Is there an unfinished agenda?
One of my uncomfortable curiosities is exploring how large financial interests manipulate environmental movements to their own advantage. I wrote in my book about how the junk food and packaging industry invented the concept of the Litter Bug to push blame for litter away from themselves and onto individuals. I also wrote an article here on Oxymoron about how the fossil fuel industry used the same technique when BP invented the concept of carbon footprinting. The genius of these slight of hand techniques is that the proposals they put forward are actually quite good. I think most of us would agree that we should have a culture where we don’t drop our litter on the street, and most people reading this will probably agree that there is value in understanding carbon footprints. But like a magicians audience, we are so focused on the waving of the wand that we don’t spot how the rabbit got in the hat.
It’s probably no surprise to regular readers that I spend a fair bit of time down rabbit holes, looking for clues that might help us make sense of things. A recent trip down a shadowy tunnel led me to an environmental book from 1977 called The Unfinished Agenda, published by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The combination of the somewhat ominous title and the oil magnate Rockefeller family raised an eyebrow.
The book aims to bring attention to the big environmental challenges facing society and presents proposals on how to solve them, based on consensus discussion with some of the most prominent environmentalists in America at the time. The contributors included senior members of Friends of the Earth, The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defence Council, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy and many others. In fact, even The Rockefeller Brothers Fund positions itself as an environmental non-profit to this day.
So, 46 years later, what did I find in this book? Was it a genuine guide to a sustainable future or a piece of cunning manipulation by the fossil fuel industry? To be honest, I’m not sure.
Let’s start with the good stuff
The Unfinished Agenda is written as a practical guide to solving environmental problems over the long term. It makes it clear up front that everything in nature and society is interdependent and that there are no easy fixes to complex problems. They do however provide very clear guidance for citizens, corporations and governments on what the issues are and what the most effective solutions are likely to be.
The following are some of the recommendations that I feel can be relevant specifically to businesses:
Give positive publicity to women in positions of responsibility and authority
Make day-care facilities, paternity and maternity leaves, flexible work schedules and other such measures available to permit coordination of parenthood duties with other career duties
Recycle organic nutrients as a supplement to and partial substitute for chemical fertilisers [and] promote the use of biological methods of pest control (i.e. organic farming)
Develop appropriately smaller scale energy generation systems [and] move rapidly from dependence on depletable energy capital to renewable energy
Solar space-conditioning (which I think means solar powered heating and cooling)
All goods be sold … labelled with disposal instructions
The sale price of manufactured goods include the disposal cost
Special conservation and recycling measures be taken for scarce and critical elements
Of course, not all are relevant to every business and some of them might not seem so radical now, but there are still good ideas here. In particular, it’s fascinating that they specifically highlight female career success and flexible working as environmental initiatives.
So far so good
The book is full of excellent recommendations to drive society toward a sustainable future while also supporting a free society with high quality of life. For governments in particular, there are still a lot of good ideas that they could borrow from this old book.
The question is, should we be worried that it’s funded by the Rockefellers? In my opinion, it’s a well conceived book full of mostly good advice and while some ideas might be a bit off key by today’s standards, on balance the agenda seems to be to create a sustainable society. But not everyone agrees.
There are people who raised concerns that there was a less wholesome agenda discreetly woven into the book. This is pure speculation, but it’s intriguing speculation.
The hidden agenda
The first concern is that the book starts with a chapter about population, which isn’t inherently problematic until you realise that the Rockefeller family had a rather concerning history as prominent figures in the eugenics movement. In particular, the Rockefeller Foundation provided considerable funding to a number of German eugenicists from the 1920’s through the Second World War to the 1950’s. They apparently didn’t condemn eugenics until 2021! Most of the recommendations relating to population size in The Unfinished Agenda seem pretty reasonable, but this association certainly feels uncomfortable.
The second concern that has been put forward is that of a more commercial motive, which was to halt progress of the nuclear energy sector that had the potential to undermine reliance on fossil fuels far more rapidly than renewables at the time. Having read the book, this does seem feasible. They dedicated a disproportionate amount of paper to explaining every reason why nuclear energy is a disaster for humanity, going so far as to suggest that it would even lead to the end of democracy.
They promoted small scale renewables as a big part of the solution, alongside technologies like district heating, but some of the criticisms they targeted at nuclear also applied to renewables, such as the fact that not everything can be substituted with electricity and that you don’t always have the energy you need when you need it.
They also promoted the use of fuel-alcohol made from waste as a convenient replacement for petrol, which feels awfully similar to the modern day promotion of biofuels by the fossil fuel industry. They even acknowledged the US government’s aim to have grid capacity for charging 15 million electric cars by the year 2000 but dismissed it quickly as being uneconomical.
Furthermore, they stated that nuclear fusion technology was too speculative and fraught with problems, so they advised that fusion research be treated as a low priority.
What’s interesting about this is not necessarily whether nuclear was or wasn’t the right solution, but whether the fossil fuel industry invested resources in amplifying the fears of environmentalists to delay progress in competing new technologies. It’s food for thought!
Understanding the message
What I’m trying to highlight in this post is two things. The first is that we shouldn’t throw out the message just because we don’t like the messenger. There are loads of good environmental ideas that have been promoted by polluting industries, including many of the ideas in The Unfinished Agenda. We should review ideas on merit alone and embrace anything that help us create better businesses for a better future.
At the same time, we should keep our eyes open as to where our information is coming from, who is funding it and what their real motives might be. In today’s world of concentrated wealth, media and tech, that’s essential to ensuring that we aren’t manipulated into following the wrong path and that our informed decisions are as solid as we think they are.
I might add one last thing here too. I’m often surprised at how often I read old books like The Unfinished Agenda and find that many of the ideas of the past are almost identical to ideas that are promoted today as new and cutting edge. Perhaps we don’t need actually new ideas and simply need to get on with the ones we’ve already had. On that note, I better stop fiddling about with my newsletter, finish my breakfast and do some real work.
Thanks for reading this week. I’d love to hear your perspectives and ideas in the comments, and if you’ve been enjoying Oxymoron then I’d love it if you mention it to someone you think might like it.