Dewayne Johnson with his sons. Photo courtesy of Baum Hedland Law Firm.

There is real momentum in the fight against agrochemicals and the companies that peddle them. After a landmark victory in Hawai’i banning the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in the state, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to do the same—nationwide. The EPA has 60 days to comply.

That same week, we watched on pins and needles as the Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company case unfolded in a San Francisco courtroom. Johnson’s lawyers argued that Roundup and Ranger Pro—proprietary mixtures of glyphosate and other toxic ingredients produced by Monsanto (recently bought out by Bayer) —he had used while working as a groundskeeper at a San Francisco Bay Area school was a substantial factor in his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

As the verdict was read in Johnson’s case late on a Friday afternoon, we couldn’t believe our ears. Our Real Food Media team was calling and texting up a storm, reeling from the news that David had defeated Goliath: the jury ruled that the company acted with malice and negligence in failing to warn consumers and awarded the plaintiff $289 million in damages (Bayer shares immediately plunged in value). Read Anna’s reflections on the trial in Civil Eats.

This was the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. There are around 8,000 other plaintiffs waiting in the wings.

The effects of this historic trial are rippling out in other ways, too: two California cities, Novato and Benicia, have gone Roundup-free and Santa Rosa has banned the use of Roundup in city parks. Following the landmark verdict, Monsanto is also getting renewed attention for its manufacture of other toxic substances, such as Agent Orange, which the company supplied to the US military during the Vietnam War. Vietnam is now demanding compensation from the company for the effects of Agent Orange—including birth defects, cancers, and other deadly diseases from which millions suffer to this day.

To all the activists, movements, frontline communities, and advocacy organizations working to get toxic chemicals banned and justice for those placed in harm’s way, we want to say: Thank you. Your hard work is paying off. Let’s keep the momentum going!

Want to throw some additional shade on Monsanto (now owned by Bayer)? Head to Corporate Accountability’s website and vote for Bayer (AKA #StillMonsanto) in their Corporate Hall of Shame.

Header image from Sustainable Pulse

The post Monsanto is Going Down appeared first on Real Food Media.

An audacious idea was hatched: A global boycott of the biggest pusher of infant formula, the Big Food giant Nestlé. The resulting campaign included the founding of INFACT (now known as Corporate Accountability International and home to Real Food Media) and, while the campaign didn’t end Nestlé’s marketing of infant formula, it dramatically restricted how, what, and where the company could market.

This multi-decade campaign of courageous leaders around the world working to promote health in the face of multinational food industry marketing was front-of-mind reading The New York Times deeply reported piece about Nestlé in Brazil. In the piece, you learn about how the global giant is still impacting the health and well being of people around the world, not only through its ongoing marketing of infant formula, but also KitKats, pudding, sugar-sweetened yoghurt. The Times pieces is powerful evidence that preventable diet-related illnesses are on the rise and the processed foods industry, including giants like Nestlé, are driving this public health scourge.

We at Real Food Media believe as a global community, we must stand up to Big Food and its attempts to influence our elected officials and demand real regulation and new policies for public health. The good news is we know there are policies that work—the ones we seek to amplify, through our videos, collaborations and media engagement—like restricting marketing to children (particularly in schools and hospitals), promoting healthy food procurement through initiatives like the Good Food Purchasing Program, and passing taxes like the sugary beverage taxes. (Ideas I shared in a Letter to the Editor, published here).

If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to read The New York Times piece and turn the heartbreak you may feel when you finish into positive action—what we try to do every day.

The post Taking on Big Food… From 1977 to Today appeared first on Real Food Media.

From seed to plate our food system is broken — and Corporate Accountability International leaders are making waves in their work to fix it.

I’m thrilled to announce that Sriram Madhusoodanan, director of the Value [the] Meal campaign, has just been named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader. And longtime ally, adviser, and founder of Real Food Media Anna Lappé will receive the James Beard Leadership Award in October.

Core to our work on the food system is connecting the dots between sustainable agriculture, food justice, public health, labor issues, and more. These prestigious awards signify we’re making great progress.

