The Right Error

Global Spin:  The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism
by Sharon Beder
Scribe Publications, 1997, 288 pages

This is a vile book.  It is also a very revealing book.  It conveys quite nicely the self-righteous authoritarianism, the distrust of pluralism, the near monomaniacal reduction of complex questions to a single perspective, the over-weening confidence in one's own presumptions and perspectives which is such a striking feature of much of the "green" movement.  The tone of Dr Beder's book is that she and like-minded people are proponents of a truth so self-evidently correct that those who disagree or demur are not only wrong, they are also completely illegitimate and have no right to put their point of view in any effective way.  The old Catholic doctrine that error has no rights is alive and well and living in the green movement.

Despite being written by an Australian engineer and academic from the University of Wollongong, the book largely concentrates on American practices and cases.  In part, this is clearly meant as a warning -- on the John Kenneth Galbraith view that the advantage of living on the same planet of the US is that you know what will happen to you in about 20 years' time -- an example being the denunciation of Australian think-tanks as "clones" of pernicious US and UK models (pages 83-92).  It is also a natural genuflection towards the country which has been the main source of inspiration for "progressive" politics since the 1960s -- despite the reflexive anti-Americanism which has become so much a part of Australian Left and "progressive" culture.  But then, American "progressives" are themselves anti-American.  Finally, America throws out a mass of relatively easily accessed data -- it is just easier to look at American cases.

The latter point is not only a matter of the greater transparency of American governance -- the separation of powers, the presumption of citizen authority and weak party structures promote much more openness of government as politics becomes much more an ongoing, vote-by-vote, process of persuasion -- but the greater activism and willingness to cite general principles characteristic of American politics.

Beder takes the reader through a tour of the various techniques that American business and other groups have used to counter environmentalist pushes for more regulation and bans.  Some of these techniques certainly represent fairly robust uses of the American political and legal system.  But then, so does much of what the environmentalist movement gets up to -- but the question of environmentalist tactics is not something the book concerns itself with at all.  It is so easy to paint one side of the debate as completely wrong and wicked if one does not bother to examine the other side at all.

The perspective that underlies the book's commentary is a very simple, indeed simplistic, one.  On one side is wisdom and altruism -- the environmentalists -- whose public policy prescriptions must simply be adopted.  On the other side is greed, ignorance and stupidity -- business and their dupes -- who misuse political and legal processes to oppose the people of wisdom and light so that they can continue to rape the planet for their own short-term gain.

In talking about the Wise Use movement Beder says "Why do environmentalists bother if there is not really a problem? ... most environmentalists have nothing personal to gain from environmental regulation and can therefore legitimately argue that they are concerned with the common good.  Few Wise Use Movement members or supporters can make the same claim" (page 54).  The idea that the people best able to make decisions about proper uses of resources are those with no direct involvement in those resources is not one that the experience of our century has been very kind to.  As for the alleged virtues of altruism -- there were plenty of altruistic Nazis and Leninists;  people prepared to make great sacrifices for what they perceived were higher ideals.  Neither movement was in anyway redeemed by this.  Indeed, one could argue that that idealism increased their appeal, allowing them to do much more damage.

The Error Has No Rights mindset shows up again and again.  For example, "[c]orporations have utilised think-tanks and a few dissident scientists to cast doubt on the existence and magnitude of various environmental problems, including global warming, ozone depletion and species extinction" (page 91) -- the use of the word "dissident" is no doubt utterly un-ironic, alas, and shows a complete misunderstanding of the scientific process.

Woe betide anyone who crosses the sacred boundary between righteous environmentalism and wicked business "[t]here are numerous examples of activists who now work for the industries they once opposed.  For example, Paul Gilding, formerly executive director of Greenpeace International, does consultancy work for big business and bodies such as the Queensland Timber Board." (page 132) The forestry industry no less!  How could he?  Fortunately "[n]ot all environmentalists are so willing to capitulate to corporate agendas;  it is normally the more conservative groups that will cooperate" (page 133).  The blighters.  Of course, any suggestion that there could be common grounds and common goals is completely out of the question.  This is a crusade of good versus evil, with no shades of grey.

The preference for political mechanisms over market mechanism is quite clear -- "A market system gives power to those most able to pay.  Corporations and firms, rather than citizens or environmentalists, will have the choice about whether to pollute (and pay the charges or buy credits to do so) or clean up" (page 104).  "[T]he market, far from being free or operating efficiently to allocate resources in the interests of society, is dominated by a small group of large multinational corporations which aim to maximise their private profit by exploiting nature and human resources." (page 105).  The gross economic and environmental failure of the command economies is an experience which has clearly passed this alleged concerned citizen entirely by.  Such wilful ignorance of gigantic human tragedies should be the subject of scorn but is, alas, perfectly respectable in many quarters.

As is the case with many promoters of the belief that politics is the path to nirvana, Beder is perfectly capable of documenting what she regards as bad practices -- such as movement of officials to and from PR and lobbying firms -- which have clearly become staples of the political process, without in any way lessening her faith that massive government intervention is far and away the best mechanism for dealing with any problem with which society might be confronted.  The problem is not with politics, it is that bad people get involved.  If politics became the domain of good people pushing good policies -- if we got "the hogs out of the creek" (page 243) -- then all would be well.  Markets, on the other hand, are irredeemable.  It is amazing what intellectual sludge can be hidden behind articulate language.

Mind you, corporate executives can read the book with profit -- stripped of the tendentious commentary, there are actually quite a few good tips about dealing with environmental issues and activists.  The main lesson, however, is provided by that commentary -- the lesson that many environmentalists have a mindset that fundamentally does not accept business as legitimate:  that not only is not willing to "make a deal", but which regards such dealmaking as literally supping with the devil.  Only by being prepared to defend the fundamental legitimacy of business -- and free debate, and pluralism -- can such people be effectively opposed.

Beder's denunciation of use of language and catchphrases to deprive environmentalists of the moral high ground is richly ironic, given her linguistic hatchet-job on those who disagree with the environmentalist agenda as she conceives it.  As she says "Propaganda is often associated with dictatorships.  However, in a "free society", where official bans on free speech are not tolerated, it is necessary for those who would rule to use subtle means to silence threatening ideas and suppress inconvenient facts.  (page 121).  Indeed.