Business Ethics – Page 12 – greenandprofitable.com

Waste $92 Million? Sure, Says Entergy

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on July 26, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Protests and Crackdowns Tagged with clamshell alliance, Entergy, nuclear power, safe energy movement, vermont yankee refueling

Here’s one for the Encyclopedia Idiotica: Entergy, owner of the sorely troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant (with a history of safety issues going back at least to 1974 when the plant was quite new),

Cooling tower failure, Vermont Yankee — Vermont Yankee cooling tower fails, 2008. Photo by ISC ALC, Creative Commons license

just spent $50 million on new fuel and committed another $42 million to installing that fuel, knowing full well that the state will consider any operation beyond March, 2012 illegal. And this doesn’t count $100 million in post-Fukushma upgrades that will be required in the next few years.

The issue of whether Vermont Yankee will be bound by state law and forced to shut down March 21, 2012 will be adjudicated in court this September: a lawsuit brought on by Entergy’s attempt to torpedo its 2006 agreement to abide by the state’s decision, once it became obvious that the vote was not going Entergy’s way.

Add to this a few other factors:

Vermont Yankee is one of 23 reactors in the US that use essentially the same design as Fukushima; it’s not out of the question that the federal government could unilaterally shut all those plants down.
The year-long Associated Press study on nuclear power safety showed glaring holes in the entire industry; a new citizen action network, like the one of the late 70s, could revitalize the safe energy/no nukes movement and bring enormous pressure to close all the nuclear plants in the US.
In New England, opposition to nuclear power is already deeply entrenched and fairly well organized. It was New England’s Clamshell Alliance, after all, that gave birth to the national nuclear shutdown movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Even if Entergy manages to win in court, it’s obvious that any attempt to keep the plant running will be met with massive citizen opposition including very public protests and civil disobedience. This will inevitably make keeping the plant open a very expensive and slow operation.

And I’ll bet that Entergy will raise an argument on the order of “you can’t make us shut down, we just spent $92 million to refuel.” Since the company knew full well that this money could be completely wasted and went ahead anyway, I hope that Judge Murtha not only refuses to consider that line of “reasoning,” but makes sure the entire cost is borne not by innocent taxpayers and ratepayers of Vermont, not even by stockhoders who had nothing to do with this decision, but by the members of the Board of Directors who voted to squander this money, and to the executives that pushed for this vote.

Corporations (and Governments) Need Thicker Skins

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on May 26, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Democracy, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with comcast, real grrls

In this Web 2.0 Age of Transparency, being stupid about being criticized is, well, more stupid than it used to be. Word gets around. Fast.

A Seattle organization called Reel Grrls, which teaches teens how to become filmmakers, criticized the revolving-door hiring by Comcast of FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker. (Lots of other people raised a public eyebrow on this one.)

In a truly idiotic move, Comcast then announced it was yanking $18,000 it had planned to fund Real Grrls’ summer camp to teach filmmaking, editing and screenwriting. Then, when the media got hold of the story and the public squawked, Comcast recanted and said the fund withdrawal was unauthorized.

But then Real Grrls said it didn’t want the money if there were going to be issues about corporate censorship. They’re using Web 2.0 channels, including a fundraising blast from media watchdog FreePress.net, to raise the money from outside the corporate world.

With 42,600 Google search results for “reel grrls” comcast as of Monday when I’m actually writing this, Comcast’s PR is clearly taking a hit.One it could have avoided completely by not doing something stupid.

Want to help? Here’s the link to donate.

Should You Work with a Company That Doesn’t Share Your Values? My Take

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on May 15, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Marketing, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with Business Ethics, walmart, working with a company you hate

It’s been a great discussion the past few days about whether and when it makes sense to work with companies that don’t share your values. I promised to add my own views after we’d gotten some comments, and thus, this post—which I wrote before receiving any of the comments, but chose to hold back on posting:

Here’s my take, as a long-time peace/environmental activist who also writes about how to leverage social change through business. You have these options:
1. Be a purist and refuse any tainted money or tainted partnerships, defining taint to mean that the company is in some way involved in things you disagree with.

2. “Separation of powers,” where you will work with a company that has dirty hands, but only work on the clean-hands aspects of that company.

