Last week RAN supports shut down one of the biggest and most ambitious online corporate greenwashing campaigns.

To mark its 100th anniversary two weeks ago, General Motors launched a new interactive website, gmnext, where the public was encouraged to submit photos, videos and comments in order to help the company answer questions like “how should GM best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?”

Yeah, it’s typical corporate greenwashing, but with a new “web 2.0″ spin where the company pretends to care what the public thinks.

So last week we posted photos on the site of student activists in Michigan protesting at the Detroit auto show. Then we asked our supporters to go comment on the site and tell GM what the public really thinks about how the automakers should address global warming and energy issues.

GM’s response? They turned off public comments.

So much for the fancy interactive that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said “encourages open and honest interaction.”

I guess it wasn’t really public discussion the company wanted. Big surprise.

One of GM’s PR flacks claimed that they were shutting off the interactive features because “we have no intention of letting a vocal set of activists highjack the conversation with invective and dogmatic misinformation.”

What were these comments filled with “invective and dogmatic misinformation” actually like?

“GM needs to stop thinking of “green” as an advertising term and nothing more. Really committing to better gas mileage and alternative fuels–NOT including ethanol, which is not environmentally sound–will be better publicity for you than mere sloganeering.”

“Since the most famous quote from Ioccoca, “How much clean air do we really need?”, the auto industry has let the public down. Most citizens believe that the auto industry has it’s hands in the oil pockets as well. Whether that is true or not, we will never know. What we do know is that the “green” options are simply not good enough. We don’t wish to see the auto industry pat themselves on the back for what we perceive as a poor job. It is just not good enough yet. This group pushes so that the industry doesn’t stop working on it. No pats are deserved yet. Cutting emissions is great, but we want better. So less patting on the back and more work is what they want.. I have to fully agree. What the production of these batteries do to the enviroment is disgusting. We have a long way to go. No kudo’s until this job is done and done responsibly. Ethanol is not a solution either. It takes just as much energy to produce as oil.. so where is the benefit, and now people are starving due to the lack of corn. Iceland uses meat that is unconsumable. Why are we not? A better job has been done by other countries.. step up to the world plate please and stop patting..”

Sounds less like dogma than clear well-reasoned comments by people who care.

Of course, GM is shutting down the interactive features of their new marketing campaign because the comments they got aren’t in line with their branding, not because they are inaccurate, mean-spirited, or dogmatic.

My take: I think that as more and more companies move towards trying to use fake “web 2.0″ “interactive” features to promote their greenwashing, we’re going to keep on them and show through our actions that the public isn’t going to let them get away with anything short of real action. Greenwashing on the web isn’t going to be easy for them.

So I say thank you to everyone who helped shut down one of the biggest greenwashing campaigns by one of the most powerful corporations on earth.

I noticed another climate change column from Thomas L. Friedman in my e-mail in-box this morning. On the whole, it was a lot more encouraging than this earlier piece, in which he lamented that the current generation of American college students isn’t making enough noise about the issue of climate change, among other things. (I wonder if the massive convergence during Power Shift 2007 did anything to change his perception on that one).

Now he’s back on a happier note, breathlessly recounting the ways that “our country is increasingly alive on this challenge.” These include:

• Google’s “RE < C” renewable energy research initiative (to make renewable energy cost less than coal),
• The M.I.T. Energy Club, an energy research group
• Also at M.I.T., some students who helped launch the Vehicle Design Summit, which is building “[t]he Linux of cars!”

It’s good that Friedman has begun to realize that young people are not, in fact, addressing the issue of climate change solely through their Facebook profiles. That’s one lesson learned. But this quote, about the Vehicle Design Summit, is typical of what he likes about the initiatives listed above:

They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is “to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency” on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car.

That’s great. We’ll need all the efficiency gains we can get in the coming decades, and the M.I.T. projects Friedman mentions here will help with that. And Google’s project to make renewable energy cheaper is laudable. But what Friedman does not acknowledge is that lack of technology is simply not the problem. Plug-in hybrids are already viable, but automakers refuse to mass-produce them and are fighting tougher emissions standards in the courts. Massive gains in efficiency are already possible with today’s technology. And we could make “RE” less than “C” tomorrow by passing a law forcing coal companies to pay for the true environmental cost of their activity. In other words, even if all of these great efforts make great progress, they won’t avert climate disaster on their own. Nor, in fact, are they actually necessary to get us started.

Friedman and the geek set he’s loving up in this week’s column would prefer that the climate issue were an Apollo-like challenge that demands a technological solution. The fact is that it’s a political challenge. The only way to change course quickly enough to prevent the worst effects of global warming is to intervene on corporate behavior. Google and M.I.T. can lead corporations to water, but it’s up to governments and groups like RAN to make them drink—and deeply.

