BOOK REVIEW

Green Washing

 

Green, Inc
by Christine MacDonald
The Lyons Press 
265 pages  $24.95

Forty years ago the environmental movement started on shoestring budgets, with hand-drawn cardboard signs held by students who were nearly unnoticed while standing in the rain. But they had a point, an audience, and attracted talent willing to commit to a cause.

That talent could organize, focus, network, fund raise, make political connections, do publicity, and grow the organization. The growth was needed to get the visibility and clout. The result has been the evolution of environmental groups with financial and political power akin to large corporations that used the same kind of talents to grow their large corporations. Corporations at the same time were often the targets of large environmental groups.

All these financially and politically successful environmental groups however did not all get to where they are today by the same means, nor are they all of the same stripe. The differences and how they affect what any particular group does are what Christine MacDonald investigates in Green Inc. MacDonald is a journalist who has written for the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and was a media manager of Conservation International’s Global Communications Division.

MacDonald has used her experience as an environmental group insider to present a view and understanding not found on glossy fundraising material.

Environmental organizations, in order to make an impact, needed one thing more than anything else – money. They had no product to market until they had the money to influence change. 

While the modern environmental movement’s roots are in the 1960s, the conservation movement has been around since the late 1800s. The conservationists, says MacDonald, differed from the modern environmentalists in that they were primarily interested in conserving land and animals – often a large tract of a family’s land. 

One of MacDonald’s examples is The Nature Conservancy, which started in 1915 with 60 acres, raising money with bake sales, etc. After decades of fundraising they now oversee 117 million acres on a budget of $1.3 billion. Conserva- tionists are interested in land preservation. Environmentalists are interested in preserving the environment more generally. 

Conservation groups, MacDonald found, have often been started, operated, and grown by the wealthy. They moved easily among wealthy donors and were familiar with the methods for making the most of large donations for both the donor and the group. Conserva- tionist management and boards are frequently staffed with family and friends.

Over the decades environmental groups grew by moving up the donor food chain. Getting a few corporate donors to throw in a million each provided a lot of security while waiting for all the $10 and $25 donations to come in. 

MacDonald concedes it is not unexpected that as the environmental groups grew they would take on the management methods of large corporations. Her criticism is directed more toward the practices of some groups that have traded their public approval of a corporate polluter for hefty contributions.

The maneuvering of the Environmental Defense Fund for a coal fire powered energy company in Texas “appeared to undercut local environmental efforts,” resulting in the construction of three large coal-powered plants.

With an office in Bentonville, Arkansas, and with Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton formerly on the EDF board, MacDonald asks, “Who gets the most out of these relationships?”

The intention is not to suggest that the 12,000 environmental groups in the U.S. alone are bad to the core. But with $9.6 billion in annual revenues and assets of $27 billion in 2004, there might be temptation to get off course. 

Of the leadership of conservation groups, MacDonald writes they are “decidedly white and stacked with millionaires.”

Conservation International is MacDonald’s strong suit. Having worked on the inside she saw first hand the workings of management. The network of big money environmental groups have offices in Washington, D.C., limos for top brass, plush expense accounts, and all the perks and pay top corporate management enjoy. It’s an environment where big money deal-making supercedes science, snails, or climate - a far cry from cardboard signs held high in the rain.