BY JIM GREEN
The Australian Conservation Foundation's recently released document "Natural Advantage: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Australia" provides a forward-looking vision for a clean, green economy and, in the process, renders obsolete the tired, old rhetoric about economics and the environment ... not.
The document was launched on October 19 at Admiralty House. Attending the launch — and endorsing the general thrust of the report — were executives from some notorious corporate polluters, including BP, BHP, Shell and Rio Tinto.
ACF is advocating a national summit to develop a 10-year "sustainability business plan" for Australia and to realise a 50-year "vision" of a clean, green economy.
The ideology underpinning the blueprint is summarised in the opening statement: "Discard the old rhetoric, forget what you've heard before; the drive for environmental sustainability can deliver greater economic productivity, new industries and new markets, as well as a clean and healthy environment. Old paradigms such as the green movement versus corporate Australia, or jobs versus the environment, need no longer apply. New industries, and the 'cleaning and greening' of old industries, offer huge opportunities for our nation."
It's a rhetoric of inclusiveness and pluralism: society is composed of corporations, governments and an amorphous "community", and all must be won over to the ACF's vision splendid of a clean, green economy. The realpolitik of corporate competition — increasing profits by cutting costs, replacing workers with technology, externalising environmental costs and the rest — are nowhere to be seen in this naive, flat-earth ideology.
Moreover, the rhetoric of inclusiveness quickly gives way to elitism: "National leadership is essential. Only by sending strong signals from the top can an economy and a society be expected to change direction."
So the ACF's blueprint is a call to arms, but only for the big end of town: "We are seeking collaborative, forward thinking work with business and governments". The rest of us need only donate to the ACF and wonder at the marvel of the "sustainability revolution" driven by the leaders of our "open and robust democratic institutions".
Cooption
The ACF's Michael Krockenberger said on ABC television's 7.30 Report on October 19, "We will still criticise, for example, BHP, if it doesn't do the right thing on Ok Tedi. We won't sit back from that role." However, the ACF has and will continue to provide cover for corporate polluters. Krockenberger himself told the 7.30 Report, "Companies like BP are on the cusp of providing ... leadership", and the blueprint urges corporations to "join Greg Bourne from BP in his call for leadership and play your part in securing our natural advantage".
BP declined to be interviewed for the October 19 7.30 Report. No wonder; the company is spending far more marketing its new corporate logo than it is investing in solar energy, and its investment in solar energy is minuscule compared to its ongoing investments in fossil fuels.
Sharon Beder, author of Global Spin: the Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, told the 7.30 Report: "The problem is that many of these companies produce products that are inherently bad for the environment and no matter how much solar panels they might put in, or how much paper they might recycle, their actual products need to be phased out and it's that phasing out that they'll never agree to and no partnership will come to that solution".
There is passing acknowledgement of this problem in the ACF's blueprint. Two of the 25 "modules" are titled "Genetic Jeopardy" and "Nuclear, No Thanks". But that leaves the other 23 modules to push the green capitalist dream.
Similarly, on ABC Radio National's Earthbeat program on October 21, Krockenberger acknowledged that addressing problems like salinity will be enormously expensive. However, he barely paused for breath before returning to the green dream, with the example of Interface, a carpet manufacturer which saved $200 million in five years by reducing waste.
The example of Interface illustrates the next blind spot in the green capitalist dream. Interface is merely increasing its profits and indulging in some value-adding greenwashing. Interface, like any other company, will reduce resource usage and waste if it is profitable to do so, but equally it will increase resource usage and waste generation if it is profitable to do so.
"Corporations, after all, are firstly and primarily concerned about their profits and their economic bottom line, and so environmental considerations are always going to come second", Beder told the 7.30 Report.
Patented Through-the-Road Hybrid Powertrain
Beyond the discussion of specific issues and specific corporations, the blueprint is a mishmash of incoherent pop sociology. "There is a happy solution to what is both an environmental and economic problem", it says. "We can use the natural environment to drive the economy in the same way that we have previously exploited natural resources to drive our economy." It is not made clear what distinguishes "using the natural environment" from "exploiting natural resources", other than a reference to green consumerism.
Business is certainly responding to environmentally aware consumerism, either by greenwashing (BP hopes to become the "supermajor of choice for the environmentally aware consumer") or niche marketing.
Recent examples of niche marketing include General Motors' release of a hybrid petrol/electricity vehicle called Precept, which has a fuel economy of 34.5 kilometres per litre. Well and good, but half of all new vehicles sold in the United States are sport utility vehicles (SUVs), which are allowed to emit as much as three to five times as much pollution as cars. SUVs are heavily marketed because the profit margins are far higher than for small cars.
DaimlerChrysler announced on October 24 that it plans to release a hybrid petrol/electricity SUV in 2003, achieving around seven kilometres to the litre. This "efficiency" is more than four times worse than General Motors' Precept, but by comparing its "Dodge Durango With Patented Through-the-Road Hybrid Powertrain" with other SUVs, DaimlerChrysler claims that the hybrid Durango will have a major impact on reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Motor vehicle companies have no real option but to greenwash, because sustainable transport would necessarily involve a huge winding back of the industry at the expense of public transport. The Corporation that Ate Cities, a documentary screened on SBS on September 25, 1999, (reviewed in GLW #376), described how General Motors and other corporations bought, downgraded and, where possible, destroyed public transport systems in scores of US cities through the middle decades of the 20th century.
The documentary estimated that replacing the light rail systems destroyed by General Motors would cost US$300 billion. Do right-wing environmentalists imagine that General Motors will recant and rebuild public transport systems at its own expense? Or that it might at least contribute to a winding back of the never-ending spiral of more-cars-more-roads? Of course not. Any company that did so would be acting against its shareholders' interests and would be liable for prosecution.
Nor will green consumerism save the day. Big business and green consumers will do no better than the Precept and the Dodge Durango With Patented Through-the-Road Hybrid Powertrain.
Postmodernist pop sociology
The blueprint treats us to lashings of postmodernist pop sociology, such as this nugget: "The digital revolution is merely the first taste of a complete industrial revolution, a sustainability revolution".
Despite the inclusion of a token module on "global cooperation for environmental protection and social justice", the blueprint is also shot through with nationalistic chauvinism. "If Australia is not prepared for this revolution it will be left behind", it says.
The ACF may believe its own rhetoric about green business, but it is unlikely that the ACF's corporate collaborators are so naive. In Global Spin, Beder quotes Frank Mankiewicz, a senior executive at the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton: "The big corporations ... are scared shitless of the environmental movement. ... They sense that there's a majority out there and that the emotions are all on the other side — if they can be heard. They think that the politicians are going to yield up to the emotions.
"I think the corporations are wrong about this. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail."
The ACF's blueprint represents the latest manifestation of the cooption of the right-wing of the environment movement. But corporate greenwashers will increasingly be exposed, as will their accomplices in the environment movement, and political space will be cleared for the environment movement to return to its roots as a protest movement.