Environment

Monsanto Hid Decades of Pollution

Submitted by Laura Miller on

Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald uncovers a decades-long campaign by Monsanto to hide its extremely toxic PCB pollution in Anniston, Alabama. Monsanto held a monopoly on PCB production in the United States until they stopped making them in 1977. For nearly 40 years while producing PCBs at the Anniston plant, Grunwald reports, Monsanto knew that the PCBs they were dumping into an Anniston creek and open-pit landfills were toxic and they concealed that knowledge.

No
Main Source: 
Washington Post, December 31, 2001
Topics: 
Corporations
Environment
Secrecy

How a Pseudo-Scientist Duped the Big Media

Submitted by John Stauber on

"Bjorn Lomborg's new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, brings us glorious news. The world's environment is getting better, not worse. ... If this sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. The Skeptical Environmentalist presents itself as a work of impartial scholarship, an attempt to test the validity of various environmental concerns through a careful analysis of the evidence. In fact, it's a polemic, an intellectually dishonest tract filled with glaring omissions, appalling errors of fact and analysis, and inaccurate characterizations of contrary arguments.

No
Main Source: 
TomPaine.com
Topics: 
Environment
Science

Lobbyist Tells of Graham's War on Health & Safety Regs

Submitted by John Stauber on

John D. Graham founded the industry-funded Harvard Center for Risk Analysis that last week issued a whitewash report on mad cow risks in the US. Now Graham has a new government post at the Office of Management and Budget where he is leading the Bush administration's assault on environmental, health and safety regulations. The secret plotting between business lobbyists and Graham has even angered a lobbyist who leaked information to the Washington Post. The documents "provide another glimpse of behind-the-scenes strategy-setting by business lobbyists" such as the U.S.

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Main Source: 
Washington Post
Topics: 
Environment
Health
Lobbying
U.S. Government

The UN's Rio+10 Summit: Banking on Feelgood PR

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

In October 2001, captains of industry from around the world marked the tenth anniversay of the United Nation's environmental summit in Rio de Janiero by gathered in Paris for a major strategy meeting, hosted by Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD).

No
Main Source: 
Corporate Europe Observer, December 2001
Topics: 
Corporate Social Responsibility
Environment

Terrorizing the Environmental Movement

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Rep. Scott McInnis of the GOP wants leading green groups to denounce eco-terror, though they're already on record against it. Is he using Sept. 11 to crack down on groups he disagrees with? Environmental activist Ray Vaughan responds to McInnis: "We have long fought against those secretive multi-national organizations that have sponsored 'environmental terrorism' in America. Throughout our great land, these groups are poisoning our air, our water and our food supply. Children have been hurt. People have been killed. ...

No
Main Source: 
Salon.com, November 26, 2001
Topics: 
Terrorism
Environment

Let's Not Talk About Arsenic

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Newspapers in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Boston, including chains owned by the publishers of The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Herald, are refusing to carry a paid advertisement criticizing retail giant Home Depot for selling lumber treated with dangerous amounts of arsenic, according to a news release from the Healthy Building Network and the Environmental Working Group.

No
Main Source: 
http://www.ewg.org/reports/poisonwoodrivals/
Topics: 
Environment
Media

Call for Censorship of Enviro Websites

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

In a startling plea for official censorship, Amy E. Smithson of the Henry L. Stimson Center has urged the government to "close down" web sites run by environmental organizations if they publish information about hazardous materials in local communities around the country, claiming that such information could be used by terrorists.

No
Main Source: 
Secrecy News, November 13, 2001
Topics: 
Democracy
Environment
Human Rights
Think Tanks

Media Coverage and Old Growth Forests

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Environmental activists are stereotyped sometimes as head-in-the-sand hippies, but the protesters who are blockading logging in Western Australia are "some of the most organised and tactically smart activists around," according to Aizura Hankin, who profiles Louise Morris, a self-described "media liaison (media slut), police/industry liaison, and lock-on wench" for the anti-logging campaign.

No
Main Source: 
The Paper (Australia), November 2, 2001
Topics: 
Activism
Environment
Public Relations

Toxic Sludge Plant's Toxic PR Defames Colorado Activist

Submitted by John Stauber on

Environmental activist and college instructor Adrienne Anderson has been the victim of an "outrageous" defamation campaign at the hands of the PR department of Colorado's largest sewage plant, and a judge has hit the plant with a $450,000 damage award. According to the Denver Post, the judge has ordered the sewage district "to publicly apologize in a full page ad." The Post notes that the judge "singled out Metro's public relations director Steven M.

No
Main Source: 
Denver Post, September 24, 2001
Topics: 
Activism
Environment
Public Relations

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