No one admits to recording Richard Berman’s address to a room full of energy executives in Colorado Springs in June 2014, but it’s an eye-opener.

One unnamed industry executive recorded Berman’s remarks and was offended by them. He provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to the New York Times. DeSmog picked up the story the following day.

If the oil and gas industry is going to prevent environmental opponents from slowing down its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to use dirty tricks, Berman told the executives, whose companies specialize in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

At least four companies with Canadian fracking operations were in Berman’s audience — Devon Energy, Encana Oil and Gas, Ensign Energy Services and Newalta.

“Fear and anger have to be part of the campaign,” he said. “You got to get people fearful of what’s on the table” (what they might lose if environmentalists win) “and then you got to get people angry over the fact they are being misled” (by environmental groups).

Energy executives need to “think of this as an endless war,” he cautioned. “And you have to budget for it,” he warned, as he made a pitch for $3 million to run ads attacking environmentalists in a campaign he calls “Big Green Radicals.”[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Berman is founder and chief executive of Berman and Co., a Washington-based consulting firm that sets up non-profit front groups to attack unions, public-health advocates and consumer, safety, animal welfare and environmental groups.

He admitted that people are always asking him, “How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?” His reply was designed to reassure. “We run all of this stuff through non-profit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for some 20 years now.”

TransCanada’s Dirty War in Canada

Too bad the Edelman PR agency couldn’t guarantee the same anonymity to its client, TransCanada Corp., in its campaign to discredit critics of its proposed Energy East pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to refineries and export terminals on the Atlantic coast.

Documents released by Greenpeace Canada in November 2014 reveal a plan much more ambitious (and likely many times more costly) than Berman’s Big Green Radicals. But the framing is similar; where Berman says “Think of this as an endless war,” Edelman says “It is critical to play offence … We are running a perpetual campaign.”

The plans call for mobilizing 35,000 supporters (in the works), setting up an online hub (accomplished), extensive advertising (happening), researching the pipeline’s opponents (in the works), and recruiting allies and third-party voices (not known).

A week after the documents were made public, TransCanada cancelled its contract with Edelman, its anonymity blown. It’s not known who took over for Edelman, but someone has to do it — the war must go on.

An Anti-Environment History

The endless war began in 1962 when Bruce Harrison, then “manager of environmental information” for the Manufacturing Chemists Association, masterminded the industry’s campaign to discredit Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s book that raised the alarm that DDT and other pesticides were poisoning wildlife and endangering human health.

In their campaign to discredit Carson, Harrison and his colleagues, PR executives from Shell, DuPont, Dow and Monsanto, used the emerging practice of “crisis management,” which has been described as a mélange of “emotional appeals, scientific misinformation, front groups, extensive mailings to the media and opinion leaders, and the recruitment of doctors and scientists as ‘objective’ third-party defenders of agrichemicals.”

Substitute online hubs, Twitter and Facebook for extensive mailings and you have the blueprint for today’s campaigns.

Everything else remains the same.

Carson died of cancer two years later; Harrison went on to become a general in the endless war as a leading light in anti-environmental PR.

The war crossed the Canadian border in the late 1980s to attack environmentalists who were resisting clear-cut logging of B.C.’s old-growth forests. Inspiration for this ten-year-long campaign, dubbed “War in the Woods,” came from the Bellevue, Washington-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose name says it all.

The centre was funded by oil, chemical and timber companies, including B.C.-based MacMillan Bloedel, whose logging of pristine old-growth forests on the west coast of Vancouver Island was attracting growing opposition.

Leading the counter-attack were the centre’s Allan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold. Gottlieb was a fundraiser for conservative causes while Arnold was the strategist, like Rick Berman adept at setting up front groups. They created the “wise use movement,” a medley of industry groups held together by two principles: private property rights should have primacy over the public interest, and access to public lands for resource use and exploitation should be unrestricted.

Arnold liked “wise use” as a label for the movement: it is short and fits into a newspaper headline, and it is ambiguous enough to mean just about anything. But behind the soothing ambiguity is the iron fist. In his book, Ecology Wars, Arnold wrote, “Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement” — total war, in other words.

