Green Growth False Promise

As I wrote in A World of Their Own, Marin County--the wealthiest in California--is where the stars of environmental show business go for seed money from the capitalist system. Unlike many venues, the National Bioneers Conference--held at Marin Center--frequently features assimilated indigenous celebrities, such as First Peoples Worldwide president Rebecca Adamson, Indigenous Environmental Network executive director Tom Goldtooth, and 350 staff member Clayton Thomas-Muller.

As I observed in Mammon's Missionaries, Naomi Klein's mission on behalf of Wall Street to co-opt indigenous activists such as Arthur Manuel and Clayton Thomas-Muller, and thus assimilate them into the corporate fold, is psychological warfare at its most repugnant. The consequence of this assimilation, as noted in The Collaborative Model Takes Root in Alberta's Tar Sands by Macdonald Stainsby, is environmental fraud, in which Big Green organizations like Greenpeace and 350 sell out the public interest, "shunting aside indigenous nations in the process and eliminating democratic oversight all in one fell swoop."

Under the umbrella of Klein's This Changes Everything project, this institutionalized racism--using assimilated indigenous celebrities as cover--leads to such things as crimes against humanity.

Collaborating with oil industry money laundries like TIDES Foundation, as well as notorious violators of human rights such as Shell Oil, 350 and friends engage in deceiving the public, while allowing Tar Sands investors to continue poisoning the planet. As Stainsby remarked in How Tides Canada Controls the Secret North American Tar Sands Coalition, backroom deals between Big Green and energy corporations leads to Big Green "defending a strategy of accommodation to capital."

The false promise of green capitalism, says Stainsby, is that we can have a growth economy and a healthy atmosphere. Commenting on this seductive claim, he maintains, "It is a lie."