Saturday, September 17, 2022

Zoo troubles: The plight of two pandas lays bare the flaws

Animals in zoos suffer greatly and are exploited for entertainment under the guise of education and conservation.

Florence Foo, Si Cheng, Taciana Santiago, and Brittany Michelson

September 16, 2022

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Florence Foo, Si Cheng, and Taciana Santiago are members of Panda Voices, created in early 2021 by an international group of panda fans from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, brought together by concerns over pandas YaYa and LeLe. The organization is committed to giving voice to the voiceless and promoting the humane treatment of animals in captivity through advocacy and services. Brittany Michelson is the captive animals campaigner at In Defense of Animals. She is a dedicated animal rights activist, the founder of Desert Oasis Turtle & Tortoise Sanctuary, and the editor of the anthology Voices for Animal Liberation: Inspirational Accounts by Animal Rights Activists (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

Zoos are often viewed as places of entertainment where humans can appreciate the beauty of the various species that can be found in different ecosystems on the planet. Many parents take their children to visit these facilities to let them experience being close to animals, educate them about the species, and emphasize the importance of protecting them. The reality of this seemingly ideal scenario is, however, much more complex and appalling. Animals in zoos suffer greatly and are exploited for entertainment under the guise of education and conservation.

While zoos claim they help to educate the public by giving people an opportunity to observe diverse animals and are also commonly seen as having a role to play in species conservation since they often conduct research and breed animals, at the end of the day they are businesses, and like any other business, they are mainly driven by profits. Vested interests and hidden agendas often determine the treatment of animals in zoos, which heavily impacts the animals’ welfare, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Animals in captivity do not face the challenges and the different stimulations that their counterparts who live in the wild encounter daily. Consequently, they need special enrichment such as toys, different foods and smells, and artificial challenges—like food hiding—to mentally stimulate their senses, deal with boredom, and help these animals live as happily and comfortably as they can in captivity.

Apart from the requirement of providing high-quality food and nutrition for the animals, the quality of enclosures and yards is also extremely important, as small areas and the lack of enrichment leads to stress, suffering, and the development of a mental illness called zoochosis among animals living in captivity. This is commonly seen in zoos when animals display stereotypical behaviors. These are abnormal and repetitive behaviors such as pacing, walking in circles, banging their heads, excessive licking, playing with their own tongues, walking backward, self-harm, and other atypical habits. These behaviors are the ways in which zoo animals cope with the stress of captivity, be it related to small enclosures, long hours of caging, insufficient quality/palatable food, and several other factors.

In the case of pandas who are confined in small enclosures that often lack enrichment or any kind of stimulus or challenge for long periods, are often kept in the enclosures without access to larger external yards where they can roam, and are not given the opportunity to meet and interact with others from their group, these circumstances often lead to challenges in mating and therefore breeding. Consequently, zoos often use invasive methods like artificial insemination to maintain breeding programs.

The consequences of depriving animals of their natural habitats and forcing them to face experiences that go against their instinctive behavior can cause great harm to them, which can sometimes be irreversible. In the name of human entertainment, these zoo animals are deprived of everything “that [makes] life interesting and enjoyable” for them.

Moreover, like humans, the diet requirements, health needs, and even tastes of these animals may change as they get older. If the costs of caring for the animals are high, zoos may not be able to meet these requirements for aging animals. Consequently, it is common that these facilities do not follow the age-appropriate diet/nutrition required, resulting in animals appearing thin and malnourished, which leads to serious health problems as shown in a video of the female giant panda YaYa at the Memphis Zoo. YaYa is one of a pair of giant pandas both suffering from zoochosis and malnourishment; the other panda is a male called LeLe.

YaYa and LeLe’s heartbreaking agony and distress in Memphis Zoo has received enormous media attention, especially in February 2022 when Oscar-winning singer Billie Eilish tweeted her support for animal protection organizations who are asking for the immediate return of the pandas to a sanctuary in their home country of China. The vegan singer and songwriter’s support, followed by an official statement released by Memphis Zoo claiming that their pandas are given excellent care “and were both in good health,” brought on heated debates on social media with many questioning the definition of “good” treatment for captive animals, and whether zoos really are the best place to keep them.

