After 12,241 articles questioning the financial motivations of skeptics, someone finally looked at the financial motivations of alarmists:
Amid its calls for individual sacrifices in the name of the environment and paeans to “green” legislation, the network once again failed to disclose prominently that its parent company stands to get rich off of “environmentalist” laws.
NBC Universal is owned by General Electric, which plays a regular role in this column because of how aggressively the company has hitched its profits to its lobbying successes. GE spends more than any other corporation in America on lobbying the federal government — more than $20 million annually over the past three years — and Green Week and Earth Week probably should be disclosed as lobbying efforts.
In many of GE’s businesses, the profit model appears to be: (1) invest in something for which there isn’t much demand; (2) then lobby to mandate or subsidize it.
Wind turbines are a great example. GE describes itself as “one of the world’s leading wind turbine suppliers.” Absent subsidies, however, there might be no windmill industry, because windmills cannot reliably produce energy, and certainly not as affordably as traditional fuels such as coal.
Germany’s energy agency examined its subsidized wind industry and concluded in 2005: “Instead of spending billions on building new wind turbines, the emphasis should be on making houses more energy efficient.” But making houses more energy efficient doesn’t make GE rich.
GE spends millions lobbying to protect and expand the cornucopia of wind subsidies that includes a “production tax credit” for wind farms, government mandates on utilities to buy wind power and local subsidies. In one case in upstate New York, the GE turbines will be powering a wind farm completed using eminent domain.
GE’s coal gasification, solar power generation, electric cars and biodiesel businesses are the same: Consumers and investors acting with their own money would not patronize these technologies, but Congress, acting with your money, will. GE’s $20 million annual lobbying budget sees to it.
I was listening to a talk show. A caller called in because he watched a program that aired on The History Channel about Global Warming. The caller was quite curious as to why a channel about history would take on something about the present, or the future. The host explained that The History Channel is owned by NBC, which is owned by GE. “Wouldn’t the higher-ups have a say in what programming NBC airs?”
I bought stock in GE a few year ago, before the Global Warming craze, not realizing GE was, or was going to be, behind the push for less CO2 emissions. If you look at GE’s line up, they have all the products they can market to be “eco-friendly”. They have “cleaner” burning locomotives, higher efficiency gas turbines, wind turbines, etc…
I believe that it’s great that GE has such a line up. What I disagree with is that their product line up essentially runs their television programming without actually having commercials for their products. I believe that utility and industry management should decide what technologies they want to purchase, whether it’s from GE or not. GE should have very influence in the government to mandate technology that they conveniently have.
Mike:
Dupont was all against banning CFCs. Then they patented HCFCs and all of sudden on board with the band. Regulations just open doors for some and closes doors for others. Companies have been doing it for years and the more regulations we have, the more they’ll do it.
Lubos Motl pointed out a link between “Realclimate.net” and “Environmental Media Services”
http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=realclimate&tld=net
Note: Registrant contact- Environmental Media Services
It looks like they DO have a direct economic stake in drumming up
hysteria:
http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/110
Environmental Media Services
Also known as a “project” of the Tides Center
1320 18th Street, NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036
Phone 202-463-6670 | Fax 202-463-6671 | Email e…@ems.org
If you’ve ever been advised to steer clear of a food, beverage, or
other consumer product based on the claims of a nonprofit
organization, you’ve likely been “spun” by Fenton’s multi-million-
dollar message machine — and Environmental Media Services (EMS) has
probably been the messenger.
EMS is the communications arm of leftist public relations firm Fenton
Communications. Based in Washington, in the same office suite as
Fenton, EMS claims to be “providing journalists with the most current
information on environmental issues.” A more accurate assessment might
be that it spoon-feeds the news media sensationalized stories, based
on questionable science, and featuring activist “experts,” all
designed to promote and enrich David Fenton’s paying clients, and
build credibility for the nonprofit ones. It’s a clever racket, and
EMS & Fenton have been running it since 1994.
Tired of being nagged about which fish are politically correct to eat?
Fretting about choosing the “right” catch of the day? You just might
be under the influence of SeaWeb and the Natural Resources Defense
Council (both Fenton clients), and their “Give Swordfish a Break!”
campaign, communicated for over two years by the trusty flacks at EMS.
Never mind that Rebecca Lent of the National Marine Fisheries Service
said that Atlantic swordfish “are not considered endangered.” The
point was to make SeaWeb and NRDC more believable and trusted when the
next big enviro-agenda came along.
Freaked out about so-called “Frankenfoods”? Worried that biotech corn
will make you glow in the dark? You’ve probably been exposed to
something harmful, all right — EMS’s anti-biotech message, approved
and bankrolled by the large segment of the “natural” and organic foods
industry that relies on Fenton Communications for its publicity. These
include Whole Foods Markets, Green Mountain Coffee, Honest Tea, Kashi
Cereal, and Rodale Press, a magazine publisher (Organic Style, Organic
Gardening, and many more) that makes millions off of the misguided
notion that organic foods are safer to eat than their conventional or
biotech counterparts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s position,
by the way, is crystal clear. Former USDA Secretary Dan Glickman has
said that “[j]ust because something is labeled as ‘organic’ does not
mean it is superior, safer, or more healthy than conventional food.”