You may know that Al Gore is reported to be considering RAN’s offer to participate in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal-fired power plants, stop mountain top removal mining, and help prevent climate destruction. Just last week, in Rolling Stone, he again talked about civil disobedience in connection with coal, the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases:

Look at Texas, where TXU wanted to build eleven new coal plants. Mayors all across that state, Republican and Democratic alike, were spurred by their grassroots supporters to rise up and say, “No, you don’t. We will not allow you to build all of these dirty coal plants here.” The entire deal collapsed, until it was reworked by an environment-minded group that said, “Wait a minute, let’s rejigger this whole thing and apply green standards.” All across the world, you’re seeing developments like that. You’re also going to see people practicing civil disobedience, lying in front of the bulldozers and the dump trucks to physically prevent the building of any new coal-fired plants.

We were on the front lines of the TXU fight, and just yesterday, RAN (along with Coal River Mountain Watch, SEAC and others) organized a die-in targeting Citi, the world’s biggest funder of coal. By targeting banks, we can cut off the flow of financing to coal projects at its source. Activists lay in front of a bank rather than a bulldozer, but the principle is the same: we can no longer afford to tolerate coal, or the banks that fund it. We’re still hoping that Al will join us on our November 16-17 national day of action against coal finance (you can still sign our friendly petition asking him to come participate in civil disobedience). And even if you have yet to win a Nobel prize, we need your support, too.

Take a look at the video below and this comment left on the earlier post about Charlotte.

John Watterberg Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 11:26 am e

I am one of the climbers from Tuesday’s action at Bank of America on Tuesday and I would like to contribute one of my personal reasons for participating in this campaign. One of my close friends is named Kerry “Chad” Albright. I had the distinct pleasure of working with Chad for a few years in New York City. Chad was born in Buffalo Creek, WV, a tiny, Appalachian mining “town” which is probably more of a network of country shacks sparsely strewn throughout what was once a pristine mountain valley. When Chad was just 9 months old a dam containing coal sludge (yes, it’s technically called “sludge”) from the nearby mines burst releasing a sludge flood through the valley. Chad’s mother was home with his older, 5 year old sister while his father was deep below the earth in a nearby coal mine. The flood was so huge and severe that Chad’s mom grabbed he and his sister before it consumed their home. She was running for higher ground up the valley with Chad in one arm and his sister by the hand when the flood reached them. His mother knew that she and his sister would not make it so as the sludge enveloped them she threw baby Chad by the leg as far as she could up the valley wall. When officials later surveyed the sludge lake that was once the valley they heard what they thought was a cat’s cry coming from what looked like the leg of a baby doll protruding from the black waste. When they hauled the leg from the muck it turned out to be baby Chad’s nearly severed leg hanging by sinew and a few ligaments. They cleared the mostly dead baby’s air passages of sludge and took him to a nearby shack farther up the valley wall to await it’s impending death.
Officials summoned Chad’s father from the mine to inform his him wife and daughter were dead and his only son would soon join them. The baby wasn’t breathing when his father stepped through the door and breathed his son’s name, “Kerry?”
At the sound of his father’s voice, Chad began to cry, the first noise he had made since the “cat’s cry”. Chad was taken to the closest hospital miles away where his leg was amazingly reattached. Chad’s survival earned him the local celebrity of the “Buffalo Creek Disaster Miracle Baby” which is still celebrated annually to this day. Chad’s father retired from the mine to raise the only surviving member of his family alone, never remarrying in the wake of his grief. It goes without saying that “Mr. Mom” is no small miracle in itself for a back country mountain coal miner from West Virginia. Chad eventually grew up to become a professional dancer follow his dream all the way to New York City where we met. He is probably dancing in a Broadway show bringing joy to untold masses even as I write this.
So you see, I have deeply personal, very real reasons for behavior which may seem to some as “extreme”. So I ask, what is more extreme: hanging a piece of cloth from a crane, or the above story and the myriad other detriments that come from coal, the techniques used to mine it, and institutions like Bank of America who continue to fund such physically and emotionally devastating ecocide?
When I was on that crane, about to go over the edge in the soft morning light, I said a prayer for safety and justice. “This is for Chad”, I prayed. “This is for Chad’s mom and big sister whom he never had the joy to know.” But most of all it truly was for every current resident of these communities and the victims who continue to suffer at the behest of greed and industry, for, sadly, stories like Chad’s are not uncommon. His is just one of millions that persist to this day. SO for anyone who still doesn’t understand why we engage these campaigns, I implore you to seek more truth and separate the facts from the fiction. Oh, and sorry about the delay on your way to work…

We love you Al!

