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george monbiot
'Appalling': US Funded Secret Industry Network Targeting Pesticide Critics
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," said writer Michael Pollan, one of those featured in the corporate files. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous."
Sep 27, 2024
New reporting published Friday exposes how U.S. taxpayer money was used to fund an elaborate effort by pesticide industry insiders to create detailed dossiers on public critics and environmentalist activists opposed to the widespread pollution created by agrochemical corporations.
The investigation was spearheaded by the nonprofit outlet Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with numerous outlets from around the globe, including The Guardian, Le Monde, The New Lede, ABC News, and the New Humanitarian. It details how outspoken critics of the pesticide paraquat—described as "among the most toxic agricultural chemicals ever produced"—were targeted by an "influence machine that works to suppress opposition to an $78 billion global industry."
While use of paraquat is banned in the European Union, it is still actively sold and applied on fields and farms in much of the world despite the documented harms it produces.
The year-long investigation, according to Lighthouse,
managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science "protest industry," and used U.S. government money to do so.
The U.S.-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network's membership roster is a who's-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world's largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.
These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, U.N. human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries.
The investigative team also released this video on Instagram detailing their findings:
Environmental writer and activist George Monbiot called the revelations "deeply shocking and appalling," and described the story as one which detailed how the U.S. government "funded attacks, denial, and outright lies to protect the pesticides industry from its critics."
The Guardian's reporting details how v-Influence—founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne—received U.S. taxpayer dollars by subcontracting with another group that received a large USAID grant:
Public spending records show the USAID contracted with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to introduce GM crops in African and Asian nations.
In turn, IFPRI paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of "modern agriculture approaches"in Africa and Asia.
v-Fluence was to set up the "private social network portal" that would, among other things, provide "tactical support" for efforts to gain acceptance for the GM crops.
The reporting noted that prominent food writers, including Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman (both of whom have written critically of industrial agriculture), were among those listed in the private network to which industry heavyweights were given invite-only access.
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," Pollan told the Guardian. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work."
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UK Climate Campaigners Get 'Utterly Disproportionate' Sentences
"Rulings like today's set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest," a U.N. official said.
Jul 18, 2024
In a decision that one United Nations official called "beyond comprehension," a U.K. judge on Thursday sentenced five Just Stop Oil activists to a combined 21 years in prison over a Zoom call in which they discussed plans to disrupt London's orbital M25 highway.
The sentences are believed to be the longest on record for nonviolent protest in U.K. history, The Guardian reported.
"The sentences handed to the five Just Stop Oil campaigners are utterly disproportionate," environmentalist and author George Monbiot wrote on social media. "Four and five years in prison for peaceful protest? This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy."
"Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?"
The five activists—Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin—were found guilty last week of conspiring to cause a public nuisance due to a four-day direct action protest on the M25 that Just Stop Oil ultimately held in November 2022. All of the defendants participated in a Zoom call in which they planned to recruit volunteers for the protest, which was intended to pressure the U.K. government to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, a policy that the incoming Labour government has now adopted. The Zoom call had been infiltrated by a Sun journalist, who shared its contents with the Metropolitan Police.
On Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Hallam to five years in prison and Shaw, Lancaster, De Abreu, and Gethin to four each.
The sentences sparked outrage from humans rights advocates and environmental campaigners.
Michel Forst, U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders who also observed part of the trial, said the sentencing "marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders, and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom."
Forst added: "Rulings like today's set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day."
Former Green Party leader and Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the sentences "obscene."
"Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?" she asked on social media.
Current Deputy Leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: "'Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance' is a deeply authoritarian description that should send shivers down the spine of all of us who want to live in a free society. Even worse when the real crime is consecutive governments who have played down the climate emergency."
Campaigners and experts also criticized the trial itself, in which Hehir did not allow the defendants to present evidence about the climate crisis to explain their actions.
"Defendants should be allowed to explain why they have decided to use nonconventional but yet peaceful forms of action, like civil disobedience, when they engage in environmental protest," Forst
toldThe Guardian after attending part of the trial.
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London—who Hehir did not allow the defendants to call as a witness—called the trial and verdict a "farce."
"They mark a low point in British justice, and they were an assault on free speech," McGuire in a statement said Thursday. "The judge's characterization of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity."
