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NEWS January 15 2002
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| Melchett joins Dark Lord in Mordor Lucy Michaels Around the country, Greenpeace activists wept into their organic cornflakes last weekend, as it emerged that Lord Melchett, former head of Greenpeace and hero of the anti-GM movement, has disappeared off to join the Dark Lord in Mordor, in the earthly form of PR villains Burson-Marsteller. ‘We don't understand - he's given us no reasonable explanation.’ said one. ‘ Why would he compromise his integrity like this? It’s not as if he needs the money…If Melchett had joined a supermarket to advise them on organic purchasing, we could just about understand him snuggling up with corporations, but Burson Marsteller, come on...why would anyone want to associate with them?’ This is the PR company that advised the vicious Burmese military junta, the SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), to change their name because it just wasn't cuddly enough. They now torture, kill, repress and exploit under the name of the State Peace and Development Council – much nicer for everyone concerned. Other clients include Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, the Saudi government after September 11, and Union Carbide in the wake of the Bhopal disaster. Burson Marsteller are simply evil incorporated. They work on behalf of the bullies against the weak, and get paid for maintaining the status quo. But Melchett has consorted with the devil before. At Greenpeace he was openly keen on corporate engagement. Speaking last summer at the ‘Getting Engaged’ event organised by corporate engagement gurus, The Environment Council, he stated that environmentalists have moved on since their early campaigning days in the 1970s and 1980s, when their primary mission was to ‘raise the issue’ of environmental problems. Now, he argued, environmentalists have to look more at solutions and focus more on business than politics because of ‘a shift in power from politics to business.’ Which rather loses sight of the fact that many environmentalists consider that precise shift to be part of the problem… Jonathan Porritt, where are you now. Jonathan Porritt was one of the most prominent environmentalists of the 1980's as spokesperson for the Green Party. Then he disappeared off to work for the government and engage with industry thinking that somehow he would wield more power by helping corporations to tinker around the edges. Instead, he has disappeared into obscurity and no longer poses a threat to the big corporate bastards destroying our planet. Melchett’s case is similar: everyone knows that Greenpeace and Melchett destroyed a GM test-site, and that, therefore, GM crops must be bad. This powerful oppositional act is surely far more influential in building a real change in public consciousness than the occasional chat with Shell or Nestle that will make him feel important, but do little else. Engaging the moderates and isolating the radicals is one of the oldest tricks in the PR book. Another is helping to organise 'green' sounding industry front groups, like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), whose members include Chevron, Volkswagen, Ciba-Geigy, Mitsubishi, Dow Chemicals, Du Pont and Shell. Set up in the early 1990s, it had considerable success in watering down the environmental treaties that came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Issues concerning the environmental impact of these large companies and issues of corporate responsibility and accountability were not discussed or even circulated to delegates. Does Melchett really want his name associated with a company whose middle name is 'greenwash'? Whilst some in the biotech industry are rubbing their hands with glee, other rabid anti-environmentalists, for whom Greenpeace is the key target for their bile, see it rather differently. A posting on the pro-GE email list, AgBioView offered the following rather warped logic: ‘So now former Greenpeace director Peter Melchett, after lining his pockets from organic supermarkets whose profits he surged with his (proven false by the UK advertising standards authority) food fear campaigns against biotechnology, is now going to work for Burson Marstellar (BM). BM, which happens to represent biotech-leader Monsanto, should be ashamed of itself for succumbing to Melchett's thuggery and apparent protection racket. The lesson for other corporations under the gun from Greenpeace and the like is simple. Whatever they say they don't really mean it. They really just want you to write them a big check. It's a protection racket.’ The Greenpeace/ PR revolving door Melchett is sadly not the only environmentalist sell-out. One of the advisors for the Environment Council's magazine, for example, is Jonathan Wootliff, who is also Managing Director of Edelman Public Relations Global Stakeholder Practice. Before Edelman, he worked for Greenpeace; before that, the Hill & Knowlton PR firm. In his current job at Edelman, he ‘provides support to corporations in building productive relationships with non-governmental organizations, pressure groups and activists so as to minimize vulnerability.’ Edelman's clients include Home Depot, Ocean Spray, Taco Bell, Boeing, Nissan, Manpower, Dairy.com, Roche's, Nissan, Pharmacia, Microsoft, Apple, Kraft, Kimberly-Clark and AHP. Paul Gilding, the former executive director of Greenpeace International has set up his own corporate consultancy in Australia called ECOS. Des Wilson, after decades of working for NGOs including Friends of the Earth UK, the Campaign for Lead Free Petrol, the Campaign for the Homeless and the Campaign for Freedom of Information, moved to Burson-Marsteller and then to the British Airports Authority to fight for the expansion of Heathrow airport. Makes you wonder what Burson Marsteller does to its new recruits! Something is rotten… As if to add insult to injury for the poor Greenpeaceniks, a leaked internal memo from Greenpeace UK’s media director reveals that not only had Melchett taken this move with their full consent, but that they thought it wasn’t too much of a change; ‘since GP has been giving advice to business for years it is no surprise that Peter will be giving the same advice in a different capacity.’ The whole thing reads like a rather flaccid and hopeless call to keep a united front, stick to the party line and pass on media enquiries to management. However, there’s hope for the Greenpeaceniks yet – someone leaked the memo… STOP PRESS: Melchett has been forced to resign from the board of Greenpeace International, following severe criticism. Further reading Corporations ‘Get Engaged’ to the Environmental Movement by Andy Rowell PR Watch Vol. 8. no. 3. Autumn 2001. www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q3/engaged.html Andy Rowell is the author of Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (Routledge, 1996). See also Corporate Watch #2 Winter 1996 ‘What's Wrong with: Burson-Marsteller?’ www.corporatewatch.org/magazine/issue2/cw2f2.html |