3. Use the partnership to actively push the company toward more progressive stances, and eventually to abandon the actions that caused you to look askance in the first place.

I’ve evolved on this issue over time. In the 70s, I’m pretty sure I’d have been a #1. And been out in the streets with the protestors. But that was before I saw how the business world can not only change itself, but become a fulcrum for change in the wider society. These days, I’m at least a #2 and when possible, a #3. I’m even in dialogue with an outfit that does seminars for utility companies—and I told them I would not assist with anything that promoted nuclear (and if they hire me to present, I will definitely be using my bully pulpit to push the #3-style agenda to the utilities attending the conference).

But I do think there might be companies (or governments) whose philosophy is so opposed to mine that I would still be a number 1, still refuse to get my hands dirty.

I also recognize that sustainability is a path, and we are all somewhere on the path. I am not sure you could find a person who is living 100% sustainably. Even my very self-sufficient 90-year-old friend who lives in a mountaintop cabin she and her late husband built themselves, with no electricity or running water, grows most of her own food, and keeps her income below the taxable level—creates carbon emissions with her woodstove.

I think a great example is Walmart. I don’t choose to shop there, because I oppose its policies on labor issues, community development impact, predatory pricing, and a host of other areas. At the same time, I have publicly lauded Walmart, many times, for its groundbreaking, deep, systemic attention to sustainability. And I point out that Walmart is not a company of tree-huggers, but of executives looking to maximize profit. I’m willing to publicly praise Walmart’s ability make and save boatloads of money through enormous initiatives to use less energy and to introduce organic foods/green products to customers who would *never* set foot in a Whole Foods–even while choosing to put my own shopping dollars elsewhere.

I discuss this kind of conundrum a bit in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

Facebook Behind Smears on Google’s Privacy Policy

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on May 14, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, privacy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with facebook, google, pr, privacy, public relations

Acording to no less a source than London’s well-respected Financial Times, Facebook has admitted hiring a PR agency to spread stories questioning Google’s privacy policies.

I’m no fan of Google’s approach to privacy, and one of the reasons I still keep Eudora, my “throwback” e-mail system where the e-mail resides on my own hard drive, is that I don’t particularly want Google to have access to my outbox (I do filter some incoming mail through GMail). However, I’ve never particularly trusted Facebook on that score either. I simply stick to a policy that assumes anything I post anywhere is public knowledge, and I try to not post anything, anywhere, that would come back to bite me. Fortunately, I live a pretty transparent and ethical life, and I don’t really have much to worry about. And I’ve never been afraid to be controversial, or to be “ahead of my time.”

I’m also willing to stand up for what’s right. If Facebook chooses to “get even” with me for expressing outrage over this action, and suspends my account, so be it. I managed to live my first 50 years without any help from Facebook. At 54, I could live another 50 years without it if I had to.

Nonetheless, I am deeply appalled. Don’t we have anything better to do than to take our opponents down? I’m much more a believer in cooperating with our competitors (something I discuss extensively in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green). And if you are going to attack your competitors, at least have the decency to do it out in the open. This kind of smear campaign is what I expect from the lunatic fringe that has hijacked the US Republican Party, not from a company that has built its entire business model on cultivating surprisingly deep openness among its users.

A Nuclear Critic Speaks to the Nuclear Industry—In the 1970s

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on April 29, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda Tagged with browns ferry reactors, dai'ichi nuclear power plant, david comey, friends of the earth, nuclear power

David Vossbrink, APR, a PR guy who happens to be the president of PRSA’s Silicon Valley chapter, wrote in regarding my recent article on a PR site, “Seeing Past the “Spin”: Debunking Five Dangerous Myths About Nuclear Power.”

Vossbrink called my attention to a speech by the late safe energy activist David Comey, of Friends of the Earth. Comey, addressing the nuclear industry’s own Atomic Industrial Forum, told them they have a major credibility problem, and that he wasn’t afraid to tell them about it because he knew they would never follow his advice to tell the truth, and therefore remain easy targets.