The verdict and sentencing also come amid an increasing crackdown on climate protest, both globally and in the U.K. The previous longest known civil disobedience sentences in the country were also for Just Stop Oil activists.
"The U.K. is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view, in the sense that the sentences imposed in other countries are neither that harsh, nor that widespread," Forst said July 12.
Greenpeace U.K.'s program director Amy Cameron said on Thursday: "These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric, and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It's part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor, and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that's been slowly being taken away from them."
Forst also called on the new government to reverse course.
"Given the gravity of the situation, I urge the new United Kingdom government, with absolute urgency and without undo delay, to take all necessary steps to ensure that Mr. Shaw's sentence is reduced in line with the United Kingdom's obligations under the Aarhus Convention," Forst wrote on Thursday.
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COP15 Biodiversity Summit Highlights 'Deadly' US Attitude Toward the World
"While others play by the rules, the most powerful nation refuses," writes George Monbiot. "If this country were a person, we'd call it a psychopath. As it is not a person, we should call it what it is: a rogue state."
Dec 09, 2022
With a global biodiversity summit underway in Montreal, Guardian columnist George Monbiot on Friday took aim at the United States for its "active, and deadly, cavalier attitude" toward the rest of the world, "an example other nations follow."
"Its refusal to ratify treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity provides other nations with a permanent excuse to participate in name only."
Although U.S. President Joe Biden recently appointed Monica Medina as the first special envoy for biodiversity and water resources, and his administration is participating in the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United States is notably not a party to the treaty, which was drafted in 1992.
In fact, the United States is the only United Nations member state not to ratify the treaty. The other 192 U.N. countries, the European Union, Cook Islands, Niue, and Palestine are all parties to the CBD--leaving the U.S. in the company of just the Holy See, the government of the Roman Catholic Church.
Former President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1993, but U.S. ratification requires 67 votes in the Senate--in which Democrats secured a 51-seat majority with Sen. Raphael Warnock's runoff victory on Tuesday, only to have Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona leave the party and declare herself an Independent on Friday.
As Monbiot highlighted:
This is one of several major international treaties the U.S. has refused to ratify. Among the others are crucial instruments such as the Rome Statute on international crimes, the treaties banning cluster bombs and landmines, the convention on discrimination against women, the Basel Convention on hazardous waste, the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the nuclear test ban treaty, the Employment Policy Convention, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
In some cases, it is one of only a small number to refuse: The others are generally either impoverished states with little administrative capacity or vicious dictatorships. It is the only independent nation on Earth not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Perhaps this is because it is the only nation to sentence children to life imprisonment without parole, among many other brutal policies. While others play by the rules, the most powerful nation refuses. If this country were a person, we'd call it a psychopath. As it is not a person, we should call it what it is: a rogue state.
Monbiot argued that "through its undemocratic dominance of global governance, the U.S. makes the rules, to a greater extent than any other state. It also does more than any other to prevent both their implementation and their enforcement. Its refusal to ratify treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity provides other nations with a permanent excuse to participate in name only. Like all imperial powers, its hegemony is expressed in the assertion of its right not to care."
"The question that assails those who strive for a kinder world is always the same but endlessly surprising: How do we persuade others to care?" he continued. "The lack of interest in resolving our existential crises, expressed by the U.S. Senate in particular, is not a passive exceptionalism. It is an active, proud, and furious refusal to care about the lives of others. This refusal has become the motive force of the old-new politics now sweeping the world. It appears to be driving a deadly, self-reinforcing political cycle."
After outlining an example of destructive farming practices in the Netherlands, Monbiot stressed the urgency of the current moment, writing that due to years of failures, "we now approach multiple drastic decision points, at which governments must either implement changes in months that should have happened over decades, or watch crucial components of civic life collapse, including the most important component of all: a habitable planet."
Scientists continue to raise alarm about the intertwined climate and biodiversity crises, warning that immediate, ambitious action must be taken on the global scale--including transforming agricultural and energy systems--to limit dangerous temperature increases and species loss.
"As we rush towards these precipices, we are likely to see an ever more violent refusal to care," Monbiot wrote. For example, rich nations have the "twin duties of care and responsibility" to accept refugees fleeing climate and ecological breakdown, but doing so "could trigger a new wave of reactive, far-right politics" that "would cut off meaningful environmental action."