The female giant panda YaYa, born in August 2000, and the male giant panda LeLe, born in July 1998, were sent to Memphis Zoo in 2003, and ever since then, for almost two decades, they have been living in small internal enclosures and sharing just one external yard. As pandas are solitary animals, YaYa and LeLe take turns using the yard.

Over the years, panda lovers have noticed a significant deterioration in both pandas’ appearance as a result of the zoo’s negligent treatment. It is apparent to visitors that their enclosures are lacking in enrichment. Interactions between the keepers and YaYa and LeLe are rarely seen. They are both very thin and often show signs of mental distress. YaYa has mites all over her body and patches of shedding fur. She has experienced several artificial inseminations over the years and had at least three miscarriages. As far as food is concerned, the quality of bamboo given to them is often yellow and dry. Consequently, they refuse to eat it and keep begging for food every day. Pandas tend to be very particular about their food as they have a good sense of smell and only eat selective types of fresh bamboo. Ninety-nine percent of pandas’ diet is bamboo so the bamboo has to be fresh; “[P]andas turn up their noses at dry or wilted leaves and discolored stalks.”

In a statement released by the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens (CAZG), one of the institutions responsible for the loan contract of pandas between Memphis Zoo and China, the association raised important concerns related to the pandas’ health. The text stated that after medical examinations conducted in 2021 and January 2022, it was concluded that both pandas are underweight, especially YaYa; the female also has fur loss due to chronic Demodex mites, and Lele has several broken molars.

There are signs of stereotypical behaviors displayed by both animals, which is their way of expressing their mental suffering. It is not hard to witness YaYa pacing around her enclosure over and over while shaking her head and displaying self-harming behavior, or LeLe sitting and playing with his tongue and even roaring in anger after a long wait without any response. More alarming is how long both pandas’ suffering has lasted. A clip on YouTube shows that the pandas’ mental distress and abnormal behaviors began as early as 2007. With no mention of actual intervention and in-depth in situ investigations having been conducted into these behavioral patterns, the inaction of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) contributes to the zoo’s neglect of the animals’ natural demands and well-being.

Memphis Zoo claims that the pandas have aged, and therefore, their appearance and problems are normal as per their age since YaYa is 21 years old and LeLe is 23 years old. However, YaYa and LeLe are actually among the youngest pandas found in the U.S., and there are many examples of older pandas in China who look much healthier than YaYa and LeLe.

Compared to their counterparts in the wild, pandas in captivity have much longer life spans. The oldest captive panda lived to 38 years of age. This, therefore, demonstrates that YaYa and LeLe’s age does not justify their frail health. This raises questions about whether Memphis Zoo has at any point customized their diet according to the age, health, and dietary needs of both pandas. For example, elderly pandas in China who have dental issues are provided with a nutritious soft diet, such as a certain amount of bamboo shoots, a salad-like combination of vegetables, grains, bamboo leaves, dietary supplements, and pre-cut bamboo culm, which is easier to bite. On the contrary, at Memphis Zoo, most times the bamboo given to both pandas is non-preprocessed bamboo culm which is hard and thick and sometimes even yellow and dry. Not only is the bamboo hard to bite, especially for LeLe who has dental issues, but also the yellow bamboo also appears stale.

YaYa and LeLe will, no doubt, have a better life at the Dujiangyan base of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, their home country, which features the best environment for pandas, the best bamboo for them, and hosts the best panda vets and experts. In one video, it is possible to see that pandas are treated with love, kindness and respect in this sanctuary, which is the world’s largest nursing home for pandas. The indoor enclosure is merely an indoor room that has bars as a barrier to protect the keepers while they feed the pandas. The pandas have spacious external yards located near their natural habitat in the mountains.

The absence of suitable enclosures, enrichment, proper customized diets, and health care for these aging animals in the Memphis Zoo calls into question any benefits that the zoos claim they bring to species conservation and education. More often than not, animals in zoos are merely on display for human entertainment. The animals pay the price to entertain humans.