In 1988, Gottlieb and Arnold brought 250 groups to Reno, Nevada, to start a movement that would oppose the environmental movement. MacMillan Bloedel flew some executives and the mayors of Port Alberni and Port McNeil to the conference to listen to speeches about how to do battle with “preservationists.”

As Arnold told the timber industry:

“The public is completely convinced that when you speak as an industry, you are speaking out of nothing but self-interest. The pro-industry citizen activist group is the answer to these problems. It can be an effective and convincing advocate for your industry. It can utilize powerful archetypes such as the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community, the natural wisdom of the rural dweller… And it can turn the public against your enemies… I think you’ll find it one of your wisest investments over time.”

He recommended that Canadian timber executives organize grass-roots organizations that could be “an effective and convincing advocate for your industry.”

“Screw The Environment. We Need Jobs”

The executives and mayors went back to B.C. with a plan to draw the residents of resource towns into the fray. A year after the Reno Wise Use conference, a “coalition of people whose livelihoods depend on trees” held a provincial conference to launch a grassroots campaign to oppose the environmental campaign. Logger Mike Morton, an alderman in Ucluelet, a Vancouver Island logging town, stepped up as a spokesman.

Morton became chairman of Share the Clayoquot Society and the following year, executive director of Share BC, an umbrella organization for 22 local “share our forest” and “share our resources” groups (“share” meaning preserve a small portion of the land and “manage” the rest) set up by the forest industry.

Forest executives were able to turn the disaffection of rural and resource industry workers, farmers and small business people into anti-environmental sentiment. Woodworkers were losing their jobs, but not because of the actions of environmentalists. They needed to look to their employers, who were replacing thousands of workers with automated equipment and exporting raw logs instead of processing them in the province.

Environmental opposition built to a climax in the summer of 1993, when 850 people were arrested for blockading a road used by MacMillan Bloedel in its logging operations in Clayoquot Sound. It was billed as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Eight months later, in March 1994, 20,000 woodworkers and residents of timber-dependent towns massed on the B.C. legislature lawn to decry a B.C. government-commissioned land-use proposal for Vancouver Island that would protect 13 percent of the island’s land base. “Screw the Environment. We Need Jobs,” their signs read.

Labeled the “yellow ribbon campaign,” it was Share’s crowning achievement.

After eight years leading Share, Mike Morton had a new job as director of communications for the BC Liberal caucus. When the Liberals under Gordon Campbell won the 2001 election, Morton became director of communications for the premier, a post he retained after Christy Clark became premier.

By then the war in the woods was over but the war in the Alberta oilsands and in B.C.'s mines was well underway. 

Image Credit: Screenshot of an image of environmentalist Bill McKibben from a "Big Green Radicals" video by the Richard Berman-connected Enviromental Policy Alliance

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In this episode of DeSmogCAST, Farron Cousins, Carol Linnitt, Kyla Mandel and Brendan DeMelle kick things off with a discussion about corporate spending in Canada and how the oil and gas industry is moving money to influence political decisions and public debate.

Next Kyla Mandel explains the significance of a new law in the UK that will expose park lands to the dangers of fracking.

Finally Brendan DeMelle discusses new revelations of Rick Perry's ties to the pipeline industry in Iowa and how these connections may influence his chances of winning the Republican nomination for the 2016 Presidential run.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

Canada’s Public Companies Should Disclose Political Spending: Report

Edelman’s TransCanada Astroturf Documents Expose Oil Industry’s Broad Attack on Public Interest

Edelman and TransCanada Part Ways After Leaked Documents Expose Aggressive PR Attack on Energy East Pipeline Opponents

Fracking Go-ahead For National Parks as Controversial Infrastructure Act Becomes Law

Climate Deniers Help Tories Weaken Fracking Rules

Facing Felony Charges, Rick Perry Joins Board of Energy Transfer Partners, Owner of Proposed Oil Pipeline Across Iowa

Fact Check: Rick Perry Already Advocated Publicly for Bakken Oil Pipeline In Iowa

GOP Activists: Rick Perry's Bakken Oil Pipeline Ties Could Cost Him Iowa Caucus Support

—

DeSmogCAST is a weekly online show that features DeSmog writers, experts and guests covering breaking news and in-depth analysis on politics, energy and environment issues in the U.S., Canada and around the world.

