=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #347
—July 22, 1993—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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THE POLLUTERS’ NOT-SO-SECRET PLAN
[More than a month ago, in RHWN #342, we urged our readers to
think like their adversaries. We offered a view of the world
that we believe many polluter’s secretly share. We asked readers
to imagine how they would behave if they were polluters who held
these views. The following compendium is written from the
viewpoint of polluters. If you are put off by the negative tone
of some of these ideas, remember that they were suggested by real
people fighting for their lives.]
1) DENY that environmental and health problems are real. This is
ESSENTIAL to our success. If the public believes we’re
endangering their health, we’re in serious trouble.
This idea is so important that it warrants an orchestrated
campaign. If possible, a major metropolitan newspaper, one known
for objectivity and good reporting, should kick off the campaign.
We should commission a half dozen books, written by former public
officials, particularly aging white males with Ph.D. degrees in
science or engineering, challenging the belief that ecosystems
are endangered, and ridiculing the notion that small exposures to
chemicals harm people.
We’ll also need a couple of slick magazines devoted to business
and the environment.
As we get into this campaign, we’ll need to characterize our
adversaries with epithets and labels, such as chicken littles,
or simply chickens; chemophobes; hysterical housewives;
irresponsible doomsayers; crazies; and so forth. This part can
be fun.
We will also need to initiate some strategic lawsuits against
people who accuse us of harming them. We can never keep them
entirely quiet, because they are too numerous, but we can learn
something important from organized crime. Organized crime does
not beat up every one of its adversaries. A single
heavily-publicized beating goes a long way toward bringing
everyone into line. Everyone has a price: most of our
adversaries will not be swayed by money, but will respond well to
fear.
Lastly, we will need a federal agency that we can rely upon to
conduct scientific studies that show pollution never harms
communities. ATSDR [Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry] is a good candidate, though EPA has often served us
well too.
Anyone who doubts our ability to get proper results from
government, should recall the EPA and the waste industry. During
the past decade at least 50 highly-placed officials of EPA,
including 3 past administrators, have created and enforced
regulations tailored to benefit the waste industry, and have then
left government to take lucrative jobs in the waste industry.
This revolving door provides all the control we could ever need.
2) DELAY the inevitable. Learn from the tobacco industry:
they’ve avoided the obvious for 40 years. Examine how they have
achieved their phenomenal success. Here are a few strategies
that work:
Corporate philanthropy: tobacco companies support the arts,
sports events, and local schools, even as they are getting the
kids addicted to a product which, if used as directed, will ruin
their health and eventually kill them.
Crush your adversaries in court. Hire lawyers born of a marriage
between the bulldog and the shark. Take no prisoners.
Vigorously defend your absolute right to make and sell any
product, no matter who may be harmed. Defend at all costs your
right to harm people; it is the essence of a truly free market.
If possible, have the federal government label your product
“hazardous.” This will shift liability onto the government, and
onto the user of the product.
Fund scientific research, especially irrelevant scientific
research. The public has no idea what’s relevant. Funding
research gives the appearance of caring, and provides a basis for
any claims you might want to make. “Our research shows” is a
much better introduction than, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one
on TV,” which also has been shown to work.
Sow the seeds of DOUBT. A little doubt goes a long way to
confuse the public and delay decisive action. If there’s any
doubt about the science underlying an issue, the media give “both
sides” even if one side has only 0.01% support and the other side
has 99.99% percent support. Tobacco companies can still find
people with science degrees who will look straight into a TV
camera and say, “I am not aware of any convincing evidence that
tobacco causes cancer.”
Our plants in Congress need the merest shred of evidence, the
slimmest shadow of a doubt, to justify a hands-off approach.
In these hard times, it is especially rewarding to emphasize
ECONOMIC DOUBTS about environmental programs. Claim they’re
going to wreck the economy, destroy jobs, cost the taxpayer
billions of dollars. If it turns out later that these
predictions are wrong, it won’t matter; no one remembers such
things.
3) DIVIDE. Keep your adversaries at each other’s throats. If
they get together, they’re formidable. Divided, they’re weak.
Our adversaries are racially and cultural diverse. They
represent rich and poor alike. Therefore, we have BOUNDLESS
opportunities to split them and set them against each other.
THIS IS A KEY IDEA, TO BE STUDIED CAREFULLY, ELABORATED, EXPANDED
AND EXTENDED.
4) DISSEMBLE. This means lie. Not that anyone likes to lie, of
course. But sometimes it’s the only expedient way to spread
doubt, divide our adversaries, and make points with the media.
The media almost never look behind what we say–they report it at
face value, so a little lie can go a long way.
