For my money, there's nothing more delicious than a book that lays bare the rot of a corrupted industry from an insider's perspective. In the hands of a skilled observer, the subject can spring to life. Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis's hilariously disturbing account of Wall Street's investment-banking industry in the late 1980s, comes to mind.
Green, Inc., by Christine MacDonald.
Lewis's book traces its lineage to Mark Singer's Funny Money, a masterpiece of nonfiction that exposed the double-dealing and corruption that led to the collapse of the savings and loan industry. Singer's impeccable reporting and lively writing carries the reader to the little Oklahoma bank at the epicenter of the financial catastrophe and plops him down right in the middle of the boardroom.
So, it was with a certain amount of anticipation that I picked up Christine MacDonald's book Green, Inc. (Lyons Press, $24.95) a self-described insider's tale of how the environmental movement has been hijacked by self-serving leaders and corporate stooges. The book's press release promised to reveal chapter and verse of mismanagement, malfeasance, and "double lives." An ambitious goal, no doubt, and I couldn't wait to tear into it.
The author immediately sets her sights on the Big Three of the conservation movement: Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. arm of the World Wildlife Fund -- though she doesn't pass up the opportunity to slam the Environmental Defense Fund and its leader, Fred Krupp, along with countless, but unidentified, environmental websites (what she quaintly calls ejournals), and other various and sundry enablers. She carries a special grudge for Peter Seligmann, CI's chair, and his sidekick, CI President Russell Mittermeier, whom she paints as a couple of overcompensated, jet-setting playboys who devote more time to fawning over starlets and corporate chieftains than they do saving the planet.
MacDonald is convinced -- to paraphrase a Watergate standard -- there is a cancer within the environmental movement. The malignancy can be traced to the alliances between conservation groups and corporations that took root in the 1980s and exploded over the past two decades. CI, The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund all have come to rely on corporations and their foundations. The conservation groups might refer to the corporations as blue-chip companies. Not so, MacDonald. She calls them, "the devils of deforestation."
MacDonald wasn't always so down on big-name environmental organizations. Indeed, it was only a few short years ago that she abandoned her journalism career to take a "dream job" at CI. Her formal title: Manager of the Media Capacity Building Program of CI's Global Communications Division. In short, public relations.
It wasn't long after joining CI in 2006, MacDonald writes, that she realized that something was "deeply wrong in today's clubby, well-upholstered world of conservations." It wasn't long, either, before she was out of a job. A year after joining CI, MacDonald's position was eliminated in a reorganization. Necessity collided with opportunity and Green, Inc. was born.
Christine MacDonald.
MacDonald's accusations are many and sweeping, but, for the most part, neither original nor revealing. She complains of widespread nepotism in the environmental industry, but fails to prove the hires are incompetent or unqualified (nor does she name names to back up her point). She condemns CI for taking millions from a foundation formed by former Intel founder Gordon Moore for a biodiversity center, but the only evidence she can muster of any wrongdoing is from unnamed "critics" who call the foundation a "glorified fishing club."
She devotes a great deal of space to troubles within The Nature Conservancy -- from incompetence and mismanagement to run-ins with the Internal Revenue Service. All interesting and true, but hardly new. The Washington Post broke the Conservancy story in 2003; MacDonald's retelling sheds no new light.
And that's true of most of the book. MacDonald wants the reader to accept her premise that the environmental movement has been irreparably corrupted merely because of corporate partnerships -- i.e., guilt by association. The author is unable to see any value in conservation groups embracing such alliances in a bid to steer environmental policies within the business community.
Nonetheless, there are glimmers of a real story in MacDonald's book. In particular, I wanted to know more about CI's relationship with the Bunge Ltd., a diversified conglomerate accused of violating Brazilian environmental laws and using lawsuits and threats to silence its critics. And MacDonald is right to insist that environmental groups should be more vocal in criticizing U.S. corporations when they run afoul of environmental policies, especially those companies that have alliances with various green organizations.
In the end, though, MacDonald can't forgive nonprofits for adopting "business operating practices and jargon," and turning their back on the days of "late-night work sessions [that] would end in sing-a-longs."
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Comments
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human power Posted 3:35 pm
03 Oct 2008
Thus, Ms MacDonald does not need to show smoking-gun new harms by the infiltration of environmental groups by corporatists. If the leadership of these groups rubs shoulders with corporate leaders, they will get head-lice.
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plushtown Posted 12:23 am
04 Oct 2008
For prehistory repeating itself, search: "Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away " (LA Times 6/25/06). Note seismic activity at end and idea of Greenland possibly being 3 islands under the 2 miles thick ice , so the center area is 1000′ below sea level (from other source). No discussion of the sea water thus running under and up into the glaciers and the potential for unseen draining via the reported drill-like beneath the "unblemished surface".