For more visit DeSmogBlog.com, DeSmog.ca, and DeSmog.uk.

DeSmogCAST is a joint project of DeSmogBlog, DeSmog Canada and DeSmogUK.

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Last week internal documents from Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, were leaked to Greenpeace, exposing an aggressive strategy to target opponents of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.

The release of the documents brought TransCanada under fire for using dirty public relations tricks to manipulate public opinion and divide communities on the issue of the company’s 4,600 km Energy East pipeline that will carry 1.1 million barrels a day of Alberta oilsands crude to one small refinery and to export facilities on the east coast.

Today a press release from Edelman confirms the firm is parting ways with TransCanada after “attention…moved away from the merits of TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline project.”

According to the release, “Edelman and TransCanada have mutually agreed not to extend Edelman’s contract beyond its current term,” which completes at the end of December.

The release also states the communications strategy Edelman devised was meant to “drive an active public discussion that gives Canadians reason to affirmatively support the project.”

But critics have been quick to point out that Edelman has a reputation for dirty corporate campaign strategies.

The leaked documents show the TransCanada strategy included tactics for undermining opponents of the Energy East pipeline and for manufacturing fake grassroots groups, or astroturf groups, that would give the public the impression of genuine community support for the pipeline.

Edelman recommended TransCanada target Energy East opponents by “distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources.”

The firm also suggested the pipeline company work with “supportive third parties who can in turn put the pressure on, particularly when TransCanada can’t.”

Edelman makes reference to other major oil companies, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Halliburton, that employ similar PR tricks.

The firm also noted its work with other major oil industry lobby groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute to promote the Keystone XL pipeline, malign opponents of fracking and fight climate legislation and renewable energy.

The revelation of Edelman’s TransCanada strategy came on the heels of another major leak that casts a shadow over oil industry PR.

Earlier this month an industry executive leaked a secret audio recording of PR veteran Richard Berman candidly outlining aggressive, high-pressure tactics for manipulating public opinion surrounding environmental and conservation groups.

Berman’s strategy — to “win ugly or lose pretty” — targeted opponents of fracking as well as other climate and anti-pipeline activists.

Berman, who was referred to as Dr. Evil in a 60 Minutes segment, told industry executives to think of the anti-environment battle “as an endless war” that industry must be prepared to pay for.

In light of Edelman’s leaked documents, TransCanada told the Globe and Mail the company was wary of pipeline opponents who have successfully stalled the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S.

TransCanada spokesman James Millar told the Globe that, with Energy East, the company was eager to gain supporters and limit the impact of opponents. Millar also noted TransCanada opted out of some of Edelman’s strategy suggestions, such as secretly funding pro-pipeline citizen groups.

Public opposition to Energy East recently escalated after author and activist Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois donated his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to an anti-pipeline online fundraiser. The crowdfunding site has now received more than $330,000 in donations to fight Energy East.

In today’s press release Edelman stated, “We stand by our strategy. It was both ethical and moral, and any suggestion to the contrary is untrue.”

The release concluded: “Unfortunately, the conversation about our efforts has become so loud in certain areas that it is impossible to have an open and honest conversation about the pipeline project. The project is too important and a thoughtful, deliberative conversation is needed more than ever. For that reason we feel that selection of a new partner for the project is necessary at this time so a new conversation on the merits of the project can begin.”

Update: TransCanada also released a statement about the break-up, which you can read in full below: 

The Energy East project makes sense for Canada. For the first time, western Canadian oil will be able to travel safely by pipeline all the way to Quebec and beyond to the east coast, strengthening Canadian energy security and offering direct local economic benefit all along the pipeline route.

