There is a kind of green washing that is even more cynical than a company putting a picture of a pristine mountain stream on its package of processed crap. It is the fossil fuel or nuclear industry front group posing as an environmental group. Frontgroups.org, a joint project of Consumer Reports WebWatch and the Center for Media and Democracy, is shedding some light on these groups; who is really behind them and what are they really advocating? They call it "Full Frontal Scrutiny".
And scrutinize they do. From the Orwellian named Ethanol Lobby's "Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy", brought to you by Monsanto, Dupont, Archer Daniels Midland and the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (just an aside here, but when your specialty is public relations, is it really wise to have a company with the initials B.M.? I suppose there is some truth in advertising there, though, considering the crap that they're slinging with this one.) to the less creatively named Americans for American Energy, brought to you by Pac/West communications. Interesting to note that Pac/West started the group just "after receiving a three million dollar no bid contract from the State of Alaska to campaign for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," according to SourceWatch.
Consumer Reports has put together a fun little quiz so you can test your own knowledge of these groups. Which group represents coal and power industries and sponsored the Presidential debates? If you guessed Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (so long as those choices include mostly coal) you would be correct. And who is funded by chemical, energy and logging companies and pushed hard for drilling on the outer continental shelf? No, not the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, they're the nuclear power industry folks, led by former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and self-proclaimed "former Greenpeace activist" Patrick Moore. It's the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security that wants us to drill, baby, drill. And when they describe themselves as "a broad-based coalition of consumers and industrial and institutional energy users", by broad-based they mean energy, pharma, agri-business and, of course Concerned Pastors, Church of God in Christ. Because apparently, the Lord is a drilling advocate.
In an odd linguistic twist, if you want to be environmentally literate, you might want to stay away from the Environmental Literacy Council. While they do have a number of impressive academics as members, they are also funded by American Petroleum Institute, Georgia-Pacific, ExxonMobil, General Electric, International Paper and the Weyerhaeuser Foundation. For those corporate sponsors, raising environmental literacy for you people is not exactly part of their mission. Maximizing shareholder profits is.
What is really frightening about these groups is the speed with which they are popping up. It seems every day, there is a new one thought up in the board room of an over-paid crisis communications or public relations firm. And let's be honest, not a lot of people have the time or inclination to dig into the funding sources behind some of these groups with their environmentally friendly sounding names. That is why we are lucky to have Consumer Reports on the case. Because the truth is, you can call your group, "We Love the Earth and All Its Creatures", but if you are peddling more fossil fuel extraction, more dirty coal, more logging, more pesticides, the name is irrelevant. These folks are lobbying for the destruction of the planet, and us along with it. Plain and simple.
Further Reading:
