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
Evgeny Morozov said in his book “Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom” that although the Internet can be used for organizing activism, the virtual connections made in that environment lack depth; a human depth that is required to drive the emotions which drive activism. He maintains that to drive activism there still needs to be “analog” connections made on an interpersonal basis and that digi-inspired causes tend to be more shallow and non-focused.
Human relations drive activism, not, as some have observed, Facebook. Perhaps that’s why there are the questions about non-focused objectives on the part of Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.
A few weeks ago, Josh Gerstein wrote on Politico.com about how some activists are upset with Facebook because the king of social networks is enforcing its usage policies. The activists are specifically upset because enforcement of its own policies enables Facebook to prevent its social network from becoming the “semantically terrified” playground of any activist with an agenda. (And wouldn’t that be pretty much any activist?)
In the article titled “Activists Upset with Facebook,” Gerstein pointed out how some people, activists among them, believe that the Facebook usage policies (i.e., terms of service) are somewhat confusing and at times variable. The confusion and variability, they say, makes it difficult for some people to use the network for their own purposes. (Read that as activists who want to leverage the Facebook audience.)
Mr. Gerstein made his point in that regard. But I think the point that Facebook is making is a very clear point. That Facebook point is that they want people to present information and express their opinions, but Facebook is not going to allow their corporate property to be hijacked for every war of words and semantical battle under the sun. Perhaps they fear that allowing such usage of their network would simply “junk up” the environment with so much polemical trash that the average user would be “turned off” and cease visiting the site.
Whatever the Facebook motivation behind the control of runaway “activism” on the site, my compliments go out to them 1) for protecting and controlling their property (Facebook built the environment, not the activists) and not succumbing to activist rhetoric (against terms of service enforcement) as do so many other companies and, 2) for trying to prevent a chaotic environment filled with one mindless activist message after the other.
Kudos.
Right out of one of the most popular activist playbooks there is came Greenpeace’s latest play against Facebook in their seven-month campaign against the social networking giant. What is that play? Embarrassment. What’s the playbook? The playbook is Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, who is considered one of the fathers of modern activism. Before I discuss this play, and how I think it’s been misapplied, let’s first have a little background on this campaign.
I first wrote about this Greenpeace vs. Facebook campaign in last month’s post, “Greenpeace Hypocrisy Continues.” The issue in that campaign is, briefly, that Greenpeace is upset because Facebook chose to locate a new server facility in Prineville, OR which is in an area that Greenpeace claims is served by an electric utility powered primarily by coal. Yet, Facebook contends that its selection of Prineville, due to a unique location in the high desert, will actually reduce Facebook’s overall electricity, and therefore coal, consumption below industry averages. (Facebook claims that due to natural cooling processes, Facebook may vent the server facility to the sky at night, exploiting the cool and dry high desert location to cool its servers.) From a CNET article titled “Facebook Reacts to Greenpeace Anticoal Campaign,” comes Facebook’s response to the Greenpeace accusations:
. . . Facebook’s director of policy communications, Barry Schnitt, responded, saying that Facebook’s planned Oregon facility was chosen with energy efficiency in mind. Also, he noted that Facebook, like any other company, doesn’t have control over the fuel source for its electricity.
It’s true that the local utility gets 58 percent of its power from coal, compared to a national average of about 50 percent, Schnitt said. But the location was chosen because of its temperate climate, which allows Facebook to use more efficient evaporative coolers rather than the traditional power-hungry mechanical chillers.
Also, by consolidating into a single location, rather than leasing space at various locations, Facebook can design for efficiency. He said that the Oregon facility will have a Power Usage Effectiveness rating of 1.15, far below the industry averages for efficiency. Google, considered an industry leader, was about 1.17 in the past quarter.
