Sometimes they make it just too darned easy - the environmental radicals, of course. I received a press release from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) recently. It railed against the fuel consumption levels of Ford automobiles and trucks and called on fleet customers, especially, to abandon the Ford brand citing, among other things, "with oil prices at all-time highs, the United States needs energy independence now more than ever . . ."

Thinking that they really could not make it this easy - could they? - I did a 2-minute search of their press release site on the web. To my amazement, they could make it that easy. In a press release titled "The Environmental Shell Game: Big Oil Takes Baby Steps" -

Aug. 29, 2003 - the same organization had this to say about Shell. "Shell is too big to be taking baby steps this late in the global environmental crisis. Any school kid can tell you not to drill in the Yellowstone (National Park) or Yosemite (National Park). Shell's true intentions are revealed by its unchanged plans to exploit the North Slope, Sakhalin and other endangered ecosystems." So the RAN argument is this: The United States is facing an energy independence crisis, and citizens should demand that companies do those things within their power to move the country toward energy independence. Or, that is, companies should do everything within their power except those things - such as North Slope drilling and production - which are the pet causes of the environmental radicals. And that even though no sound scientific evidence exists that argues persuasively against drilling and producing on the North Slope.
RAN may be a respectable group of individuals taking an essential stand on the need for environmental responsibility and stewardship. I can't argue with their stated commitment to save the remaining 20% of the world's old growth forests. It must be done. No, it's the leaps of logic, contradictory terms and fuzzy science that bothers me and, more than that, the lack of responsibility for their actions. More importantly, it is my fear - rapidly becoming my conviction due to interaction with some of these groups - that the environmental movement has moved from grass roots, genuine concern to corporate structures whose business is environmental agitation and whose methods are suspect.

Returning to Shell, you may remember the huge international stir caused by GreenPeace when Shell proposed to abandon the Brent Spar facility. Arguing that the facility contained enormous amounts of contaminants, GreenPeace made more regional and international noise than should be merited by a natural disaster of the Krakatoa sort. It cost the industry, and Shell, dearly in terms of money and public opinion. But the huge media campaign proved a major boost to the global image of GreenPeace as the guardian of social and environmental responsibility. When it came time for an apology for "grossly" mis-stating the amount and significance of any potentially dangerous materials in the Brent Spar hull, there was no media circus of the sort that accompanied the group's accusations.

Yet it is corporate environmentalism that really troubles me, as many other corporate entities today do. When a business, profit or non-profit, reaches a certain structural complexity, a large part of its remit becomes maintenance of the corporation. If, as I suspect, the corporate environmentalists have reached that point, it seems a particularly ludicrous exercise to pretend they are acting only in the interest of the greater good.

It is not that I am against environmental stewardship. I am, like many in the industry, soundly in that camp. And I don't pretend to whitewash the fact that this industry has some heavy work to do in this area. But it will take a bit more convincing for me to buy the idea that much of the corporate environmentalists are any more committed than we are.

Comments