Animals who are born and bred in captivity, unfortunately, may not have the skills to survive in their natural habitats in the wild. However, instead of caging them and merely allowing them to survive, humans have the responsibility to help them feel at home and be themselves, so that they can thrive. This is even more important when they age and experience more challenges in their daily activities. Therefore, the animal sanctuaries that care for them with love and respect, and simply let them be themselves, are a better home for elderly animals and the ones who show obvious signs of not coping within the zoo environment. Rescued animals are given space in natural sanctuaries to heal in their own time and at their own pace.

Memphis Zoo is not necessarily representative of every zoo; however, it is a telling example of how much these animals suffer in these kinds of facilities. Captive animals need appropriate enclosures that are as natural as possible and provide plenty of space, a proper diet, good health care, and plenty of enrichment. Animals are much happier and healthier in places that focus on these aspects instead of profits. For example, enrichment is part of the experience at Gengda Wolong Panda Center, another sanctuary in Sichuan, China, which is near their natural habitat. Sanctuaries seem to provide the best environment for captive animals, as they respect animals, care about their mental and physical health, and customize their food according to age and dietary needs. Sanctuaries are where YaYa, LeLe, and other captive animals need to be to enjoy a life catered to their happiness instead of one meant to ensure their use for human entertainment.

Court ruled against USDA’s GMO QR code labeling requiring additional on-package labeling

“Today’s decision marks a key step toward ending the food industry’s deceptive and discriminatory GMO food labeling practices, which have kept consumers in the dark by concealing what’s in their products.”

Ashley Curtin

September 16, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

QR codes on labels of genetically engineered foods was ruled unlawful by a United States District Court this week. The United States Department of Agriculture is now required by a judge to add additional information and disclosure options to GMO foods under the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, which was passed in 2018.

The Center for Food Safety, which filed the lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2020 on behalf of a coalition of nonprofit organizations and retailers regarding QR code labeling, called the ruling a victory after an almost 20 year campaign for a federal GMO labeling law.

“This is a victory for all Americans,” Meredith Stevenson, Center for Food Safety (CFS) staff attorney and counsel in the case, said. “Today’s decision marks a key step toward ending the food industry’s deceptive and discriminatory GMO food labeling practices, which have kept consumers in the dark by concealing what’s in their products.”

The court ruled that USDA’s decision to only allow for electronic or digital disclosure on packaging, also known as “QR code” or “smartphone” labeling, and no additional on-package labeling, was a “significant error,” the Center for Food and Safety reported. The USDA was in violation of the law in allowing QR codes only on packaging when the agency found them to be “insufficient,” the court ruled.

The court wrote that “in mandating a study on the accessibility of the electronic disclosure, and directing the USDA to act only if the electronic disclosure was determined to be inaccessible, Congress clearly intended for the USDA to provide ‘additional and comparable options’ to improve the accessibility of the electronic disclosure method.”

The USDA is now required by law to revise portions of the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard and add additional disclosure options to QR codes on GMO food packaging.

“This is a win for the American family,” Alan Lewis, vice president advocacy & governmental affairs for Natural Grocers, said. “They can now make fully informed shopping decisions instead of being forced to use detective work to understand what food labels are hiding. The public’s rejection of hidden GMOs has been weighed by the Court to be greater than the agrochemical industry’s desire to hide GMOs behind incomprehensible bureaucratic rules.”

Ashley Curtin
Ashley is an editor, social media content manager and writer at NationofChange. Before joining NoC, she was a features reporter at The Daily Breeze – a local newspaper in Southern California – writing a variety of stories on current topics including politics, the economy, human rights, the environment and the arts. Ashley is a transplant from the East Coast calling Los Angeles home.

No more sacrifices

We have become all too used to the notion that success only comes with sacrifice, even if this is anything but the truth for the wealthiest and most powerful Americans.

Liz Theoharis

September 16, 2022

SOURCETomDispatch

In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we’re assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.

We have become all too used to the notion that success only comes with sacrifice, even if this is anything but the truth for the wealthiest and most powerful Americans. After all, whether you focus on the gains of Wall Street or of this country’s best-known billionaires, the ever-rising Pentagon budget, or the endless subsidies to fossil-fuel companies, sacrifice is not exactly a theme for those atop this society. As it happens, sacrifice in the name of progress is too often relegated to the lives of the poor and those with little or no power. But what if, instead of believing that most of us must eternally “rob Peter to pay Paul,” we imagine a world in which everyone was in and no one out?