Regrettably, recent controversy around our communications strategy has created distraction most notably in Quebec. Media reports have incorrectly suggested that TransCanada’s communications practices are unacceptable. The conversation about Energy East has turned into a debate about our choice of agency partner. We need to get back to a conversation about the project itself and as a result we have agreed that it is in the best interests of the project that we do not extend our contract with Edelman.

In the current environment, we can’t have the respectful conversation that we want to have with Canadians and Quebecers about Energy East. We need to discuss the project on its merits, responding to valid concerns such as how we will protect water and marine life, instead of talking about communications tactics.

We are therefore starting a fresh conversation with all stakeholders. We want to be part of eastern Canadian communities for decades to come, and we want to do everything that will enable us to earn the trust of Canadians for the long-term.

You can also view our statement on the Energy East blog in English or French.

Thank you,

Tim Duboyce

Spokesperson,

Energy East Pipeline Project

Image Credit: TransCanada

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Perhaps it’s the charming student activist, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who donated his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to the pipeline fight, or perhaps it was the scandalous documents leaked last week that showed pipeline company TransCanada has teamed up with one of the world’s most powerful PR firms, Edelman, to manipulate public opinion surrounding the Energy East pipeline.

Or maybe it’s the fact that at least two-thirds of Quebecers oppose the construction of a 4600km pipeline that will carry 1.1 million barrels of oilsands crude through their province (and five others) for export. Maybe onlookers, disturbed by the 50 arrests on Burnaby Mountain, have felt compelled to prevent a similar situation from erupting east of Alberta.

Who knows?

But what is becoming clear is the firestorm of public opposition that is committing to the fight against Energy East. Twelve hours after Nadeau-Dubois announced his $25,000 donation on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle on Sunday donations surpassed $140,000.

“If Quebec blocks this project, we will do a service to ourselves and future generations, but we also need to send a clear signal that we are prepared to contribute the global fight against climate change,” the Montreal Gazette reported him saying.

As of Tuesday, donations have surpassed $300,000.

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada says the “unprecedented outpouring of support shows the breadth and depth of opposition in Quebec to this pipeline.”

He adds it also shows the level of opposition to “the broader pro-oil, anti-environmental agenda of the federal government.”

“It shows that a lot of people want to be a part of a movement that makes the world a better, fairer and greener place, and don’t accept that we have to accept the oil industry’s false choice between environment and economy,” Stewart told DeSmog.

Council of Canadians map of Energy East pipeline route.

Mark Calzavera, regional director for Ontario, Quebec and Nunavut with the Council of Canadians, says the outpouring of support “shows very clearly that people are concerned about Energy East and that opposition is growing.”

He added people are more interested in information about the pipeline and in challenging the information that is currently available.  

“In no way is [Energy East] a nation-building pipeline,” he said. “It’s an export pipeline.”

“It’s taking the product in its rawest form that it can be shipped in, which is diluted bitumen, and they are exporting it along with any the jobs that go with refining it.”

The people of Canada have for years now been saying they’re concerned about climate change and are looking for leadership on climate change from their governments and we haven’t seen it so people are taking matters into their own hands. These pipeline projects – that lead to greater emissions – they’re opposing them personally.”

Nadeau-Dubois told CBC Daybreak Monday that Quebec is in a “serious situation.”

“We have a very, very important choice to make around that very controversial Energy East TransCanada pipeline,” he said.

Stewart said the ‘nation-building pipeline’ narrative deployed by TransCanada is now turning against the company and the Energy East proposal.

“The only nation that Energy East is building is a nation of resistance. TransCanada’s attempt to trick people and buy support for their project has backfired, and now people want to be a part of the alternative,” he said.

Image Credit: Environmental Defence Canada via Flickr

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This week's episode of DeSmogCAST covers the Edelman TransCanada dirty PR campaign, DeSmogBlog's new report on the gas industry revolving door lobbying push for LNG exports, and the outcome of the BC elections.

Hosted by DeSmogBlog contributor Farron Cousins, the DeSmogCAST guests this week are Emma Gilchrist, Brendan DeMelle and Steve Horn. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

TransCanada has bought some unlikely support for the company’s public relations astroturf offensive aimed at winning support for the Energy East pipeline.

