Corporate America Finally Gets the Ecological Message
Is the environmental hoopla resonating through the halls of American business “mere corporate ecobabble intended to placate the latest group of special-interest loonies?”
Not according to Fortune magazine. In its Feb. 12 issue, Fortune finds that corporate America has finally caught on to what the “loonies” have said all along: that people don’t like seeing their planet assaulted and their children poisoned.
In a cover story on business and environmentalism, Associate Editor David Kirkpatrick rounds up a passel of big businessmen who agree that “the 1990s will be the decade of the environment.” Quite a few of them say they are willing to do something to clean up that environment.
“Everyone knows there are a lot of (terrible) polluters,” Kirkpatrick said by telephone. “What people didn’t know--what I really didn’t know--is that companies are doing as much as they are.”
One of the companies changing its environmental perspective is Du Pont, which has announced that it will voluntarily stop production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the year 2000, thus forfeiting its leading share of the $750-million-a-year CFC industry.
Another example of corporate good citizenship is the Virginia-based Applied Energy Services’ commitment to planting millions of dollars worth of oxygen-producing trees in Guatemala to compensate for a coal-fired plant it built in Connecticut.
Kirkpatrick also describes McDonald’s laudable plastic packaging recycling program. He points out that the program arose because the corporation was “faced with growing protests over the volume of waste it generates.”
Few of the corporations featured in the piece, however, concede that their environmental consciousness was raised by 20 years of prodding by activists. Some even come across as condescending and self-righteous.
A Pacific Gas & Electric spokesman, for example, urges corporations to take such visionary steps as having a continuing dialogue with environmentalists and making environmental issues part of decisions. “Do these things,” he says “because they are the right thing to do, not because somebody forces you to do them.”
That from a company the National Resources Defense Council accused last year of slashing conservation programs.
In fact, skeptics argue that much of the current corporate interest in environmentalism often manifests itself in better public relations rather than better anti-pollution policies. Kirkpatrick concedes that “some of the most egregious polluters today are now pointing out that they are environmentalists too.” But he is convinced that for the most part, corporations have decided that cleaning up their acts is good business.
While the big environmental groups and big business are schmoozing and dealing, though, more localized gadflys remain a nagging problem for big business, Fortune points out. As one public relations consultant who specializes in “corporate environmental strategy” puts it: “The grass-roots groups are concerned about the value of their homes and the health of their children. That means they are relentless. In general, unlike the mainstream environmental groups, they are not interested in compromise or mediation.”
Some of these more uncompromising environmentalists are described in the Feb. 5 Newsweek, in an article titled “Trying to Take Back the Planet.” Naturally, the picture from the grass-roots perspective looks a bit different than it does from that of the “Big 10” environmental groups that are working with industry, and turning the ballyhooed 20th anniversary of Earth Day into, according to Fortune, “a veritable biz-fest.”
As veteran environmentalist David Brower tells Newsweek reporter Jennifer Foote: “Nature is diversified and our movement needs to be. Besides, if we all got together and became one efficient organization, Exxon would buy us with petty cash.”
The global warming of interest to environmental stories is not letting up. Time replaced its 1989 Man of the Year cover with a portrait of the Earth. And rumors are circulating on the East Coast that the Fortune cover story forced the competing Forbes Magazine to pull its own environmental cover.
In December, Forbes ran a widely discussed story headlined: “The Global Warming Panic: A Classic Case of Overreaction.” The latest story was rumored to have a similar theme.
Forbes does have another environmental cover story in the works, said Lawrence Minard at Forbes. But he scoffed at the notion that the magazine pulled it in reaction to Fortune’s story, which he called “weak.”
Playboy Plays Its Trump Card in March
Speaking of covers. . . . It is a curious statistical fact that only once in each decade has Playboy magazine featured a man on its cover. In the ‘60s, it was Peter Sellers. In the ‘70s it was Burt Reynolds. In the ‘80s it was Steve Martin. And just three issues into this new decade, Playboy has plopped Donald Trump on its March cover.
As the subject of the Playboy interview, Trump discusses everything from Leona Helmsley--”She’s out of her mind. . . . truly evil human being” to Spy magazine, which insists on referring to Trump as “a short-fingered vulgarian.” (Spy, he says, “is a piece of garbage.”)
Highlights of the interview by Glenn Plaskin include Trump’s view that Japan is laughing at America’s business stupidity and a rundown of just what Trump would do if he were elected President (not that he’s interested, mind you).
Also interesting is his opinion that every successful person, including Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ, and the Pope have “far greater egos than you will ever understand.”
Contrary to what readers might suspect, though, Playboy did not, according to Managing Editor Jonathan Black, create its cover to appease the sizable ego of the Trumpster. Rather, someone at the magazine apparently thinks there are readers who find Trump sexy.