In that context, consider recent policy debates on Capitol Hill as the crucial midterm elections approach. To start with, the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promises real, historic advances when it comes to climate change, health care, and fair tax policy. It’s comprehensive in nature and far-reaching not just for climate resilience but for environmental justice, too. Still, the legislation is distinctly less than what climate experts tell us we need to keep this planet truly livable.

In addition, President Biden’s cancellation of up to $20,000 per person in student loans could wipe out the debt of nearly half of all borrowers. This unprecedented debt relief demonstrates that a policy agenda lifting from the bottom is both compassionate and will stimulate the broader economy. Still, it, too, doesn’t go far enough when it comes to those suffocating under a burden of debt that has long served as a dead weight on the aspirations of millions.

In fact, a dual response to those developments and others over the past months seems in order. As a start, a striking departure from the neoliberal dead zone in which our politics have been trapped for decades should certainly be celebrated. Rather than sit back with a sense of satisfaction, however, those advances should only be built upon.

Let’s begin by looking under the hood of the IRA. After all, that bill is being heralded as the most significant climate legislation in our history and its champions claim that, by 2030, it will have helped reduce this country’s carbon emissions by roughly 40% from their 2005 levels. Since a reduction of any kind seemed out of reach not so long ago, it represents a significant step forward.

Among other things, it ensures investments of more than $60 billion in clean energy manufacturing; an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, and more; about $30 billion for grant and loan programs to speed up the transition to clean electricity; and $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund that will allow states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities so that they, too, can benefit from rooftop solar installations and other clean energy developments.

The IRA also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individual Americans through tax credits that will encourage purchases of energy-efficient homes, vehicles, and appliances. Among other non-climate-change advances, it caps out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, reduces health insurance premiums for 13 million Americans, and provides free vaccinations for seniors.

As the nation’s biggest investment in the climate so far, it demonstrates the willingness of the Biden administration to address the climate crisis. It also highlights just how stalled this country has been on that issue for so long and how much more work there is to do. Of course, given our ever hotter planet and the role this country has played in it as the historically greatest greenhouse gas emitter of all time, anything less than legislation that will lead to net-zero carbon emissions is a far cry from what’s necessary, as this country burns, floods, and overheats in a striking fashion.

Pipelines and sacrifice zones

Earlier iterations of what became the IRA recognized a historic opportunity to enact policies connecting the defense of the planet to the defense of human life and needs. Because of the resistance of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, as well as every Senate Republican, the final version of the reconciliation bill includes worrying sacrifices. It does not, for instance, have an extension or expansion of the Child Tax Credit, a lifeline for poor and low-income families, nor does it raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though that was a promise made in the 2020 election. Gone as well are plans for free pre-kindergarten and community college, in addition to the nation’s first paid family-leave program that would have provided up to $4,000 a month to cover births, deaths, and other pivotal moments in everyday life.

And don’t forget to add to what’s missing any real pain for fossil-fuel companies. After all, coal baron Manchin seems to have succeeded in cutting a side deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for a massive natural gas pipeline through his home state of West Virginia and that’s just to begin a list of concessions. Indeed, the sacrificial negotiations with Manchin to get the bill passed ensured significantly more domestic fossil-fuel production, including agreement that the Interior Department would auction off permits to drill for yet more oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and possibly elsewhere, all of which will offset some of the emissions reductions from climate-change-related provisions in the bill.

It’s important to note as well that, although progress was made on reducing fossil-fuel emissions, expanding health care, and creating a fairer tax system, for the poor in this country, “sacrifice zones” are hardly a thing of the past. As journalist Andrew Kaufman suggests, “One thing that does seem assured, however, is that the arrival — at last — of a federal climate law has not heralded an end to the suffering [of] communities living near heavy fossil-fuel polluters.” And as Rafael Mojica, program director for the Michigan environmental justice group Soulardarity, put it, the IRA “is riddled with concessions to the big carbon-based industries that at present prey on our communities at the expense of their health, both physically and economically.”

