Angry in the Great White North

There is a new coal-fired power plant in the works in England, and environmentalists are up in arms.  The company building the plant E.ON has hired the public relations firm Edelman to help:

Over the next week, campaigners from around the United Kingdom will converge on the site of a proposed expansion of the coal-fired Kingsnorth Power Station and participate in civil disobedience protests. The company behind the proposal, E.ON UK, a subsidiary of the German energy company E.ON, is so worried by the prospect of the planned civil disobedience campaign that it has hired the PR firm Edelman, to see if it can help ensure that the company's proposal retains government support.

Like so many companies, E.ON UK gushes about its corporate social responsibility program and proclaims that it is "working towards low carbon energy" and that "climate change is an important issue for society." It sounds reassuring, but the reality is much more disturbing.

When E.ON UK prepared its environmental impact statement to try and justify its decision to build two new 800 megawatt coal fired units at the site of the existing Kingsnorth power station, it supplied 253 pages of information. This includes almost 50 pages on ecological issues, 16 pages on transport issues and another 20 on noise issues. While all these are important aspects that need to be addressed, the fact that E.ON devotes only 54 words to addressing the issue of carbon dioxide emissions from the plant is testimony to their arrogance.

"Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide have been identified as playing a major role in Global Warming. The efficiency of the new units will be greater than the plant efficiency of the existing Kingsnorth power station. Thus the new units will emit less CO2 per GWh of electricity produced than the existing Kingsnorth power station," is all the company's report states (PDF, page 44).

The article goes on about global warming and carbon dioxide.  And so and so forth.

Let's get to something interesting and demonstrably true, and that is the role of the David Suzuki Foundation in all this.

Is the David Suzuki Foundation getting involved in the protest?  No.

Is the David Suzuki Foundation releasing a report to counter the E.ON impact statement?  No.

The David Suzuki Foundation is providing cover to the PR firm Edelman, credibility that is being transferred over to the Kingsnorth public relations effort:

As hundreds and possibly thousands of people prepare to protest against the Kingsnorth proposal, it is easy to see why E.ON is looking to Edelman for PR salvation. And it is no surprise that Edelman took the account. After all, Edelman has worked for odious clients such as the tobacco industry, hyped dot com companies before the "tech wreck," tried to defend Microsoft when it was being sued in the U.S. for anti-trust violations, and helped Wal-Mart with its front group, Working Families for Wal-Mart. Not surprisingly, campaigners for a Kingsnorth-free future have already protested outside the company's London office.

While Edelman's London office has been busy trying to defend what could be the biggest new carbon dioxide emitter in the United Kingdom, Edelman Canada has been gushing about going "carbon neutral" after it landed an account with the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), an environmental group. Edelman Canada states that it will "provide insights on Quebecer's perceptions of environmental issues and counsel DSF on how to engage them and other decision-makers." (Why the David Suzuki Foundation is hiring a PR firm, let alone one that across the Atlantic is trying to defend the indefensible, is an interesting question in itself.)

Edelman, of course, aims to win both ways. In Canada, it wants to use its work for an environmental group to lure more corporate clients receptive to the company's spiel about facilitating "dialogue" with non-profit groups. ("Dialogue" is PR-speak for divide and conquer.) In the "Corporate Citizenship" section of its global website, Edelman states that it has appointed Alice Hogueisson as Global Environmental Manager "to champion our commitment" to the environment, adding that she will be involved in "reducing Edelman's global energy consumption and decrease our overall CO2 footprint."

Here's a free tip for Alice. Pick up the phone, call the CEO of Edelman UK, Robert Phillips, and tell him to advise E.ON to scrap the Kingsnorth and other coal-fired power station proposals. More importantly, if they don't, drop the E.ON account and issue a media release stating why. With two calls Edelman could help spare the planet several hundred million tonnes of carbon dioxide. And then it could start looking through the rest of its client list, too.

A bit of a stretch?  Perhaps.  But then it's not me who is saying any of this.  This the Center for Media and Democracy which is tearing into the David Suzuki Foundation for aiding and abetting the public relations campaign for Kingsnorth power plant.

The David Suzuki Foundation retained Edelman back in June, so this would be a matter of the Foundation issuing a warning to Edelman that taking on the Kingsnorth account would require the Foundation to terminate their relationship with Edelman.

That hasn't happened.

Instead, the Center for Media and Democracy mock the value of being associated with the David Suzuki Foundation:

But the odds are that Alice and Robert won't make the calls that they should. If Edelman prefers to take E.ON's money and run a hypocritical line on reducing its carbon footprint, it should at least include the following paragraph in its next corporate social responsibility report:

"We changed a few lightbulbs, did a little more video conferencing than we otherwise would have and whacked out a few media releases about how we were going carbon neutral. This made us feel a little better about ourselves and helped make clients feel a bit better about us too. But this was all froth and bubble. It amounted to nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions we helped create when we worked for E.ON defending the proposed Kingsnorth and other coal-fired power stations."

Change a few lightbulbs?  A little more video conferencing?  That bit of mockery was as a direct result of the David Suzuki Foundation work:

"It's an honour to be working with such a high-profile, science-based environmental organization. The David Suzuki Foundation is a leader in raising awareness and providing policy recommendations on the environment, specifically in the area of nature conservation, climate change and sustainability, which is something that we also do within our practice," said William L. George, Senior Vice President and National Practice Leader, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. "Edelman is a pioneer in the area of engaging citizens and decision-makers in social and environmental issues and we are proud to help DSF in this endeavour."

To demonstrate their leadership and commitment to being a true partner, Edelman Canada (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver) has become carbon neutral. A formal audit of the Edelman Canada offices was done by a partner of the David Suzuki Foundation, Planetair, a non-for-profit service dedicated to raising awareness of individuals, corporations, and institutions about how their day-today activities impact upon our global climate, fostering behavioural changes required to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and call for actions to offset GHG emissions that cannot be effectively reduced.

As far as Bob Burton, managing editor of SourceWatch, is concerned, this is all pure spin cooked up by Edelman, spin that is helping E.ON sell the Kingsnorth power plant, spin being played up as credible by the relationship with David Suzuki Foundation.  And for Burton, that makes the people running the David Suzuki Foundation either witless pawns or cynical hypocrites.

I suppose there isn't enough evidence to decide which.