The Greenwashing of America

To attack the corporate buyout of Earth Day 1990 is somewhat like shooting at a house with a BB gun. It's an easy target. Many U.S. mega-corporations were none-too-subtle in their attempts to have their names and logos attached to anything that was worn, watched, eaten, or heard by the Americans who went outdoors on April 22 to clean up a little plot of God's creation.

Most people saw the irony in it all. Some corporations spent more money advertising their commitment to the environment than they did on improving the environment. You couldn't find an unopened can of green paint anywhere on Madison Avenue.

Recently at a conference for alternative press people and environmental activists sponsored by The Utne Reader, much of the discussion centered around the effects of corporate involvement with environmental organizations: Who gains? What is lost? One presenter, A.J. Grant, president of Environmental Communications Associates, Inc., convinced Burger King executives, whose annual advertising budget is $215 million, to use $7 million of it to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. In this way they would be encouraging others to be concerned, she thought, while still serving their own needs. But is that the best use of $7 million for the environment?

The American Petroleum Institute spent some of its cash on a half-page ad in The Washington Post explaining why the Clean Air Act's gentle encouragement of ethanol is "An Environmental Frankenstein." The API advertisement begins, "We want cleaner air. So do all Americans." That's as convincing of their environmental sensitivity as the ad in Newsweek by the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness which informed readers that "every day is Earth Day with nuclear energy."

Serious questions are arising within the environmental movement about whether groups should let corporations get away with greenwashing. Can the groups use such advertising to deepen the public's commitment to earthkeeping? Or is this blood money?

But similar criticisms from some quarters are being aimed at environmental groups. Recently a paid advertisement in The Washington Post stated that "the biggest winners" of the recent Earth Day activities were "the well-paid evangelists of the 'eco-anxiety industry.'" The ad, placed by The National Inholders Association (NIA) and the Multiple-Use Land Alliance (MULTA), both based in Battle Ground, Washington, stresses that the major environmental organizations are the primary beneficiaries of the renewed concern for the earth.

The part of these two groups' attack that is most damaging is the part that is true: The salaries of the executives of such environmental groups as the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, and the Wilderness Society are in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

Environmentalists are often portrayed by the media as unconcerned about the effects of their actions on real people, and as an economically and racially homogeneous group. Six-figure salaries are not going to improve this perception among auto workers and miners in Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana.

Working people could lose even more confidence in environmental groups when they see corporate executives schmoozing with well-paid green leaders. The National Wildlife Federation has established a corporate donors fund so that known polluters such as DuPont and Waste Management Inc. can still have their names appear on an environmental sponsorship list for only $10,000.

1990 IS MORE THAN JUST THE BEGINNING of a new decade with new faddish concerns. It is an election year. And it has been a very long time since a potential consensus loomed large in the American voting public.

But right now people are saying in poll after poll that the environment is their number one concern, and that they are willing to make some personal sacrifices for a cleaner world. That scares the profits out of those who benefit from the Earth's losses. They want to make sure—and environmental ads are a "soft money" approach—that they are protected from any substantive change or regulation.

Environment-unfriendly corporations need to create an ecological agenda in their own image. They try to show how nuclear energy is environment-friendly, that fossil fuels are healthy to breathe, that styrofoam really can be recycled, that plastic does eventually degrade. Above all, it is important that companies develop their own policies to correct any past problems. Anything but regulation.

That's an agenda even a polluter could love and sign onto. And so politicians of every stripe are running "greener-than-thou" campaigns. Full-page ads by major corporations give the politicos legitimacy and cover.

Several senators up for re-election who hadn't said the word "ecology" for 20 years are in the wild so much these days they've gotten almost as many mosquito bites as sound bites. Sen. Rudy Boschowitz (R-Minn.), for example, is talking trash ... as in incineration, recycling, and reuse. That's new, as well as news.

In Rhode Island, the opponent to incumbent Sen. Claibome Pell (D-R.I.), Rep. Claudine Schneider, is taking the greenest path in her attempt to steal a shaky seat from the Democrats. Schneider is taking her lead from Trudy Coxe, a veteran grassroots environmentalist who is running as a Republican for Schneider's House seat.

Schneider represents a new wave of women running in important elections this fall. In six major Senate races and at least four races for governor—including California and Texas—women are representing one of the major parties, usually as Republicans. Some analysts attribute this year's strong showing by women in primary races to the early involvement of women in environmental causes.

Rep. Newt Gingerich (R-Ga.), the minority whip in the House, has said that the Republican Party must become the environmental party if it is ever again to attain majority status on Capitol Hill. It will take a lot of image building for them to be both the growth party and the green party, but if it is pulled off, the implications are enormous.

So we may be on the verge of an eruption of volcanic proportions that could alter the political landscape. If the environmental movement can be co-opted by the slick advertising of corporate interests, a very different, much more conservative establishment could set the agenda for years to come: perhaps just enough time to drain the aquifers, burn or cut down the rain forests (in Brazil and in Oregon), and wait for interest in the earth to subside.

Many mainstream environmentalists are saying that we have only a few more years left within which to reclaim the planet. Election Day 1990 will be important for generations to come. This is the time to raise the level of debate beyond 30-second commercials and quarter-page newspaper ads. The voice of 70 percent of the voters who express their fear for the fate of the world must sing out in unison a song of change.