Keep in mind that Michigan is already anything but a stranger to sacrifice zones. Case in point: the water crisis in the city of Flint as well as in Detroit. The Flint Democracy Defense League and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization have battled lead-poisoning and water shut-offs for years in the face of deindustrialization and the lack of a right to clean water in this country. Such grassroots efforts helped sound the alarm during the Flint water crisis that began in 2014 and have since linked community groups nationwide dealing with high levels of toxins in their water supply so that they could learn from that city’s grassroots organizing experience. Meanwhile, so many years later, Michiganders are still protesting potential polluters like Enbridge’s aging Line 5 oil pipeline.

And there are many other examples of frontline community groups protesting the ways in which their homes are being sacrificed on the altar of the fossil-fuel industry. Take, for example, the communities in the stretch of Louisiana between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that contain hundreds of petrochemical facilities and has, eerily enough, come to be known as Cancer Alley. There, among a mostly poor and Black population, you can find some of the highest cancer rates in the country. In St. James Parish alone, there are 12 petrochemical plants and nearly every household has felt the impact of cancer. For years, Rise St. James and other local groups have been working to prevent the construction of a new plastics facility near local schools on land that once was a slave burial ground.

Then, of course, there are many other sacrifice zones where the issue isn’t fossil fuels. Take the city of Aberdeen in Grays Harbor County, Washington, once home to a thriving timber and lumber economy. After its natural landscape was stripped and the local economy declined, that largely white, rural community fell into endemic poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse. Chaplains on the Harbor, one of the few community organizations with a presence in homeless encampments across the county, has now started a sustainable farm run by formerly homeless and incarcerated young people in Aberdeen as part of an attempt to create models for the building of green communities in places rejected by so many.

Or take Oak Flat, Arizona, the holiest site for the San Carlos Apache tribe. There, a group called the Apache Stronghold is leading a struggle to protect that tribe’s sacred lands against harm from Resolution Copper, a multinational mining company permitted to extract minerals on those lands thanks to a midnight rider put into the National Defense Authorization Act in 2015. Along with a growing number of First Nations people and their supporters, it has been fighting to protect that land from becoming another sacrifice zone on the altar of corporate greed.

On the east coast, consider Union Hill, Virginia, where residents of a historic Black community fought for years to block the construction of three massive compressor stations for fracked gas flowing from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Those facilities would have potentially subjected residents to staggering amounts of air pollution, but early in 2020 community organizers won the fight to stop construction.

Consider as well the work of Put People First PA!, which, in Pennsylvania communities like Grant Township and Erie, is on the tip of the spear in the fight against an invasive and devastating fracking industry that’s ripping up land and exposing Pennsylvanians to the sort of pollutants that leaders in Union Hill fought to prevent. Note as well that, in many similar places, hospitals are being privatized or shuttered, leaving residents without significant access to health care, even as the risk of respiratory illnesses and other industrially caused diseases grows.

Such disparate communities reflect a long-term history of suffering — from the violence inflicted on indigenous people, to the slave plantations of the South, to the expansion (and then steep decline) of industrial production in the North and West, to pipelines still snaking across the countryside. And now historic pain inflicted on low-income and poor Americans will increase thanks to a growing climate crisis, as the people of flooded and drinking-water-barren Jackson, Mississippi, discovered recently.

In a world of megadroughts, superstorms, wildfires, and horrific flooding guaranteed to wreak ever more havoc on lives and livelihoods, poor and low-income people are beginning to demand action commensurate with the crisis at hand.

Dark clouds blowing in from the “equality state”

While reports on the passage of the IRA and student debt relief dominated the news cycle, another major policy announcement at the close of the summer and far from Capitol Hill slipped far more quietly into the news. It highlights yet again the “sacrifices” that poor Americans are implicitly expected to make to strengthen the economy. Just outside of Jackson, Wyoming, one of the wealthiest and most unequal towns in this country, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell committed his organization to take “forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply and to keep inflation expectations anchored.”

