The greenwashing of some of the world’s biggest polluters’ by European public relations and lobbying consultancies is exposed in a new report released today. As the COP21 Paris climate summit enters its second week, “The climate smokescreen – PR companies lobbying for big polluters in Europe“, by Corporate Europe Observatory, presents case studies of seven public relations firms with climate-destructive clients.
The study examines Volkswagen’s crisis communications efforts as the emissions scandal unfolded, Gazprom’s use of PR diplomacy to facilitate its drilling in the Arctic, and spin by the palm oil industry as the Indonesian rainforest burned. It also investigates the consultancies and strategies behind the image-laundering efforts of other corporate perpetrators of climate change including Shell, Total, and Koch Industries.
Detailing the various tactics of PR firms, the report explores the professional greenwashers’ lobbying toolbox, from setting up cocktail parties and mingling events with politicians, to helping polluters access and influence the regulatory process, to slick campaigns that rebrand dirty energy as clean fuel. The research reveals how PR and lobbying consultancies make some of the biggest climate change culprits appear to be part of the solution. However, these “solutions” simply allow polluters to avoid changing their dirty business models and delay real action that could enact a transition to clean energy and keep us below the catastrophic tipping point for global warming.
The report shows the contrast between the increasing number of PR firms who state concern over climate change, and the destructive clients whose interests they serve and calls for tight restrictions on the role of big polluters, and the lobby firms representing them, in decision-making on climate policy.
The report can be read here: https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/the_climate_s…
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 253 new monthly donors in the next 3 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy