[Moving the big polluters out of the crime scene by focusing on
the individual is a proven PR or public relations (read: propaganda)
con, a manipulative trick. It is a cunning move by industry – in
short, a con.]
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CORPORATE PR & GLOBAL WARMING – THE BIG CON  
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Thomas Klikauer
October 3, 2023
Counterpunch
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_ Moving the big polluters out of the crime scene by focusing on the
individual is a proven PR or public relations (read: propaganda) con,
a manipulative trick. It is a cunning move by industry – in short, a
con. _

, Matt Palmer

 

_Switch off your light for an hour at home_
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the environmentalist World Wildlife Funds asks of you. Since 2007, WWF
has conducted a global campaign to convince individuals to turn off
their lights for one hour, on one day of the year. It seeks to
individualize global warming while diverting attention away from the
big polluters
[[link removed]].

Moving the big polluters out of the crime scene by focusing on the
individual is a proven PR or public relations
[[link removed]]
(read: propaganda) con, a manipulative trick. It is a cunning move by
industry – in short, a con. The term _con_
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_contekier_ – as in _discord_ and to be _in strife_.

What the con of corporate PR
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does, is simply manipulation. This is corporate PR’s _raison
d’être_ anyway. It is a fraud, a swindle, a ploy to hoodwink the
public [[link removed]], or as the German
philosopher Adorno [[link removed]] would
say, it is a prime example of _mass deception_
[[link removed]]. Corporate PR wants you
to believe that _toxic sludge is good for you_
[[link removed]].

It follows the deceptive ideology of _“do your bit”._ To achieve
this, WWF’s campaign was invented by a commercial advertising
company called Leo Burnett
[[link removed]] that worked for
Heinz, McDonalds, and Philip Morris – which of course, the tobacco
corporation had nothing to do with the fact that
[[link removed]]
during the 20th century,

_there were 100 million tobacco-related deaths_

_and it is anticipated that as many as 1 billion people_

_will die from tobacco in the current century._

Back at the climate change con, the feel-good _Earth Hour Campaign_
[[link removed]] – generously supported by the global
good-doing elite
[[link removed]]
– aims to convey a symbolic “con” message that individual
actions will protect the natural environment.

Similarly, corporate PR has convinced many that there is something
called clean coal
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then there is also renewable natural gas
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renewable nuclear energy
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– a French favorite. Yet, the best of all is that there isn’t
_global warming_
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or global heating
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just climate change
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And of course, there is no planetary death machine
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that is set in motion by capitalism
[[link removed]] moving us towards the
capitalocene [[link removed]] with the
climate hell [[link removed]], as our
final destination
[[link removed]].

Corporate PR firms effectively have made sure that the insane
[[link removed]] concepts of PR have
become taken-for-granted points in the climate change debate. In a
further sign of _Madness and Civilization_
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debate on global warming.

We have known the influence of corporations like ExxonMobil, Koch
Enterprises, etc. on the debate. Their official, not so official
[[link removed]],
and dark money [[link removed]] pay for
reactionary think tanks like the Heartland Institute
[[link removed]], the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and
many more. Some of them even run public opinions manipulating
astroturfing
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campaigns.

Unfortunately for us but very fortunately for them, these shady PR
agencies are hardly ever examined. Their influence
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nebulous and hazy. Not surprisingly, the “work”(!) of PR firms
requires that they remain invisible keeping a low profile when it
comes to creating unscrupulous _communications efforts_ – read:
manipulation efforts .

Yet, the worst offenders are corporate PR firms such as Edelman
[[link removed]],
Glover Park
[[link removed]],
Cerrell
[[link removed].], and
Ogilvy
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They seek dominance in the public sphere by wanting to manipulate our
understanding of public issues like global warming.

Over the last century, PR has become increasingly dominated by a
handful of large PR firms. It follows the concentration of economic
power in the hands of a few corporations. This enables such
well-resourced corporations, and their PR–henchmen to become
dominant advocates on global warming.

Instead of a democratic forum, the public sphere has become
increasingly dominated by powerful PR firms and corporate mass-media
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This is often ideologically camouflaged as free speech.

Corporations and their PR firms have a distinct advantage based on
sufficient economic, political, organizational, and ideological
capacities to generate publicity campaigns on behalf of corporate
interests.

Much of this goes back to Poison Ivy
[[link removed]] – Ivy Lee – a
manipulative press agent doing the dirty work for John D. Rockefeller
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Standard Oil. Yet, the true mastermind of mass deception remains
Edward Bernays [[link removed]].

One of their early tasks was to fight the publication of biologist
Rachel Carson [[link removed]]’s
research on the toxic legacy of chemical pesticides.