Couched in typically wonkish language, his comments — made in the “equality state” — may sound benign, but he was suggesting capping wages, an act whose effects will, in the end, fall most heavily on poor and low-income people. Indeed, he warned, mildly enough, that this would mean “some pain for households and businesses” — even as he was ensuring that the livelihoods of poor and low-income people would once again be sacrificed for what passes as the greater good.

What does it mean, for instance, to “moderate demand” for food when more than 12 million families with children are already hungry each month? It should strike us as wrong to call for “some pain” for so many households facing crises like possible evictions or foreclosures, crushing debt, and a lack of access to decent health care. It should be considered inhumane to advocate for a “softer labor market” when one in three workers is already earning less than $15 an hour.

It is disingenuous to say that the economy is “overheating,” as if what’s being experienced is some strange, abstract anomaly rather than the result of decades of disinvestment in infrastructure and social programs that could have provided the basic necessities of life for everyone. Nonetheless, Powell continues to push a false narrative of scarcity and the threat of inflation to smother the powerful resurgence of courageous and creative labor organizing that we’ve seen, miraculously enough, in these pandemic years.

At this point, as a pastor and theologian, I can’t resist quoting Jesus’s choice words in the Gospel of Matthew about how poor people so often pay the price for the further enrichment of the already wealthy. In Matthew 9, Jesus asserts: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The Greek word “mercy” is defined as loving kindness, taking care of the down and out. In Jesus’s parlance, mercy meant acts of mutual solidarity and societal policies that prioritized the needs of the poor, which would today translate into cancelling debts, raising wages, and investing in social programs.

Despite the encouraging policy-making that hit the headlines this summer, America remains a significant sacrifice zone with economic policies that justify their painful impact on the poor and marginalized as necessary for the greater good. It’s time for us to fight for a comprehensive, intersectional, bottom-up approach to the injustices that continually unfold around us.

House committee investigates the role of PR firms in spreading climate disinformation

There is a long history of PR firms creating and spreading climate disinformation in order to block climate policy and promote fossil fuel interests.

Nick Cunningham

September 16, 2022

SOURCEDeSmogBlog

On September 14, a congressional committee probed the history that PR firms have played in creating and spreading climate disinformation in order to block climate policy and promote fossil fuel interests.

The hearing, held by the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee Oversight & Investigations, invited several firms, including Singer Associates, Story Partners, and Pac/West Communications. None of them showed up.

Instead, the hearing heard from several witnesses, including experts in the PR industry. One of them was Christine Arena, a former VP at Edelman who now researches and exposes greenwashing and industry obfuscation. Arena laid out three overarching campaign strategies that PR firms use on behalf of their fossil fuel clients, citing a study from Brown University researchers Robert Brulle and Carter Werthman. Those strategies are corporate image promotion, third-party mobilization (astroturf groups), and delegitimization of the opposition.

“The U.S. oil and gas sector has always pushed for policies that allow for new fossil fuel expansion, and against policies that would reduce demand,” Arena said in a prepared testimony. “But what has changed recently is the intensity of the industry’s pursuits, and the vast resources it deploys through public relations and lobbying efforts meant to crush potential regulatory obstacles in its path.”

The oil industry and its hired PR hands continue to deploy these strategies. A recent example Arena cited was the oil industry’s effort to opportunistically seize on Russia’s war in Ukraine to promote long-standing policy wishes, while misleading the public by blaming climate policy for causing higher energy prices.

These tactics are especially aggressive at the state and local level, where “brute financial force” is used to kill off climate initiatives, Arena added.

That power imbalance was on vivid display in Colorado in 2018 when grassroots activists succeeded in getting a ballot initiative put to voters that would have imposed greater setback distances on fracking operations, limiting how close to homes and schools new oil and gas wells could be drilled. A year earlier, two deadly oil and gas infrastructure explosions had rocked Firestone, Colorado.

The industry poured money into that election, outspending community and environmental groups by a factor of more than thirty to one. Noble Energy, a large fracking company (now owned by Chevron), hired DC-based PR firm Story Partners, to help defeat the measure. Story Partners created two astroturf campaigns, based on the firm’s research that showed that support for setback distances declined when voters heard about the “devastating consequences” that it would have on the state’s economy. The campaign ran ads to promote “clean” natural gas, warn of damage to Colorado’s economy, and positioned Noble Energy as a responsible partner. Story Partners still displays its campaign to defeat the ballot initiative on its website as a successful “case study” of how it protected its client’s assets.

The House committee also heard from Anne Lee Foster, who held an unpaid position in 2018 for Colorado Rising, a grassroots group supporting the ballot measure to establish drilling setback distances. She spoke about the multiple instances in which people would harass her and her colleagues as they tried to gather signatures.

Around that time, Colorado Public Radio reported that an internal Anadarko Petroleum document, leaked to Colorado Rising, asked employees to report the locations of signature gatherers via a phone texting system. Once the location was identified, counter-protesters appeared at a moment’s notice, shouting and harassing the signature gatherers and passersby who considered signing on to the ballot initiative effort.

According to a report produced by the House committee, oil companies including Anadarko Petroleum, Noble Energy, and Chevron, had set up two front groups, “Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy and Energy Independence” (Protect Colorado), and “Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development” (CRED). Those two groups then funneled most of their proceeds to an Oregon-based PR firm called PAC/West. The two front groups offered a “buffer” between the oil drillers and the PR campaign, the committee report said.

Although it was later deleted from its website, PAC/West described how it was paid by Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy to “lead a statewide education campaign” to defeat the ballot measure. Ultimately, the ballot measure was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2018.

“I personally suffered from what I feel is stalking or harassment in a number of other circumstances throughout this campaign,” Anne Lee Foster told the committee on Wednesday in her prepared testimony.

That was one small example of a web of influence between a handful of PR firms and the oil and gas industry. “Let me be clear: There is nothing standard or ethical about these practices. They are deceptive communications practices that mislead our citizenry and undermine our democracy,” Arena said.

The work that PR firms do goes far beyond simply promoting the image of their clients, according to Melissa Aronczyk, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s School of Communications & Information, another witness at the congressional hearing.

“Public relations firms often present themselves and their work in terms of facilitating or amplifying ideas or information. In fact, public relations is not only communicating ideas and information but coming up with those ideas and creating that information,” Aronczyk said in her testimony. PR firms provide long-term strategic planning, set up front groups, manufacture the illusion of support, and monitor and target opponents. She said the work goes back many decades.

PR firms also operate a broad network of influence out of public view, sharing information among multiple clients and trade groups, which allows companies to “minimize the reputational and financial risk of speaking out against climate action,” Aronczyk said.

“Because this coordinated infrastructure of anti-environmental action is operating behind the scenes, members of the public and lawmakers have no way of knowing if the campaigns operating on behalf of fossil fuels are real or manufactured,” she added.

But the growing pressure on the PR industry is having an effect. Clean Creatives, a climate campaign targeting the advertising industry, says that nearly 400 PR firms have signed a pledge to not work with coal, oil, and gas companies.

“We’re seeing the beginning of a transformation of the PR and Advertising industry when it comes to climate,” Duncan Meisel, executive director of the Clean Creatives campaign, said in a statement. “Oil and gas companies used to be seen as prestige clients, now agencies are embarrassed to admit that they work for them. But this dirty work is still going on in the shadows, making the spotlight of this House hearing and investigation all the more important. The future of creativity is clean and it’s time for agencies to step into the light.”

One PR firm was not at Wednesday’s hearing: FTI Consulting. The House committee is investigating FTI, which has refused to turn over documents requested by the congressional investigators.

“We initiated the subpoena process for FTI Consulting, which has one of the worst reputations in the business. The negotiations are ongoing. The trajectory is sadly not good,” Rep. Katie Porter said in her closing comments on Wednesday. “What are they trying to hide? Is it their creation of fake grassroots groups for their clients to hide behind? Was it the creation of fake social media profiles to track plans of activist groups? Or is there something worse? The harder FTI Consulting fights, the more it appears that they have a lot to lose by having their tactics exposed through oversight.”

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Saturday, September 17, 2022

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No more sacrifices

Pipelines and sacrifice zones

Dark clouds blowing in from the “equality state”

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