The Program Big Oil's PR Firm Uses to 'Convert Average Citizens'

[Scuba]

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/a-top-pr-firm-promised-big-oil-software-that-can-convert-average-citizens

Astroturfing is the increasingly popular tactic wherein corporations sponsor front groups or manufacture the appearance of grassroots support to simulate a genuine social movement that is rallying for goals in line with their profit motive. In the past, astroturf efforts have used paid actors, company employees, and media-heavy websites. But the program Edelman pitches in its own reports goes even deeper.

The new papers detail an in-depth proposal—part sales pitch, part action plan—put together by Edelman's Calgary office, suggesting that TransCanada combat environmental groups by mounting one such manufactured “grassroots advocacy” campaign. Those environmentalists are ​currently organizing to oppose the Energy East pipeline, which TransCanada hopes will be an alternative to the long-delayed Keystone XL, on the grounds that it will disastrously boost carbon emissions and increase the likelihood of a major oil spill.

Edelman's plan is specifically designed to “[a]dd layers of difficulty for our opponents, distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources," according to the documents. It stresses developing “supportive third parties, who can in turn put the pressure on, especially when TransCanada can't.” In other words, the goal would be to attack environmentalists head on with supporters recruited by, but not necessarily directly affiliated with, Edelman and TransCanada.

In one document titled "Digital Grassroots Advocacy Implementation Plan" and dated May 20th, 2014, Edelman explain that its "Grassroots Mobilization Program”—an astroturfing campaign by any other name—should begin with an “action center website." The document also suggests using a “technologically distinct subdomain” like action.energyeastpipeline.com. Come November, that very site is live, and it is run by TransCanada.

[badtoworse]

1. Opponents of a project are organized and aren't always completely transparent either.

Neither side has clean hands when it comes to environmental policy and conflict.

[Scuba]

2. But there's a significant difference - one side has altruistic motives, the other greed.

[badtoworse]

4. Sometimes environmentalists are zealots, oblivious to the impact their agenda has on ordinary people

I like to have reasonably priced gas for my car and I like to heat my home with reasonably priced natural gas. Many environmentalists want the opposite - expensive fuel that would it a hardship for many people to do those things. We have the opportunity to bring jobs back to the US with our big advantage in energy costs. Again, the environmentalist agenda ignores that. BTW, they can be just as deceptive as any other group - Gasland, for example, was a crock.

Greed is a pajorative that is not fair. What would you expect an energy company to be doing? I would expect them to satisfy the needs of their customers and deliver good returns to their shareholders - that's what business does.

To be fair, environmentalists have accomplished a lot of good things. Power generation is far cleaner today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Same with water quality. I could go, but suffice to say that I recognize that a lot of positive things have been accomplished.

I've been in the electric power business for more than 30 years and I'm pretty tuned into what's going on with environmental regulation. I see both sides the issue. My own view is that there is a need to balance the interests of all the stakeholders, but that is not a view I see shared by environmentalists very often.

[Scuba]

5. Wow, you sure have been drinking the kool-ade at work, haven't you?

[badtoworse]

7. In my experience, virtually all energy infrastructure gets opposed by environmentalists.

I don't want to live in a cave.

[RiverLover]

6. Does your view of "balance" face the fatal reality of fossil fuels impact?

If the carbon emissions from fossil fuels are allowed to continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, the science of what will happen sooner or later is relatively clear, even if its exact timetable remains in question:this world will be destabilized as will humanity (along with countless other species). We could, at the worst, essentially burn ourselves off Planet Earth. This would prove a passing event for the planet itself, but not for us, nor for any fragment of humanity that managed to survive in some degraded form, nor for the civilizations we’ve developed over thousands of years.

In other words, unlike “the news,” climate change and its potential devastations exist on a time scale not congenial either to media time or to the individual lifetimes of our short-lived species. Great devastations and die-offs have happened before. Give the planet a few million years and life of many sorts will regenerate and undoubtedly thrive. But possibly not us.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21618-ending-the-world-the-human-way-climate-change-as-the-anti-news#

I know we like to stick our heads in the sand, but this is serious. We are literally killing future generations & all life forms on the planet. Its not extreme to think so. Its reality

[Octafish]

3. I don't remember Greenpeace spoiling the Gulf of Mexico.

I do remember them pointing out how Conservative Greedheads made sure in 1971 we'd get to today's USA where Money is Speech and trumps Peace:

The Lewis Powell Memo - A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

The author, a lawyer who made a killing protecting Big Tobacco from Uncle Sam, for his trouble got nominated to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon, traitor and crook.