"In other words, we face the threat of a self-perpetuating escalation of collapse," he concluded. "This is the spiral we must seek to break. With every missed opportunity--and the signs suggest that the Montreal summit might be another grave disappointment--the scope for gentle action diminishes and the rush towards drastic decisions accelerates. Some of us have campaigned for years for soft landings. But that time has now passed. We are in the era of hard landings. We must counter the rise of indifference with an overt and conspicuous politics of care."
The column comes as attendees and experts warn COP15 represents "the make-or-break moment" for the variety of life on Earth, given the rate at which species are disappearing--largely driven by "deforestation, overfishing, corporate agribusiness megafarming, and extraction of natural resources"--with major implications for humanity.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, advocates are pushing for a post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) that includes:
- Protections for at least 30% of lands and waters by 2030;
- Policies to prevent or reduce invasive species by 50%;
- The elimination of plastic waste;
- The reduction of pesticides in the environment by at least two-thirds;
- The recognition of Indigenous peoples' rights and central role in protecting biodiversity; and
- At least $100 billion in annual funding for developing countries to protect wildlife, provided by wealthy governments.
While some are preparing for the Chinese-hosted conference in Canada to be another disappointment--one advocacy group on Monday published a report exposing corporate capture of not only the developing framework but all work related to the treaty over the past three decades--rich nations, including and especially the United States, are still facing pressure to step up.
Will Gartshore, World Wildlife Fund's senior director for government affairs and advocacy, said Monday that "WWF will continue advocating for the virtues of the U.S. joining the convention. But in the meantime, there is much that the U.S. can do to align itself with the goals of the agreement and ensure the success of the COP15 negotiations" and resulting framework.
Pointing to the "America the Beautiful" plan unveiled last year, Gartshore said that "the Biden administration has sent important signals about its commitment to halting and reversing nature loss by proposing to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 and by launching new initiatives to protect global forests, account for nature's economic value, and mobilize nature-based solutions to climate change."
"And by appointing the first-ever U.S. special envoy for biodiversity and water resources, the president has elevated the issue and put nature firmly on America's diplomatic agenda, alongside climate change," he continued. "All of these moves signal to other countries that the U.S. is in the game even if it is not directly at the negotiating table, and that they should strive for ambitious outcomes knowing the U.S. is taking commensurate actions of its own."
Gartshore added that "the other critical role the U.S. can play to further positive outcomes at COP15 and beyond is by mobilizing increased resources for the implementation of a global biodiversity framework and influencing other countries to do the same. As Congress works to finalize a U.S. government funding bill by the end of the year, WWF is making the case that it should include significant new resources to support the conservation of nature, particularly in developing countries that house much of our planet's remaining biodiversity."
Writing Thursday for Project Syndicate, former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) also noted the Biden administration's recent envoy appointment and embrace of the 30x30 goal, and called for the U.S. to positively contribute to what "may be the world's last best chance to reverse biodiversity loss."
According to Feingold:
Although the U.S. itself is not a party to the CBD--owing to bipartisan divisions and opposition from various interest groups--its heavyweight status affords it ample opportunities to contribute, including by influencing the debate over the final language of the framework.
Moreover, the U.S. can help build partnerships, influence key decision-makers, and create new incentives for conservation efforts around the world. It can advocate stronger incentives for country-specific commitments to achieve the most urgent conservation goals. It can help to secure the financing and funding pledges needed to support low- and middle-income countries' efforts to achieve global conservation goals and protect their local ecosystems. And it can integrate conservation into its international development policies, thus helping to offset the cost of biodiversity conservation in these countries.
While Monbiot declared in a tweet about his column that "the U.S. is leading by example--the worst possible example in an ecological emergency," Feingold suggested that "the Biden administration's recent initiatives could redefine America's conservation movement, enabling the U.S. to lead by example and set the standard for conservation on the continent."
"It is a country that can use its enormous power and global influence--be it economic, cultural, or political--to help the world shape a new and desperately needed global biodiversity framework," he added. "Despite divisions over other issues, the U.S. can achieve an internal consensus on the need to protect its great natural heritage, and to support the global conservation agenda through funding commitments and capacity-building initiatives. That consensus cannot come soon enough. With the clock ticking down, COP15 must be seen as an urgent wake-up call."
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