Category Archives: Corporate Kleptocracy

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Unicorn or an Oxymoron?

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Is CSR a unicorn, or a horse with a shell glued to its forehead? Is it a mythical beast that can only be seen by virgins and saves communities from the poverty pollution and problems they face – sometimes also caused by business? Or is CSR a way to dress up an old nag – business – and make everyone believe in the magic, when you just whitewashed horsemeat?

I don’t believe CSR is anything more than a case of the emperor’s new clothes – or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s not just because of the over-abundance of ‘sustainability’ and ‘stakeholder-driven’ acronyms and slick new-speak. CSR is in direct conflict with the sole objective of a corporation – generating profits for owners. Companies are actually money-mercenaries – they are sworn to generate profit. Aside from that, corps can do whatever they want. But what if they want to do something that would make – gasp – less money?! That could actually end in a lawsuit with stockholders. Continue reading →

Changing the Climate: A Return to Science-Based Decision-Making

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Apparently while I was on vacation this summer America officially entered the FUBAR zone. The first half of 2012 has some pretty apocalypt~ish weather trends, with the U.S. breaking thousands of temperature records, half of America declared a disaster area, and massive crop failures across the grain belt guarantee food prices will spike in September. Let’s not forget the hail storms, massive power outages, haboobs, derechos, and other End of Days occurrences of 2012. So when do the aphids and frogs arrive?

Yet Global Warming, Climate Change, or The Sky is Falling, depending on your perspective, has garnered nary a mention in the Presidential election. David Roberts wrote an excellent piece on the current state of affairs regarding climate change, saying “It’s as though the very term is an endangered bird — every time it flitters across a screen somewhere, it’s met with great excitement.” But if we drop the discussion on limiting carbon emissions, we’re all going extinct.

Scientific studies continue to demonstrate a correlation between carbon emissions and a spike in global temperatures and extreme weather events. See the shifting temperature distribution graph and the average temperature chart if you don’t believe me. Yet the cultural conversation in America is so scientifically illiterate and willfully ignorant that it overpowers peer-reviewed research, an international consensus, and the very future of stable human civilizations. Continue reading →

Can Corporate Social Responsibility Save the Planet?

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My first day of the MBA portion of my joint Environmental Policy and Business Administration degree, our Business Sustainability and Society professor asked students for word associations with ‘Corporate America.’ Here is a wordle of the class crowdsource.

Corporate America: A Culture of Psychopaths? 

I contributed the world psychopath, because what else do you call a ‘person’ who lacks a conscience? Through Citizens United we have declared corporations to be people, but they have no moral compass, no Jiminy Cricket. People need to sleep at night with the choices they’ve made, but corporations rest easy after serving their shareholders and executives. To complicate matters further, it seems that the personality types that excel in financial and corporate leadership exhibit abnormally high psychopathic tendencies (up to 10 times societal averages). By allowing psychopaths to run our businesses and government, the American people have lost control of our country, and humanity may lose control over the anthropocentric climate change we’re causing through our shortsighted economic policies. Continue reading →

Memorial Day: In Memoriam of …?

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Memorial Day – a day of remembrance. We say it’s to honor those who fought and died for freedom. And to barbecue. But what does freedom actually mean as a concept? To me, freedom is the right to pursue personal happiness, to practice the religion and belief system you choose without fear of oppression. Freedom from the tyranny of the masses – those monolithic viewpoints that tread minority opinion underfoot. Basically, the freedom to disagree.

So does this memoriam apply exclusively to soldiers fighting ‘sanctioned’ wars for nationalistic and corporate ends? What about the freedom fighters that have suffered harassment, imprisonment, torture and death for me to have the right to say… whatever I want, basically. Or the gay rights activists around the world fighting for the right to openly love the consenting adults they choose, the people of other political viewpoints that fight for equality and justice in America and overseas. I am a pacifist, and don’t think America has gotten into a war for the ‘right’ reasons in my lifetime, or in my grandparents’, if ever. But I honor those poor souls used as cannon-fodder for bigger, and pettier, causes than they often know about or understand.

Let’s honor the solders by not having any more pointless wars based on false pretenses, by not pitting one nation’s men against another and pretending we don’t all descend from the same ancestor (that’s Lucy, not Adam and Eve, for those of you who were napping during science class). As Kevin Costner said in The Postman (way better post-apocalyptic film than Waterworld!), “Wouldn’t it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?” Just a thought… then maybe we’d be more interested in Presidents with MMA skills instead of backgrounds in corporate malfeasance. Continue reading →

Label Genetically Engineered Foods (an appeal to democracy and common sense)

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Signature gathering to label genetically modified foods in California ended last week. So far it looks like enough signatures were gathered to get the initiative on the 2012 California ballot. 500,000+ signatures were needed, and Label GMOs gathered nearly one million just to make sure challenged signatures don’t destroy the initiative (remember ACORN, the 2008 election, and the Republicans’ smear campaign?).

Quick definition of genetically engineered crops: new seeds made with recombinant DNA technology, which involves splicing genes from other organisms or species into crops at the molecular level to introduce desired traits. Note: This is not your dad’s selective breeding. We’re talking scientists using virus vectors in labs to cobble Frankenstein-crops together. Biotech corporations make claims of improved drought resistance and nutrition, but so far they’ve only created pesticide-producing and weed-killer-resistant traits. Unfortunately, I’m not weed-killer-resistant, last time I checked.

Grandmother Pamm Larry calls herself the initial instigator of the Genetically Engineered Labeling Act. When I spoke with her in September, she told me that “what made me decide to get involved with it was that I had been studying about studying about genetically engineered stuff for quite a few years, 6, 7, 8 years, and I was getting kind of depressed about the situation, almost catatonic, nervous and crying – I’m a grandma and a mom and wondering what kind of a world we’re leaving our children.”

Continue reading →