Subject: Re: Greenpeace, Vancouver, B.C.
Date: Jul 11 19:25:14 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Richard Rowlett asks:

>What is 'Greenpeace' up to in Vancouver. I was barely hearing some radio
> call-in show out of Vancouver late last night. Long-time paying supporters
> of 'Greenpeace' were outraged about something they were doing but I could
> only hear every third word or so. It might have had something to do with the
> "salmon wars" or something else, and their current actions clearly was
> described as a slap in the face to the community and supporters, or something
> like that. Anyone know what's going on?

Well, whatever is going on, the *last* two lots of people to believe are
either the BC Provincial Government--which has allied itself with both above
and, it turns out, under the table with the logging industry and union, and
none of them great friends of the environment--or the private media,
including the two major dailies, which are now in editorial terms virtually
indistinguishable from logging industry trade journals, the main network
news programs, and phone-in shows which, due to fierce competition between
open-mouth hosts at the local radio stations, need extreme statements as
their bread-and-butter to attract audience-share. The two Vancouver dailies,
the Sun and the Province, often report as spurious front-page 'news'
frequent glowing editorialisms extolling the importance and worth of the
logging industry to the provincial economy, a fact which only a fool would
deny; their front page coverage of the industry's critics, however, has them
stooping to use the vindictive tabloid tools of the gutter press.
Undignified. Back in the days when the Sun was moving toward becoming a
fairly decent regional newspaper, it even used to have some pretty fair
reporters and columnists, and ran what were relatively (for BC) objective
stories; however, several years ago it bowed to industry, er, persuasion and
allowed its best "...to follow further career opportunities". Since then,
the relationship to journalistic objectivity in this and many other subjects
of purely local municipal or provincial interest is about the same
relationship as between a beer fart and a Hayden string quartet, forgive
m'French, ma'am.

Whatever the merits of Greepeace's actions--and on their warnings of
environmental insult by government/industry, I'll note they've got a pretty
respectable track record: they've been right far more often than they've
been wrong. Most of their statements--when quoted correctly and in
context--certainly seem to be on the whole more objectively truthful and
reliable than statements from either government or industry, which, with
depressingly few exceptions, tend at best to be self-serving manipulations
of truth and at worst, outright lies and denial. I'll emphasise that I hold
no particular brief for either side, and am not in any way advocating nor
supporting their programs, it *is* clear there is a co-ordinated campaign by
government, industry and private media to demonise and vilify them, and to
deliberately distort any reportage that may--if done objectively--show them
in a better light. Given how politics usually plays in this province, I'd
suspect GP of doing something right if they've got the Big Guys in the
province so annoyed and trying so hard to discredit them.

Well, one's worth is known by the quality of one's enemies, according to
some cynical authority; and whatever their methods, Greenpeace *has* gone to
the heart of whether the logging industry should be allowed to continue
treating the province as its company town. One doesn't have to be a rabid
radical environmentalist or anti-colonialist to see that what's good for an
industry's shareholders may not always coincide with what's good for the
rest of us, particularly those of us who live here, or the environment.
History and current events here and elsewhere shows this is not uncommon.

As a wishy-washy small-l liberal, I would hope for the adoption of standards
of sustainability in any resource-extractive industry which make both a
healthy economy and a healthy environment. As a brought-to-earth realist,
I've seen that in this province, and particularly in this arena, moderates
on either side of the issue work tremendously long and hard for compromise
but then get been squeezed out by uncompromising elements in industry and
government (provincial and municipal) intent on subverting the principle and
practice of any environmentally friendly legislation. This is not opinion,
by the way--one meeting at the very least was held by pro-industry groups
which included people in local industry and government which was video- and
audio-taped and in which methods of political and actual sabotage of
impending forest practices legislation and discrediting of moderates on both
sides were discussed explicitly--transcripts starkly demonstrated the
negotiations in bad faith on the industry side.

Well, reducing those you see as your opponents to an unpopular radicalism by
perversely repudiating their moderation is a political tactic from way back
(and particularly effective in Canada, a country whose people hate and fear
boat-rockers in the present, no matter how much they'll glorify their
memories and appropriate their accomplishments in the future). The seductive
question then arises: who and what is then left but the radicals and radical
action in response to such radical conservatism? But the real question is, I
feel, how does one successfully move the debate *back* to the center and
away from the radical fringes in the face of industry and government
connivance and intransigence leading to the then-resultant radical
environmentalist response?

As I've lived in BC for over 25 years, I've seen the private media and
various provincial governments (left- or right-of-center) pull this vicious
little journalistic dog-and-pony show many times before at various targetted
groups and individuals who (left-, center- or right-wing, moderate or
radical) trouble the powerful corporate machine in this province. Plus ca
damned change...

Michael Price When I found out that seven of my years
Vancouver BC Canada was only one of theirs,
mprice at mindlink.net I started biting absolutely everything.
-Max Carlson (Ron Carlson's dog)