As first reported by Ricochet, Erin Jacobson, the recent director of communications for the NDP, Canada’s official opposition party, will be helping advise TransCanada on developing the astroturf campaign, bringing her expertise in Canadian public affairs and developing digital political campaigns.

As revealed in documents obtained by Greenpeace (reported Monday on DeSmogBlog), TransCanada hired Edelman, the world’s largest PR company, to create a “grassroots advocacy” campaign to help push the oilsands crude pipeline through the eastern provinces to New Brunswick.

A document prepared by Edelman for TransCanada, titled “Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document,” dated May 15, 2014, lists Jacobson as “Canadian program lead,” and explains that she “will join the Energy East team to provide Canadian-specific advocacy counsel.”

Jacobson started at the NDP in 2008, working first as a communications assistant and rising through the ranks to her position as director of communications. Immediately before leaving to work for Edelman, her title was “Deputy Director of strategic communications” in Tom Mulcair’s office.

According to Edelman’s blog, while at the NDP, Jacobson “was critical to developing the party’s national brand and identity in a period in which it grew from 36 elected Members of Parliament to 100…This appointment is the next step in Edelman’s ongoing efforts to play a bigger role in the Canadian public affairs marketplace, with a focus on political campaign style, digital public affairs advocacy.”

Supporters of the social democratic party, which is generally progressive on environmental and social issues, will likely be surprised to learn that the mind that created the NDP’s iPhone app and designed the website template used by most of the party’s members of parliament is now thinking of ways to convince Canadians that a pipeline, carrying oilsands destined primarily for export, is in their best interest. 

Examples of TransCanada's social media strategy. 

Edelman’s plan, according to the leaked documents, includes “[adding] layers of difficulty for our opponents, distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources,” and argues for developing “supportive third parties, who can in turn put the pressure on, especially when TransCanada can’t.”

The timing of Jacobson’s hire also raises some questions. The Edelman document says that Jacobson would start work on Energy East on June 1, mere weeks after she left the NDP. On June 19th, Edelman officially announced Jacobson’s hire.

Only weeks removed from her position inside Opposition leader Mulcair’s office when officially joining Edelman (and, no doubt, in close communication with the Energy East team no later than May 15th, the date of the “Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document”), Canadians are left to wonder what sort of privileged Parliamentary information could have been passed along to the Edelman and TransCanada teams. Mulcair recently re-emphasized his support for Energy East — though with rigorous environmental review and “transparent, credible process."

According to Ricochet, current NDP Deputy Director of Strategic Communications Valérie Dufour said that Jacobson "was never involved in developing the party’s policy on energy and that she had not contacted any former colleagues on official business since her departure for Edelman." DeSmogBlog reached out to multiple members of the NDP for comment by phone and e-mail, including the office of Mulcair, but none responded by time of publication.  

Edelman did not respond to requests for comment. 

On the Energy East project, Jacobson will be reporting to Edelman Senior Counsel Michael Krempasky, an outspoken right-wing activist with a long history of shady digital PR tactics. Krempasky was a prolific blogger at RedState.org, which he co-founded, and has been tied to many Koch-funded groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Leadership Institute. Krempasky will, according to the documents, be spending a quarter of his full-time schedule on Energy East.

Krempasky put his firm in hot water when it was revealed that he was using fake "grassroots" bloggers for a digital astroturfing campaign that he created for Walmart, a tactic for which Edelman had to apologize. Jacobson will also be working with Nate Bailey out of Edelman's DC office, a self-described "ex-flack and GOP hack," who will be spending between one-quarter and half of his time on Energy East. 

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Vivian Krause has spent years scrutinizing how Canadian environmental groups are funded, claiming she's just asking "fair questions."

But as the blogger-turned-newspaper-columnist has run rampant with her conspiracy theory that American charitable foundations' support of Canadian environmental groups is nefarious, she has continually avoided seeking a fair answer.

