the report. At all.
Please check the EII report yourself. It’s only three pages. (Yes, this EII report link given by Sealord appears on the Sealord Web site. However, I found the same report on the EII site which you can
Continue reading Don’t Use One Fish Tale to Disparage Another
This past Monday a Politico article entitled “Did CPI (Center for Public Integrity) Coordinate with Greenpeace?” appeared as another entry in the ongoing battle between Koch Industries and Greenpeace.
The flap described by the article was a controversy over an alleged coordination between a CPI and a Greenpeace report concerning Koch Industries. As a defense in this controversy, in the article Randy Barrett, a spokesman for CPI, differentiated the two organizations by describing Greenpeace as an advocacy group and characterizing CPI as “an official news organization.” That phrase piqued my interest.
CPI is listed on Guidestar.com, the Web site that offers information about non-profit groups (most of that information is free). In the Guidestar report about CPI, in the Mission Statement section, CPI states:
The mission of the Center for Public Integrity is to produce original, responsible investigative journalism to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. The Center: . . .
♦ Educates, engages, and empowers citizens with tools and skills they need to hold governments and institutions accountable.
Further in the Guidestar report about CPI, in the Impact Statement section, CPI states:
The Center for Public Integrity measures our impact using a variety of quantitative and qualitative assessments. . . . we provide for more continuous feedback on the relevance and helpfulness of our work as well as a means to monitor the way advocates, citizens, and policymakers use it to promote social change.
These goals and objectives that they list don’t seem to be consistent with those of a news organization, one that reports objectively and allows its audience to do what they please with the information. These goals and objectives that they list imply an agenda, one of social change.
Please. If you’re an advocacy group, why not just admit it?
The more I review them, the more Greenpeace’s transparency reports continue to disappoint as well as amuse.
In Greenpeace International’s 2010 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) submission (section 2.2), the NGO states that they “promote open, informed debate about society’s environmental choices.” Such words conjure up images of the Lincoln – Douglas debates and suggest the gentility of intellectual exchange. Yet, that’s not exactly the image I would say most people have of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace is, as they say in the Intro to that same GRI submission, a “global advocacy organization.” Advocacy organizations don’t debate. They advocate; they promote; they shame; they demonstrate, with or without legitimate foundation under their arguments or with or without truth behind their cause.
In the 2009 – 2010 Greenpeace US Annual Report (page 3), Greenpeace describes its “victory” over Nestlé in a dispute regarding palm oil sourcing as one where the company was “shamed by millions of consumers who unleashed their outrage on the company through Facebook and Twitter.” I observed that social media campaign while it happened. Read about it here. The outrage, in what I came to call “The Kit Kat Incident,” to which Greenepeace refers was orchestrated by Greenpeace; much of it, at least, was not spontaneous on the part of those “millions of consumers.” Such actions do not constitute debate. Such actions constitute advocacy.
As I observed in a previous post, “If Greenpeace was not confrontational, would they be known for protest actions such as draping a banner over Mount Rushmore, or scaling the Canadian parliament building, or for disrupting a Nestlé shareholders meeting by rappelling down from the ceiling with leaflets and banners flying?”
Greenpeace is not a debating society and this point was driven home in a CNN interview with Kumi Naidoo, the Executive Director of Greenpeace International. In that May 2010 interview, Mr. Naidoo stated ”We’ve got lots of dialogue going on with a range of companies. Even with Nestlé we had been talking with them, but if talk does not deliver the results, we have to create the possibility for millions of people who care about the environment to send a clear message. Those [companies] that don’t have products that are sold to the public, the challenge there is slightly different, but when you have a company that sells a product directly to the global public you have a greater ability to leverage things more quickly.”
This type of philosophy is not based on open debate. This type of philosophy is based on coercion and the leadership of that coercion (“we have to create the possibility”).
So, come on Greenpeace. Give us a little credit. Don’t try to “nicewash” your image by telling us in your GRI report that you promote open debate. Perhaps then you might earn more points on the transparency rating that you are trying to earn by filing these reports.
On a page of the Houston Press’ Web site appears the article “Greenpeace Says Dow’s Freeport Chemical Plant Has Lousy Security.” The article is a one-sided view of an alleged problem that Greenpeace says exists at a Dow Chemical plant.
The fact that it is on a page of the Houston Press implies that it’s balanced news and, because of that assumption, after the reader goes through this article, they might think that the world is coming to an end. There is no balance in this article.
But it isn’t balanced news. It’s a blog article, which means it’s opinion and not objective news, or at least as objective as news can get.
Yes, the page is marked “Blog” at the top. Put the Blog designation is not very clear and can be visually lost amid all of the other clutter that the Houston Press places on the page.
The take away from this?
Social media, blogs among them, aren’t usually concerned with objective reporting. They are more news commentary oriented. Be aware of that, and when you read an online article that seems very slanted check to see if indeed it is a blog. Don’t be mislead by social media.
Today, let’s discuss responsible consumption, which can cut in more directions than one. Let me explain.
A current topic discussed in the news is for consumers to assume responsibility for their purchases, taking steps to be as certain as possible that their purchases don’t support companies committing environmentally harmful acts or companies that may behave in a socially irresponsible manner. These are certainly worthwhile goals. The world could do with less environmental harm and less social irresponsibility, committed by either corporations or individuals.
Of course, one problem that consumers would have in making such decisions would be with the identification of such companies. The problem lies in the semantics; just what does “environmentally harmful” or “socially irresponsible” mean, and who defines such things. If you read the business press regularly, or even if you occasionally read this blog, you’ll know that many of those definitions are set by NGO and activist groups such as Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and Corporate Accountability International. It is these groups, these “semantical gatekeepers,” who have appointed themselves to define what is “environmentally harmful” or what is “socially irresponsible.” I suppose that’s better than no one taking on this task, but such power in the hands of a limited number of groups can be unsettling. Perhaps what is needed here, in addition to more “responsible consumption” of companies, is more responsible consumption of these “semantical gatekeepers,” a “monitoring of the monitors,” if you will. But what’s to motivate the public in taking such an interest? How about a financial interest? The criterion of money usually hits home.
Whether you know it or not, if you are an American taxpayer, you support these semantical gatekeepers, the groups who decide from whom you should buy and from whom you should not.
How so?
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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