This is the cruxt of their argument, which I would bet will go on for quite a while. And because it will go on, it’s important for people to know what is going on in that argument. This bring me back to the embarrassment play, and the misapplication thereof.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky recommended that anti-corporate campaigns be directed at embarrassing a targeted company. His reasoning was sound from the perspective of human nature. He recommended to embarrass a targeted company because, he said, it is impossible for any company to adhere 100% of the time to 100% of its own rules about corporate social responsibility. No matter how hard a company, or an individual for that matter, tries to be “good,” it’s just not going to happen. Humans make mistakes and corporations are run by humans. There will be mistakes
Continue reading Greenpeace and Its Own Self-Embarrassment
A few weeks ago, to a bit of fanfare, Greenpeace USA unveiled their new Web site. After seeing the news story announcing this, which was titled “As Greenpeace unveils new website, environmental villains quake in their dirty boots,” with great anticipation, I rolled my browser over to the new site. A few minutes after I got there and toured the site, I yawned and thought “so what?”
My next thought was about the title of their introductory article “As Greenpeace unveils new website, environmental villains quake in their dirty boots.” Greenpeace takes this communications tack quite often. They frequently portray themselves as the scariest thing to be on Earth since tyrannosaurus rex went around having its neighbors for lunch. When Greenpeace does this, I think that if they were actually that scary why do they have to keep telling everyone? But I moved past that tired thought and on to thinking about the rest of their new site.
The new Greenpeace USA site is more “socially” oriented than the old site; it features on the home page a blog style format with tabs for News, Images, Videos, Reports, and Media Releases. The formatting is better than their previous site version, making it easier to find things. In fact in the introductory article, Greenpeace says that their new designs, which involved “months and months of coding” “make it easier for YOU to find what you’re looking for.” I’ll agree. The site is cleaner, and not as cluttered as their old site. Looks like they “vacuumed out” some unneeded material. But why it took months and months of coding, I don’t know. The new site is nothing revolutionary, so the months spent, or claimed to have been spent, seem foolish. In configuration, it highly resembles the format of Facebook or about 500 other sites I’ve seen. There are many Web site templates available for a few hundred bucks that one can drop into their server and get the same effect.
However, on the positive side, I will say that the new Web site does hold a lot of advantages for me. Because Greenpeace USA now has better organized its “information,” such as their “exposé reports,” which are filled with questionable research methodology, such as I have analyzed previously on this blog, the new Greenpeace site makes it easier for me to find their poorly researched material about which to review, critique, and write. So, for that I will say . . .
Thanks, Greenpeace.
Recently Greenpeace announced it’s corporate campaign against Facebook. The reason for the protest? Back in February of this year, Facebook announced that it will build a new server facility in Oregon, which will be powered by an electric utility that burns coal for power generation. This presents an interesting conundrum for Greenpeace, one that I haven’t seen raised elsewhere. How?
Well, Greenpeace has no compunction about using Facebook, when it suits them, as a social media battle space in their anti-corporate campaigns. A free social media battle space, mind you. For example, they used Facebook in this fashion extensively and especially well in The Kit Kat Incident (a protest action and boycott against Nestlé) about which I wrote on this blog. And, in a recent Forbes interview with Greenpeace online specialist Laura Kenyon, Jeremiah Owyang wrote that Greenpeace claims over 1 million Facebook supporters which Laura indicated that Greenpeace would call upon in future campaigns.
So, if Facebook doesn’t accede to Greenpeace’s energy usage demands, and bow to the Greenpeace corporate campaign launched against Facebook – ironically enough on Facebook itself, will Greenpeace call upon its Facebook supporters to boycott Facebook in the same way Greenpeace called upon Nestlé customers to boycott the Kit Kat bar?
Will 1 million Greenpeace supporters suddenly disappear from Facebook, leaving Greenpeace scurrying to find a new, and free, social media battle space for future anti-corporate campaigns?
As the Brits say . . . not bloody likely.
Hypocrisy lives.
|
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 . . .
 |
Klout.com rates Richard as influential on the subject of activism. |
|
