I wanted to share this frightening article with the
list. Sorry for the formatting. I enclose the web
link, but I'm not sure whether you will be able to
access it (I subscribe to Salon.com's "premium"
service).
Cheers,
Laurie Belin
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/01/22/grist_dems/index.html
Manufacturing the environment
When industry flaks need to learn how to
spin not-so-eco-friendly election issues, they go to
an environmental
conference.
From
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By Amanda Griscom
Jan. 22, 2004 | This morning, some 50
people powwowed in the chandeliered Ticonderoga
conference room of the
Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill for
a conference titled "Environmental Issues 2004: How to
Get Results in an
Election Year." There weren't more than
a handful of environmentalists in attendance --
perhaps because the
conference was hosted by the National
Association of Manufacturers, known to be one of the
most anti-environment
industry groups in the country. The
great attraction of the affair (which cost up to $150
a head) was its keynote
speaker -- not an industry kingpin, not
a bigwig GOP pollster like Frank Luntz, but U.S. EPA
administrator Mike
Leavitt.
Leavitt's headliner status was peculiar
given the focus of the conference: how to craft
pro-industry environmental
messages to influence the 2004
elections. And this was only Leavitt's second speaking
engagement outside the EPA
since he took the agency's helm. The
first was his address two weeks ago to another
industry group, the Edison
Electric Institute, which all reporters
but one were barred from attending. "Leavitt's NAM
appearance reaffirms, if
nothing else, that his heart is with
industry -- the corporate folks are the ones he's
making time for," said Frank
O'Donnell, executive director of the
Clean Air Trust.
Conference organizers unabashedly
described the event as a tutorial to help industry
representatives bone up on their
public messaging skills as they prepare
to face off against environmentalists in the cutthroat
media circus of an
election year. "Many of our members run
businesses in arenas to which media is not, shall we
say, sympathetic,"
said NAM spokesperson Darren McKinney
just before the event. "In general terms, we are
hoping to provide our
members with an education about how
environmental stories are created and reported, and
how the creation has an
effect on the political process in an
election year."
McKinney insisted that NAM is just
trying to play the same game as the "Sierra Club,
sky-is-falling crowd." As he
explained it, "We're all part of the
same ballgame, we have the same goals -- to get our
message out through the
media, make our case as best we can, and
convince voters to get the type of policymakers in
office who will see
things our way."
Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the
Electric Reliability Coordinating Council
and one of the most oft-quoted industry
apologists in the media, spoke on a
conference panel titled "Crafting
Environmental Messages." Before the event,
he told Muckraker that "industry is
never going to have an advantage over the
enviros in the media -- the enviros are
always going to be able to say 'you are
killing children' or they'll play the
asthma card. They'll make these highly
emotionally charged claims -- claims
that will get more melodramatic in an
election year."
When Muckraker pressed Maisano to
outline his strategy for crafting messages,
he described a three-pronged approach:
1) distill the regulatory reform in
question to its simplest terms and give
some easy analogies; 2) explain why the
reform is needed and how it will
streamline the system, create jobs, balance
economic concerns and so forth; and 3)
explain that it will actually improve the
environment. "You can take a lot of the
issues and use this approach," he said.
"Whether it's ANWR or MTBE or efficient
air conditioners or whatever, you
can replace the parts. Simplicity has to
come through. The messages can't be
complex." Maisano conceded that he
cannot in all situations argue that there is
an environmental advantage to the
reforms he advocates, but insisted that in
most cases he can.
Another conference participant was Greg
Casey, CEO of BIPAC, a political action committee with
a mission to elect
business-friendly politicians to public
office. "Obviously I come from a slightly biased point
of view," he told
Muckraker. "I represent the political
interests of the American business community. My
message is: Now is the time
for our message and our messaging
mechanisms [for reaching voters] to mature."
Casey advised executives not to simply
direct their messages to the media -- which he
believes to be a losing battle --
but to direct them closer to home: "My
suggestion to the business community is you have a
natural, affinity-driven
relationship with those folks who are
your employees, your stockholders, your customers,
your suppliers, and your
investors. Messages on the environment
-- and the impact of environmental regulations on
industry -- should be
directed through personal e-mails and
newsletters to these folks who really want to believe
their business leaders, and
who have a stake in those issues."
So what did Leavitt have to say on these
matters? Well, nothing. He delivered a stump speech
that was totally
detached from the focus of the
conference. In an upbeat tone, he assured
manufacturers that environmental quality in
the United States has advanced by leaps
and bounds in the past 30 years and that it's time to
move beyond
command-and-control regulations. "We
need to do [environmental policy] in a better way that
doesn't compromise
our economic competitiveness," he
declared.
One of the few enviros at the
conference, Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense
Council, found it troubling
that audience members -- executives and
flaks from companies such as Halliburton and
Bristol-Myers Squibb --
seemed oblivious to the implications of
the policy changes they want to spin. "Over and over
people said, 'We keep
hearing that this is the worst
administration in history, so how do we sell our
message? How do we snooker people?
How do we fight back in the messaging
wars?'" said Perks. "It was as if it totally didn't
register in their minds that a
regulatory crisis was occurring at all.
The sole concern was putting a good mask on it."
Rollbacks and regulations
While NAM officials may not fancy much
of what they read in the media these days, they should
be tickled pink by a
report titled "Manufacturing in
America," released by the Commerce Department on
Friday, which calls for rollbacks
of environmental and other regulations.