If Krause were seeking a fair answer, she'd quickly learn that both investment dollars and philanthropic dollars cross borders all the time. There isn’t anything special or surprising about environmental groups receiving funding from U.S. foundations that share their goals — especially when the increasingly global nature of environmental challenges, particularly climate change, is taken into consideration.

Despite this common-sense answer, Krause’s strategy has effectively diverted attention away from genuine debate of environmental issues, while simultaneously undermining the important role environmental groups play in Canadian society.

Creating Diversions a Trademark of Oil Industry Strategy

This diversion strategy is a well-known tactic of the oil industry. A strategy document leaked yesterday details how one of the world’s most powerful PR firms, Edelman, advised TransCanada to undermine opponents to the Energy East pipeline.

Edelman recommended TransCanada apply pressure to opponents by “distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources.” To achieve that, Edelman advises TransCanada to work with “supportive third parties who can in turn put the pressure on, particularly when TransCanada can’t.”

Sound familiar?

In Vivian Krause's resume, she proudly takes credit for spawning a Senate inquiry and Canada Revenue Agency audit — distractions that forced environmental groups to spend time defending themselves, rather than doing their important work as watchdogs and advocates for environmental protection.

While Krause has been busy maligning the funding of Canadian environmental groups, very little attention has been paid to where Krause gets her bread buttered.

Krause Receives 90% of Income From Resource Industries

Krause frequently claims her research is independent (PDF) and that her work is unaffiliated with any industry — yet she has admitted that since 2012, more than 90 per cent of her income has come from oil, gas and mining interests through honorariums and speaking fees.

Krause has been paid as much as $10,000 to speak to energy executives. While she may not be directly employed by the fossil fuel industry, her work certainly aligns with that industry’s interests.

Groups paying Krause speaker’s fees included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Association for Mineral Exploration and the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Large speaking fees are increasingly being used as a handy way to support the work of industry allies without directly employing them.

To see just how contentious speaking fees can be, take a gander at the recent Rex Murphy or Peter Mansbridge controversies. CBC ended up adjusting its policy, requiring hosts to disclose their speaking fees.

What Was Vivian Krause’s Argument Again?

So let’s get this straight: Krause, who has relied on speaking fees from the multinational resource sector for 90 per cent of her income for the past three years, argues that Canada’s environmental organizations are fronts for U.S. interests because they receive a portion of their funding from across the border?

Despite the spurious logic, Krause is still given a platform to spread her misleading information in the Postmedia chain of newspapers, including the Financial Post and The Province, as well as on Global News shows where she's a regular panelist on Unfiltered with Jill Krop.

While Krause may spin a mysterious tale, the answer is simple: philanthropic dollars crossing borders to support work on global issues is the norm. And Canadian charities are required to disclose all significant donations from foreign sources annually.

The Real Debate Canada Needs

The continued debate over the funding sources of the environmental community is simply a diversion tactic that favours the fossil fuel industry's desire to avoid having the real debate about Canada’s energy future.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges nations to phase out fossil fuels immediately to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

The report puts responsibility squarely on the shoulders of our elected leaders, saying they can “either put policies in place to achieve this essential shift, or they can spend the rest of their careers dealing with climate disaster after climate disaster.”

But Canada won’t meet its 2020 international climate target, according to Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand.

“The federal government does not have an overall plan that maps out how Canada will achieve this target. Canadians have not been given the details about which regulations will be developed, when, nor what greenhouse gas reductions will be expected,” Gelfand wrote in a report last month.

Now that China and the U.S. have signed a deal agreeing to cut emissions, Canada is left with even fewer excuses not to act.

Meantime, the federal government’s mandate to advance an energy superpower agenda marches forth, resulting in controversy across the country — from the Kinder Morgan fiasco on Burnaby Mountain, to the First Nations legal battle against Enbridge Northern Gateway, to the Athabasca Chipewyan and Beaver Lake Cree First Nations’ fight to prevent oilsands expansion on their territory, to efforts to ban fracking in Nova Scotia.