Afraid to eat dairy products from cows that have been treated with
hormones to produce extra milk? Scared that the hormone, which the FDA
calls “entirely safe,” will make its way into your body and cause
cancer or other irreparable damage? Beginning with a huge press
conference in 1998, EMS pushed that very message relentlessly for over
two years. And they did it on behalf of Ben & Jerry’s, a paying Fenton
client. Why would Ben & Jerry’s care? Because their ice cream is made
with hormone-free milk, and David Fenton calculated that a little
health hysteria would drive customers to their “alternative” product
quite nicely.
It’s called “black marketing,” and Environmental Media Services has
become the principal reason Fenton Communications is so good at it.
EMS lends an air of legitimacy to what might otherwise be dismissed
(and rightly so) as fear-mongering from the lunatic fringe. In
addition to pre-packaged “story ideas” for the mass media, EMS
provides commentaries, briefing papers, and even a stable of experts,
all carefully calculated to win points for paying clients. These
“experts,” though, are also part of the ruse. Over 70% of them earn
their paychecks from current or past Fenton clients, all of which have
a financial stake in seeing to it that the scare tactics prevail. It’s
a clever deception perpetrated on journalists who generally don’t
consider do-gooder environmentalists to be capable of such blatant and
duplicitous “spin.”
The first rule of this game is that it’s strictly pay-for-play. For a
price, you too can promote your product by maligning the competition
with junk-science smear tactics. To Fenton Communications, you’ll be a
“client”; down the hall at EMS, though, you’ll join the ranks of its
“project partners.” And nobody will be the wiser.
Surely by now you know that money makes the world go ‘round, and the
globe doesn’t stop spinning for Environmental Media Services just
because it calls itself “nonprofit.” EMS exists to make money. It
turns a profit for Fenton Communications by improving the bottom lines
of a wide variety of Fenton clients. Understanding how the money
changes hands, though, requires a shift in focus from Washington to
San Francisco, where the Tides Foundation is based.
The Tides Foundation is an unusual philanthropy in many ways, not the
least of which is that it gives away other foundations’ money.
Corporations, individuals, and other foundations can all use Tides as
a pass-through vehicle, “designating” that their cash be funneled to
tax-exempt third parties. Tides is also unusual in that it runs its
own “incubator” for these nonprofit entities, a subsidiary called the
Tides Center that runs the day-to-day operations of new activist
groups so they can focus on making life difficult for the rest of us.
The end result is a “foundation” that uses its own tax-exemption as a
sort of blanket coverage for newly-formed nonprofits (all of them left-
of-center), while funding them with money that originates somewhere
else.
In this arrangement, startup activist groups don’t have to risk being
turned down when they ask the IRS for tax-exempt status: they just
ride piggy-back on Tides’s exemption, giving them the same privileges
extended to churches and universities without having to satisfy any
real requirements. And big-money donors with anti-corporate or anti-
consumer leanings can readily fund the lunatic fringe without having
to disclose where their money went. They only need mention in their
tax returns that a donation was made to the Tides Center, and their
legal obligations are fulfilled. One more curious side effect of this
deal is that newly-incubated activist groups (what Tides calls
“projects”) can appear to have absolutely no expenses of their own for
employees, lobbyists, or fundraising contractors, as Tides officially
cuts all the checks.
So while Environmental Media Services was started, and is still run,
by staffers of Fenton Communications, it was officially instituted as
a “project” of the Tides Center in 1994. This gave Fenton some
plausible deniability and initially shielded him from the suggestion
that EMS was just a shill for his clients. It has also provided a
ready-made funding mechanism for foundations, “progressive” companies,
and other Fenton clients who don’t want their contributions to EMS
noted for the public record [Editor’s note: despite the logistical
roadblocks set up by Tides, our research still has been able to
reverse-engineer several million dollars in foundation grants to
EMS].
Of course, anyone ingenious enough to invent such a scheme is also
probably crafty enough to abuse it as well. Consider that the Tides
Center paid EMS president Arlie Schardt over $115,000 in 1998. Fair
enough, since he was technically a Tides employee, in addition to
being the “Senior Counselor” at Fenton Communications and a board
member at Friends of the Earth. But that doesn’t explain the $583,727
that Tides paid to Fenton that same year, which was designated as
“public relations” expenses in Tides’s tax return. You see, Tides has
never “officially” been a Fenton client, as that would appear to be a
huge conflict. The Fenton Communications web site doesn’t list Tides
as a current or former client either. So what was the half-million-
dollar payout for?
We may never find out. But we do know that in the past three tax years
(1998-2000), the for-profit companies “eGrants,” Seventh Generation,
and Working Assets (which sells long-distance phone service and
brokers credit cards), have each put over $1 million into Tides. They
are all, by the way, clients of Fenton Communications. So are big-
money foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts, the David & Lucille
Packard Foundation, and the John Merck Fund. Together, they have
contributed another $1.6 million (that we know of) to EMS, using Tides
as a money-funnel. “
– A. McIntire