A week later appeared
"Climate Change Could Cause Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, Scientists Say" (Ottawa Citizen 7/3/06). ("Could" as in "Gravity could cause unsupported objects to fall."
In neither article is any discussion of possible effects of earthquakes on glaciers sliding, ignoring the inevitable sequence: less weight triggers earthquake, quake causes slide, repeat until arctics are cap-less.
"Greenland's Ice Cap Is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate" (S.F. Chronicle 8/11/06) says said ice is 3 miles thick, and also that it's melting thrice as fast as 5 years gone (LA Times 6/25 said twice)
Also see "Glaciers Are Flowing Faster" Nature 9/23/04,
"A Bit of Icy Antarctica Is Sliding Toward the Sea" Science 9/24/04, "Dramatic Change in West Antarctic Sea Ice Could Produce 16ft Rise in Sea Levels" Independent/UK 2/2/05. (By the way, this explains the Dubai ports deal in Spring '06, contracts bought from the former owners of the Penninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.)
Yet Greenpeace remains headquartered in Amsterdam and stresses loss of sea ice and endangered polar bears, walruses, seals, only mentions land ice tangentially.
UK Observer 9/8/07 ran
"Melting ice cap triggering earthquakes" about NW Greenland in summer '07 getting first, 1-3 Richter so far, earthquakes on record, for ice lightening reasons.
UK Independent 10/3/07 ran "Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave" about the previous July, past July's in that part of Greenland usually being about 5C. Article mentions rain at the North Pole, a great hook for newspapers and late night comedians, yet stressed by no one. "Wet Santa" would be great for circulation and yucks, yet subject is ignored.
UK Independent 10/3/07 also ran "From the air, the evidence of climate change is striking", mentions moulins (melt-holes) big enough to fly a helicopter into but is written like a travel article, all about light and beauty.
MSNBC 12/13/07 reported "Magma may be melting Greenland ice", about magma close to surface of NE Greenland and NY Times 1/21/08 said "Scientists Find Active Volcano in Antarctica" about magma close to surface of West Antarctica. (Which is nice, because they didn't report the hurricane in the South Atlantic 3/27-28/04, an unprecedented event. I confirmed the non-reportage with the Assistant Public Editor.)
UK Independent 9/23/08 ran the horrid title and better subtitle "Exclusive: The methane time bomb:
Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide".
This at least is getting a little play on environmental blogs, but so far not as much as deserved, and I haven't seen it in US newspapers.
Has anyone seen any of the above stressed by the supposed doomsayer Gore, by Greenpeace, Sierra Club, any group?
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randino Posted 12:07 am
06 Oct 2008
I have always tried to follow the maxim I plagerized from Ronald Reagan: Thou shall not speak ill of other environmentalists. When I became active on forest issues with the Buckeye Forest Council, I encountered people who did not even consider the NC to be an environmental group.
I dismissed it as organizational jealousy or green sectarianism. Having come up in the sectarian left, I had little use for separating sheep from goats.
Then I started seeing a disturbing pattern with the NC. Whenever the Buckeye Forest Council would lock horns with the Ohio Division of Forestry over clear cuts or prescribed burns in the Hocking or Shawnee State Forests, you could bet the farm that the Nature Conservancy would come running. Not to back you up, but to provide cover for the DOF. They were not watch dogs, they were lap dogs. I regret to say that I now agree with those whose judgements I first thought were overly harsh.
Another issue is the role of non-profits in either inhibiting or promoting social change. The problem with non profits is that corporations have profits, governments have taxes, and non-profits have begging cups. Non-profits can do a lot of good. They work their hearts out and the world is a better place for them being around. I have worked for them myself for most of my working life. But they are on a short leash, and have to stay constantly aware of the wishes of their funders. Over the past twenty years "corporate envy" has taken over far too many groups. There are only a few groups that still cling to the old movement ethos. I think the non-profit world needs to open up a discussion on what we want to be: pimps for the status quo, or activists who will boldly go where the brave dare not go. It is a constant issue, that good people in non-profits continually live with, with varying degrees of discomfort.
Finally, let us pause to praise the little green groups. They are underfunded and staffed. They don't have a pot to piss in. But they have very sharp teeth which they apply to the back sides of despoilers and two timing bureaucrats. They are where the new issues are developed, and new campaigns launched. They are the soul of the environmental movement and as long as they are around we have hope.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
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halli620 Posted 12:19 am
08 Oct 2008
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