These efforts are not the outcome of foreign conspiracy — they’re the outcome of a lack of any sensible national conversation about how to develop our natural resources while meeting our international climate change commitments.

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Documents obtained by Greenpeace detail a desperate astroturf PR strategy designed by Edelman for TransCanada to win public support for its Energy East tar sands export pipeline. TransCanada has failed for years to win approval of the controversial border-crossing Keystone XL pipeline, so apparently the company has decided to "win ugly or lose pretty" with an aggressive public relations attack on its opponents.

The Edelman strategy documents and work proposals outline a “grassroots advocacy” campaign plan to build support for TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline as well as to undermine public opposition to oil and pipelines generally.

The documents should cause well-deserved embarrassment for Edelman, the largest PR company in the world, as well as TransCanada. 

But this is not just a temporary black eye for a PR firm and its corporate client. The Edelman documents reveal a broader industry campaign to undermine the public interest and attack the oil industry’s critics across the board. 

In one of the files, titled Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document, Edelman emphasizes that TransCanada would not be alone in adopting this kind of aggressive strategy. 

The document notes the oil industry’s other extensive astroturf campaigns (including Edelman’s $52 million campaign for the American Petroleum Institute) to promote the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking, defeat climate legislation and attack renewable energy:

“Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Halliburton (and many more) have all made key investments in building permanent advocacy assets and programs to support their lobbying, outreach, and policy efforts. In launching a program like this, TransCanada will be in good company with a strong roadmap to follow.” (Grassroots Advocacy Vision p. 5-6)

dc.embed.loadNote('//www.documentcloud.org/documents/1362370-tc-energy-east-quebec-plan/annotations/187404.js');

The Edelman TransCanada documents once again confirm the fossil fuel industry’s desperate and expensive “permanent advocacy assets and programs” designed to attack grassroots organizers, nonprofits and charities, and ordinary citizens who are concerned about further fossil fuel infrastructure investments in an era of increasingly dangerous climate change.

The Globe and Mail, which broke the story of Edelman’s TransCanada plan, notes that the elaborate PR campaign plan is one more befitting the U.S. where aggressive PR has a longer history.

The Globe describes Edelman’s “reputation for aggressive tactics in the United States,” and quotes Greenpeace campaigner Keith Stewart expressing concern about TransCanada hiring Edelman’s services for "dirty tricks" PR:

“They’re bringing a much more aggressive, U.S.-style politics here,” Mr. Stewart said. “They’re employing pressure tactics that I would characterize as dirty tricks.”

But what I find particularly revealing about this story is how TransCanada has responded. From the Globe:

TransCanada spokesman James Millar said Monday the company learned valuable lessons in its battle over the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S., and is eager to enlist supporters and blunt the impact of opponents as the Energy East debate heats up. But he said it opted against pursuing some of Edelman’s more controversial proposals, such as quietly providing support to nominally independent pro-pipeline citizens’ groups.

TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline would ship 1.1 million barrels per day of tar sands and other western Canadian crude to refineries and export terminals along the Canadian Atlantic coast. The project faces stiff public opposition on both sides of the border, most significantly in Quebec.

Edelman isn’t coaching TransCanada on anything new in its PR arsenal. Most of the tactics described in the campaign plan originate with the PR industry’s lengthy and desperate efforts to protect the tobacco industry from accountability for its own dangerous product.

For example, the Edelman documents discuss efforts to put pressure on industry opponents by “distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources.”

Edelman suggests working with “supportive third parties who can in turn put the pressure on, particularly when TransCanada can’t.”

As anyone familiar with the tobacco industry PR playbook knows, these buzzwords such as “supportive third parties” are old techniques designed to help companies that, like the tobacco industry, don’t have much credibility with the public.

The idea is to get “independent experts” and credible-sounding front groups like the “Global Climate Coalition” or the “Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide” to parrot your message and play defense on your behalf because the public doesn’t trust you. You’re an oil company that makes money off pollution. You have zero credibility. So you follow the shady PR advice, "Put your words in someone else's mouth."  