Comey referenced a British spymaster, Richard Crossman, who was in charge of “alien psychological warfare” during World War II. He outlined 7 key principles that Crossman put forth in a 1953 lecture:

The Basis for All Successful Propaganda is the Truth
The Key to Successful Propaganda Is Accurate Information
The Most Successful Propagandist Is the Person Who Cares About Education
To Do Propaganda Well, One Must Not Fall in Love with It
A Successful Propagandist Cannot Afford to Make Mistakes
The Propaganda Must Be Credible to the Other Side, Not Your Own [empahsis mine]
Understatement Succeeds Best [the Brits used understatement to make the Nazis think they were only bringing a portion of what they could, and that they could inflict far more damage on their enemy]

An aside: Interestingly, while trying to find his speech online (which was critiqued in a journal published February 1975, and thus must be no later than mid-1974), I came across Comey’s description of the fire at the Browns Ferry, Alabama nuke in 1975 (which could have been utterly catastrophic, but once again, we were lucky). The Browns Ferry reactors, among 23 US nuclear plants using essentially the same design as the failed Dai’ichi reactors in Japan, had to be shut down this week because of tornados. At least they didn’t wait until the tornado created a disaster, as the tsunami did in Japan.

Unfortunatley, Comey was right: the nuclear industry still can’t seem to tell the truth. And fortunately, I believe that Comey was also right about what that means; it should be easy to undermine the nuclear industry’s credibility and overcome the juggernaut, to make it clear that we as a society will not tolerate the construction of a single new n-plant or license extension of an existing one, and that we need to take active steps to decommission the ones already in use.

Let’s prove Comey right—get out there and organize!

Note: I will be glad to send the PDF of Comey’s full speech–write me at shel (at) principledprofit.com, subject line Send David Come Nuke Speech. I was not able to locate it online.

“No Risk to Humans” from Plutonium Spill? Who Are They Trying to Kid

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on March 30, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with daichi nuclear power plant, lying officials, radiation safety, safe levels of plutonium

The latest news from Daichi makes it clear: Nothing these officials say can be trusted:

Highly toxic plutonium has seeped into the soil outside the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex in northeastern Japan, officials say. The amounts detected in five different soil samples taken from the facility did not pose a risk to humans, safety officials say.

Yes, I am calling that last sentence an outright lie—a disgusting, damnable, and definitely dangerous dissembling.

Want to know the safe level of inhaled plutonium? Zero. The risks are lower if it’s eaten or drank. Breathing the stuff has a very high deadliness factor because it settles in the lungs.

Urgent: Speakers, Beware the Middlesex University Scam

By Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert Posted on February 21, 2011 Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics-International Tagged with middlesex university, professor robert brain, professor woodman walker, speakers beware, speaking scam

Early this month, I got an e-mail from a Professor Robert Brain, inviting me to speak at my full fee plus expenses for a rapidly upcoming conference in England. The topic he proposed was a bit off my usual topic, but one that I could handle.

Follow-up mails from a Professor Woodman Walker included a letter of agreement to sign and requested more information from me. I wanted to find out more about the parameters of the speech, so I asked for some phone time. Our interview was scheduled for 8 a.m. my time this morning.

In the meantime, I had asked my good friend Google to tell me what it new about these two “gentlemen.”

The results were not encouraging:

One of the links on that page led me to a full account of how the scam works. I also checked the Middlesex University staff directory. Oddly enough, the phrase “Robert Brain” brought back a listing of the staff directory, as you can see in the screen shot–but when I clicked through the directory itself, neither Robert Brain nor Woodman Walker showed up.

Now, I’ve had a few speaking requests that seemed pretty flaky at first, and turned out to be real. So I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Here’s an approximation of how the conversation went:

Me: “Good morning, this is Shel. How may I make your day special?”

Him: “This is professor Woodman Walker of Middlesex University, UK.”

Me (big, hearty): “Good morning, Professor. The first thing I need from you is the names, off the top of your head and you can give me contact information later, of three people who’ve spoken for you in the last year. There are some rumors about you on Google.”

Him: hangs up.

Speakers—be suspicious of any e-mail that asks for banking information in order to get a work permit (I didn’t get that far with him)—and don’t be surprised if a similar scheme shows up allegedly from a different school and different professors.

You’ve been warned!

Category: Business Ethics