5) DESTROY. When all else fails, destroy your adversaries’
credibility, cohesiveness, and confidence. Call them commies.
Call them hippies. Call them at 3 in the morning and curse at
them in Spanish or Korean. Drive them crazy. Have the police
“discover” drugs in their cars. Kill their dogs. Burn their
homes. Whatever it takes. (But don’t get caught.)
6) DECOY. Set up smoke screens. Divert attention away from the
real issues. Looking for a site? Announce that you’re examining
multiple sites, to keep your adversaries spread thin, unable to
focus on the site you really want.
Hide in a web of enterprises. The modern trend toward
“enterprise webs” instead of old-style corporations (see Robert
Reich’s book, WORK OF NATIONS) offers great opportunity to leave
exceedingly complex paper trails that few can follow. Contracts,
subcontracts, leases, subsidiaries–all offer opportunities to
conceal who’s doing what to whom.
Avoid appearing at public meetings. That’s what we have
government for, to appear on our behalf.
At all costs, avoid direct confrontation with communities. It
takes a miracle to win a direct confrontation, unless of course
you can turn the situation violent. A violent confrontation, we
can ALWAYS win.
7) DEFEAT bad legislative proposals. Simply put: buy votes and
influence. Money spent on lawmakers and judges is ALWAYS a good
investment.
8) DEMAND and require government to use risk assessment wherever
possible. It is our best tool for having our way with any
community. A well-written risk assessment can prove that anything
is safe. Risk assessment, more than any other single tool, has
allowed us to continue business as usual. THIS IS A KEY IDEA.
We must support risk assessment at all costs.
DEMAND public hearings where the public gets only 30 seconds (if
we’re generous, 3 minutes) to state its case. Better yet, have
“public information sessions” where the public can only “ask
questions” and cannot “make speeches.” If they “make speeches,”
cut them off. That way we control the whole meeting, yet give
the appearance of a democratic process. Appearing to be
democratic is important.
It goes without saying that meetings should be held during the
day, whenever possible, so working people can’t attend. If you
must meet at night, arrange the agenda so the hystericals get to
speak late in the evening, after the media have left.
9) DEFLECT liability and responsibility, particularly at the
personal level. The key to the success of the business system is
that individual investors are not held responsible for anything a
corporation does. If things go bad, chapter 11 bankruptcy bails
everyone out, as in the asbestos industry. If individuals were
ever held strictly liable for corporate behavior, our privilege
and power would disappear.
In addition, it is important to DEFLECT attention away from
corporate behavior. Keep the public focused on its own personal
behavior. Make people feel guilty about their lifestyles. Keep
people focused on water-saving toilets, setting up recycling
programs, and planting trees. One of the great success stories
of all time is the way corporations have effectively disappeared
as a public issue. When was the last time you saw a headline,
“Legislature limits size of corporations” or “Corporate bad actor
loses right to do business.” Not since about 1915 have you seen
such a headline. Now THAT’S successful deflection.
10) DIRECT AND CONTROL the pace of change. The inevitable IS
inevitable, but we can control the pace, which is really all we
need.
11) SUPPORT the Big 10 environmental groups when they work to
pass unenforceable legislation, as they’ve done for 20 years.
Passing unenforceable legislation undermines confidence in
government, splits the environmental movement, wastes taxpayer’s
money, bloats the bureaucracy, and convinces the public that real
change is impossible. PERFECT.
12) Keep regulators focused on controlling chemicals one at a
time, instead of controlling whole classes of chemicals. THIS IS
ANOTHER KEY IDEA. Controlling chemicals one at a time, risk
assessment by risk assessment, will take centuries or longer.
Meanwhile, the chemicals are profitably in use while we debate.
13) We need to restrict the first amendment to the Constitution,
so-called free speech. Speech isn’t free, it’s loose. This is
one key area where we haven’t solidified control, and we need to
work on it.
14) Free trade agreements, like NAFTA and GATT, are keys to the
expansion of our control world-wide. WE NEED THESE AGREEMENTS.
Not only will they let us have our way with the developing world,
but they will undermine jobs in the U.S. Who will be blamed for
that? Government. The more we can convince people that
government is the main problem, the better off we are.
15) We must convince people that it is hopeless to work for
change. Always create the strong impression that nothing
different is possible. It’s important for the public to believe
things have always been the way they are today, and always will
be.
16) Paint ourselves green, green, green. Green is good. Green
is friendly. Green is the color of money.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: business strategies; greenwashing; free trade;
nafta; gatt; liability; corporations; corporate charter; risk
assessment; first amendment; freedom of speech; free speech;