"Think of this as an endless war"

The story of this dirty PR approach is sadly one with a long history. There are scores of books written on the subject, including Climate Cover-Up by DeSmog co-founder Jim Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.

Just last month, Richard Berman — known as “Dr Evil” for his many iniquitous public relations campaigns — was caught on tape coaching oil industry executives to “win ugly or lose pretty” and to “Think of this as an endless war…. And you have to budget for it.”

It seems the oil industry is content to continue pumping tens of millions of dollars into deceiving the public and attacking its critics with the help of notoriously sketchy PR companies.

Rather than do the right thing, this industry is clearly more interested in fighting dirty.  

Read the Edelman TransCanada Energy East campaign documents:

• Energy East Campaign Organization: Promote, Respond Pressure (August 5, 2014) • Digital Grassroots Advocacy Implementation Plan (May 20, 2014) • Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document (May 15, 2014) • Strategic Plan: Quebec (May 20, 2014) • Research Synthesis (no date)

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When it comes to shipping coal, it looks like the Vancouver Port Authority is taking a page out of the U.S. coal lobby's books. In an effort to combat negative public opinion about coal and the proposed expansion of coal exports through Fraser Surrey Docks, the port authority has hired public relations firm Edelman Vancouver to revamp its image.

Edelman is the largest public relations firm in B.C. and the company has a history of both pushing coal exports and disregarding public opinion. Until recently, the firm represented the pro-coal organization Northwest Alliance for Jobs and Exports, one of the largest groups in Washington state pushing for an increase in coal exports.

Edelman was fired by the Northwest Alliance after Lauri Hennessey, Edelman vice-president and spokesperson for the alliance, was recorded at an industry conference disparaging the people of the Pacific Northwest and calling the opposition “wacky” and “weird.” At the same conference, Hennessey acknowledged climate change in her address, but argued that the coal mined in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming — the source of the coal that would be shipped through Fraser Surrey Docks — wouldn’t have any adverse effects on the climate.

Edelman has now designed an ad campaign called Port Stories on behalf of Port Metro Vancouver. The ads have got it all: hardworking Canadians, poignant family moments and sweeping statements about how the port has shaped Vancouver as a city. There’s only one thing missing: any mention of coal.

Public documents also show that in April of 2012, the Port Authority hired American law firm McKenna Long & Aldrige to lobby on its behalf south of the border. The registration form, which indicates Port Metro Vancouver has been taken on as a client, says McKenna Long & Aldridge will push for “any regulations or inquiry of the U.S. Maritime Commission regarding possible cargo diversion from U.S. ports to Canadian or Mexican ports.” 

Tightening regulations on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. mean coal producers south of the border are looking for the quickest way to get their product to market. With fierce opposition to proposals for new coal shipping facilities in the U.S., producers are turning north to Vancouver.

This means that, while purporting to take public opinion into account when making the final decision on the port expansion, the Vancouver port authority has powerful lobbyists working in Washington to push for the very thing many citizens are opposed to in B.C.

The port of Metro Vancouver is the largest port in Canada, trading more than $53 billion per year in goods. According to a company statement, the port would like to be “embraced as a member of the community,” but its conduct around proposals to ship U.S. coal through Vancouver has proven a thorny matter.

Laura Benson, coal campaigner with the Dogwood Initiative, says that until the conflict of interest between the port’s role as a regulator and its position as a proponent of coal export is resolved, the public is facing an uphill battle.

“If the port were truly a corporation, then it would be fair game for them to be hiring PR companies and the biggest and best lobbyists.”

But because the port is also responsible for deciding on the proposed expansion of the Fraser Surrey Docks, Benson says, the conflict is essentially written into its mandate. She says it doesn’t have to be this way.

“There are all sort of models of ports around the world run in a much more responsible way.”

In order to put a stop to dirty coal use for good, port reform needs to be on the agenda, Benson argues.

Benson also stressed the need to continue to build a cross-border movement to oppose coal exports.

“I do think that we’re looking at a desperate industry,” she said. “Their window of opportunity is closing, and if we are successful in blocking thermal coal out of our port, this could be a turning point.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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