Immediately, chemical corporations and PR firms launched a massive PR
campaign to sow doubt about Carson’s methods and findings. Today, we
know them as merchants of doubt
[[link removed]]. Ever since, be it
tobacco [[link removed]], sugar, global
warming, etc., sowing doubt has become a proven method of corporate
PR.

Between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s, corporate PR firms have
cranked up advocacy structures to anticipate, fight, prevent, and
possibly destroy environmental policies. Their power and influence can
never be matched by underfunded environmental movement and NGOs.

Given the colossal uncompetitive advantage gained through their PR
campaigns, it has become rather common practice for corporations to
employ PR firms to conduct misinformation and disinformation
[[link removed]]
campaigns.

These politico-manipulative campaigns constitute major investments of
corporate resources ranging from $10 million to in excess of $100
million a year for a single PR campaign. It is corporate propaganda
with the single-minded and very ideological purpose of bringing a
so-called _target audience_ (read: us) to adopt to a pre-conceived
attitude and belief that has been selected well in advance by a
corporation.

The idea is to frame or reframe
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environmental issues, so that – even the attitudes of social
movement on global warming
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become linked to individual behavior rather than the toxic
[[link removed]] behavior of corporation
[[link removed]]
– the _Toxic 100!_ [[link removed]]

To do that, a complex network of organizations, think tanks, public
relations firms has been formed to develop and disseminate accidental
misinformation, and worse, deliberate disinformation about global
warming. Beyond that, the agency of corporate polluters also has a
significant impact on media coverage.

For example, there once even was a PR campaign in which – and in
partnership with WWF
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American Cattleman’s Association promotes the consumption of beef
[[link removed]].

Yet, the Global Climate Coalition
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group opposing global warming – once hired E. Bruce Harrison
[[link removed]] – the Godfather
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of anti-environmental propaganda.

Until 2020, The top 20 corporations
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such anti-environmental PR campaigns are: General Electric, Royal
Dutch Shell, BP, Siemens, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Mobil Oil, Edison
Electric Institute, CSX Transportation, American Iron and Steel
Institute, National Grid, American Petroleum Institute, Union Pacific,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Southern Company, Duke Energy,
Exelon, Enron, Nature Conservancy, and ConEd.

Meanwhile, the top-20 PR
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working for them are: Edelman, Caplan, Weber Shandwick, Cerrell, Hill
& Knowlton, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Ogilvy, Ketchum, Charles Ryan, DF
King, Jasculca Terman, GCI Group, Potomac Comms, Kamber, Kearns &
West, Manning Selvage & Lee, Porter Novelli, Rowland Communications,
Singer Associates, and The Marino Organization.

In the end, it is safe to say that PR firms are major _con artists_ in
distorting, framing, and manipulating the issue of global warming.
They ran short-lived propaganda campaigns as well as misinformation
and disinformation crusades
[[link removed]] that run over for many
years. The influence of PR firms in virtually all industry sectors is
widespread.

Yet, the euphemistically labeled utilities sector
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greatest use of PR firms. Beyond that, there is a marked concentration
of PR firms in each sector of the industry. PR firms tend to
specialize in _“representing”_ specific sectors. Meanwhile, a
handful of larger PR firms are widely engaged in
political-manipulative activities
[[link removed]].

Overall, their PR campaigns seek to crank up the image of an entire
sector and its polluting corporations
[[link removed]]. While the direct
political impact of their campaigns is hard to determine, they have,
nevertheless, a sustained cultural impact pushing ideas like _coal
country_ and _carbon footprint_
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Today, the latter is taken-for-granted – a stunning success for
corporate PR.

What corporate PR certainly does is shifting the debate. They do this
by framing global warming
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environmental policy making. To achieve that, many PR campaigns aim to
shift public opinion – directly or indirectly.

Given what is available to the public, it remains virtually impossible
to connect specific PR companies with specific manipulative PR
campaigns. In other words, the system is set up to protect the system
– the system of capitalism
[[link removed]].

Clearly, the setting up of effective PR by corporations has become an
essential part of virtually all efforts to manipulate climate policy.
Being able to successfully circulate the corporate narrative allows
anti-environmental PR to set the terms that can define the debate to
favor the _planetary death machine_
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Worse, corporate PR firms can be expected to continue to keep the foot
on the accelerator until we have reached climate hell
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The usual suspects of ExxonMobil, Koch Enterprises, the Heartland
Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Edelman, Glover Park,
Cerrell, and Ogilvy will make sure that the captions on a New Yorker
cartoon
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become true. It read, _yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a
beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders!
_

Thomas Klikauer is the author of _German Conspiracy Fantasies._
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* Corporate Climate Policy; Corporate Polluters; Corporate Public
Relations;
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