The report complains that enviro regs soak up roughly
2 percent of the gross
domestic product created by the
manufacturing sector, and that the cost of these and
other rules is rising faster than
the sector's income -- not surprising,
perhaps, given that manufacturing income plateaued
during the recession of the
last two years.
A Small Business Administration study
cited in the report found that the cost to
manufacturers of complying with
regulations was $147 billion in 1997,
"or a cost per employee of $7,904." Environmental regs
accounted for nearly
half of that -- $69 billion in 1997, or
a per-employee cost of $3,691 -- while
workplace-safety rules, tax-compliance
regulations, and the like accounted for
the rest.
The report calls on the trusty White
House Office of Management and Budget to promptly
"evaluate ... proposed
reforms and, when appropriate, implement
those reforms on a priority basis." As Commerce
Secretary Donald Evans
explained when the report was released,
"This is our strategy to remove the barriers that are
holding back American
manufacturers and costing jobs."
In a public statement, NAM president
Jerry Jasinowski praised the report and complained
that because U.S.
manufacturers must comply with onerous
regulations, they carry a cost burden "22 percent
greater than our nine
major trading partners." According to
Larry Fineran, NAM's vice president of regulatory and
competition policy, the
report is consistent with the Bush
administration's "shift away from command-and-control
regulations in order to
improve America's competitive advantage
in the global marketplace."
"The Bush administration today has
broken new ground," Jasinowski
rhapsodized, "acknowledging that
manufacturing is vital to the nation's
economy, recognizing the unprecedented
challenges to our global leadership,
and recommending reforms to strengthen
our manufacturing competitiveness ...
This is the first time in modern history
that an administration has made
manufacturing in America a top national
priority."
What he didn't mention, of course, is
the trade-off: When the health of the
manufacturing industry becomes the top
priority, the health of the public at large
may get the shaft.
Slush sucks
With the New Hampshire primaries looming
large, local activists are in high
gear trying to get environmental policy
concerns a prominent spot on the
presidential candidates' agendas. More
than 500 such activists are operating
within a group known as the Carbon
Coalition, which is coordinating all
manner of grass-roots activity -- from
door-to-door canvassing to direct
meetings with campaign officers -- to
convince candidates that their commitment
to curbing global warming will be a
defining issue in this primary.
"We've made a lot of headway in the last
month," said Adam Markham,
executive director of Clean Air-Cool
Planet and a charter signatory of the coalition. "Most
of the candidates weren't
mentioning global warming in their early
stump speeches, but now they are putting a lot of
emphasis on Kyoto,
energy independence, and domestic
carbon-reduction programs."
The "Live Free or Die" state is an
appropriate setting for this sort of climate-change
rabble-rousing. In 2001, New
Hampshire became the first state in the
nation to implement a mandatory cap on carbon dioxide
emissions from
power plants with its Clean Power Act. A
year earlier, it implemented the nation's first
greenhouse gas registry so
companies and institutions could begin
tracking their CO2 emissions, laying the groundwork
for a cap-and-trade
system. New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine
also recently coordinated on a study predicting the
environmental and
economic problems that global warming
could cause in their states; the study concluded that
disruptions to their
coveted fall foliage, ski resorts, and
maple-tapping season were not only bound to happen,
but already in the works.
"Ten years ago, we were predicting what
might occur [as a result of global warming], and now
we're just listing off
what's already begun to happen --
impacts on the Northern Forest ecosystem, changes in
the high alpine habitats of
the White Mountains, changes in the
maple-syrup industry because tapping season is
happening earlier every year,"
said Markham. "There are also clear
changes in ice and snow conditions that are no small
concern for our skiing and
snowboarding industry."
The Carbon Coalition has distributed
thousands of posters around the state in preparation
for the primaries,
emblazoned with such slogans as "Save
Our Syrup" and "Slush Sucks." The group is also
working with the
National Ski Areas Association to
promote "Sustainable Slopes Day" and with NRDC on the
ski campaign "Keep
Winter Cool," which will be launched
after the primary. Over the next week, a PBS
documentary titled "Climate
Change: In Our Backyard" will air in New
Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, chronicling the visible
and predicted
impacts of global warming in New
England.
So far, Markham said, the candidate who
has been most enthusiastic about addressing
environmental and
climate-change concerns is Sen. John
Kerry, D-Mass., victor in the Iowa caucuses. Kerry
boasts a 96 percent
lifetime voting record from the League
of Conservation Voters, outscoring all of the other
candidates. (Connecticut
Sen. Joe Lieberman comes in second with
93 percent.) Kerry also has an aggressive energy plan,
which proposes to
get America's renewable-energy
generation up to 20 percent of our total production
portfolio by 2020. For the inside
scoop on Kerry's environmental record,
his plan for energy independence, and his beloved
Harley Davidson Wide
Glide, have a look at the Grist
interview with Kerry. (Also take a gander at Grist's
interviews with other candidates
and determine who should, in the
electoral sense, live free or die.)
Muck it up
Here at Muckraker, we always try to keep
our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground (a real
physiognomic
challenge). The more sources we have,
the better -- so if you are a fellow lantern-bearer in
the dark caverns of the
Bush administration's environmental
policy, let us know. We welcome rumors, tips,
whistleblowing, insider info,
top-secret documents, or other useful
tidbits on developments in environmental policy and
the people behind them.
Please send 'em along to
[log in to unmask]
-------------------
For more environmental news, sign up for
Grist Magazine's free e-mail service.
salon.com
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Amanda Griscom is a columnist for Grist
Magazine.
Her articles on energy, technology and
the
environment have appeared in
publications ranging
from Rolling Stone to the New York Times
Magazine.
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