So The Nation reports that Al Gore is considering our offer to engage in civil disobedience, specifically on our November 16-17 National Day of Action Against Coal Finance:

Gore’s office confirmed that the former Vice President had received RAN’s invitation and was considering it, though no decision has been made.

“He has not accepted any of their offers to date,” Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore, said of the RAN offer. Kreider did not deny that this phrasing leaves open the possibility of Gore saying yes down the road.

I, for one, am really hoping he decides to participate, if not on November 16, then someday soon. For one thing, I’d like to meet the guy.

You can still sign RAN’s friendly petition asking Al to come be arrested with us—don’t worry, we aren’t flooding his assistant with e-mail or anything. More than 5,000 people have signed already. Sign on and show Al how excited we are that he’s considering our invitation.

At six am this morning (EDT) four intrepid RAN-ites scaled a crane outside Bank of America’s headquarters in Charlotte North Carolina and dropped a banner announcing: “Bank of America: Funding Coal, Killing Communities”.

In full view of all their employees, the banner sent a powerful message to America’s largest bank that being one of the top financiers of coal and climate change is unacceptable business. Charlotte hasn’t seen civil disobedience since the Vietnam war, so the event shut down the city center for a while - but the disruption was nothing compared to what residents of the coalfields are experiencing every day. This action happened on the same day as a public hearing for Duke Energy in Raleigh is expected to draw serious opposition to a planned coal-fired power plant and just days before hearings for the Stream Buffer Zone rule in Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. Big Coal is having a rough week, and it’s our job to make sure that the money behind them feels the pressure too. We think we succeeded. More info here.

UPDATE: check out the video after the break.

More »

Today, the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Al Gore (and the IPCC). No one deserves it more than he does. We’re very happy for him. And we think he should go to jail.

Specifically, he should go to jail on RAN’s November 16-17 Day of Action Against Coal Finance. As reported in Nicholas Kristof’s NYT column on August 16, Al is on record as saying:

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers … and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”

Well, Al, it’s because by the time they’ve rolled out the bulldozers, it’s already too late. That’s why Rainforest Action Network, Coal River Mountain Watch, Appalachian Voices and thousands of supporters are mobilizing to stop Bank of America and Citi from financing coal extraction and the construction of those coal-fired power plants. We at RAN would really like you to come along.

If you, too, think Al should be arrested, go ahead and sign our petition asking him to be arrested with us. I will personally guarantee you that if Al is going in the slammer, I’m coming with him. How about you?

Yesterday, we sent out a message for concerned individuals to post comments to the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) and their legislators about the Bush administration attempting to relax rules regulating mountaintop removal.

Here’s the link. Below is the message. Please act now.

Dear Friends,

George Bush has declared war on Appalachia’s environment and people. Ravenous coal companies are literally exploding the tops off of mountains, destroying ecosystems and nearby communities, to extract reserves of coal.

Bush’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) now wants to RELAX environmental regulations on mountaintop coal mining (when they should be strengthening them and abolishing mountaintop removal). This is the third time since 2002 that Bush and his OSM have attempted to relax these regulations. Each time, they have been thwarted by people like us concerned about the mountains, forests and people of Appalachia.

Our friends in the coalfields are asking for our help. Please follow this link and send comments to the OSM and your federal legislators by Sept. 24th.

Please speak out today to save America’s mountains and nearby communities!

For the mountains,

Scott Parkin
RAN Global Finance Campaigner

Slate sums up the general public reaction to the Live Earth concerts this past weekend: Lame Earth. Both the event itself and the criticism of it seemed off the mark to me. From the little bit I saw and what I’ve read in the coverage, the actual environmental movement seemed largely absent from the consciousness-raising event. Organizing for collective action is by far the most effective way for people to make a difference—yes, even more so than changing out those incandescent bulbs. But although there are plenty of grassroots organizations out there that can help people make a difference, there didn’t seem to be much of a presence.

Rather than focusing on that angle, of course, the mainstream media seemed much more interested in the amount of electricity and number of paper plates consumed during the event. Our own Mike Brune appeared on CNN today on the Glenn Beck Program—the host was more apparently more interested in bovine flatulence (and the fact that Live Earth organizers didn’t exhort the audience to become vegetarians) than in why we should stop the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

Both of the things that bother me about the whole affair—the lack of real grassroots organizing at the event and the media focus on the resources consumed during the event itself—stem from the same problem in popular environmental consciousness; namely, that many people equate the environmental movement with the movement toward “green” consumerism. More »