Shattering the status quo on health

As one of 40 Culture of Health Leaders nationally, Madhusoodanan will join outstanding individuals from across the country to participate in leadership development training and to collaborate and innovate to solve persistent problems. Culture of Health Leaders is a new program co-led by the National Collaborative for Health Equity and CommonHealth ACTION with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“The inspiration and vision these leaders bring to our program is astounding, and they come at health and equity from every angle,” said Brian Smedley, Culture of Health Leaders co-director and executive director and co-founder of the National Collaborative for Health Equity. “They will redefine the way leaders in every field use their innovation and influence to shatter the status quo on health in our country.”

Madhusoodanan leads Corporate Accountability International’s campaign challenging the corporate breakdown of our food system. Partnering with labor allies, community leaders, educators, and parents, he has led the organizing challenging McDonald’s, the corporation that has done more to distort our food system than any other. In the past year, his campaign challenged McDonald’s political influence-peddling via the National Restaurant Association, brought together parents and educators to end the exploitative marketing practice called McTeacher’s Nights, and helped communities pressure hospitals to end their contracts with McDonald’s.

Promoting justice and equality

The James Beard Foundation is recognizing Anna Lappé as a visionary who is influencing how, why, and what we eat. “This year’s honorees are game-changers who have made an impact in improving childhood nutrition, fighting hunger, and promoting justice and equality in our food system,” said Susan Ungaro, president of the James Beard Foundation.

“This is a particularly significant honor because of my respect for previous award winners and this year’s other honorees including Greg Asbed and Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Raj Patel [also a Corporate Accountably International adviser], Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, and John Boyd, Jr.,” said Lappé.

Lappé is a widely respected author and educator, known for her work as an advocate for just and ecologically restorative food systems. She is the founder and director of Real Food Media, a project of Corporate Accountability International. She founded Real Food Media to develop creative media initiatives that strengthen the food movement. Recent projects include Voices of the Food Chain, a partnership with the Food Chain Workers Alliance and StoryCorps. This initiative brought the stories of food chain workers from the field to the restaurant in their own words to millions of people around the country.

We are deeply proud of our remarkable colleagues who are challenging corporate abuse with passion, creativity, and commitment.

The post Corporate Accountability International Advisors and Staff Receive Distinguished Awards appeared first on Real Food Media.

by Anna Lappé

Last month, Chicago hosted two seemingly unrelated meetings. At the National Restaurant Association’s annual trade show you could check out workshops such as “Pickle Your Fancy” and “You Bacon Me Crazy,” while mingling with some of the other 63,000 attendees. Though the annual trade show is the NRA’s most public moment, the group works year-round behind the scenes, influencing politicians and legislation to shape what we eat, how we eat it and how restaurant workers — including those employed by McDonald’s — are treated.

As trade show participants, including those from some of the biggest restaurant chains in the country, were closing up their display cases, McDonald’s annual shareholder meeting was just getting started. It would appear to be no coincidence that the trade association’s meeting was timed to coincide with the Golden Arches confab of shareholders — McDonald’s is one of the trade association’s generous corporate sponsors.

But in recent years, McDonald’s annual meeting has become a venue not just for corporate officials opining on official sales reports, but also for public-interest advocates taking the fast-food chain to task for contradictions between what the company says it values and what it does in practice.

McDonald’s NRA membership makes its recent professed concern for its workers ring hollow. The trade group has actively lobbied for years against improving conditions for restaurant workers, including better worker wages and benefits. As one of the NRA’s largest dues-paying members, McDonald’s supports such lobbying and benefits from its success.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA lobbies on “virtually every issue affecting the restaurant industry.” In 2013 alone, the NRA, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization, spent a total of $71 million, including on lobbying and campaign contributions.

In 2014, it spent $3.9 million on contributions to candidates and lobbying 89 separate bills, according to its disclosures. Some of these efforts included longstanding lobbying against health care reform and increases in the minimum wage. The NRA specifically lobbied against policy proposals such as the “Forty Hours is Full-Time Act,” which would give those who work 30 hours a week the same benefits as those who work 40 — especially important today as business owners reduce hours per week to minimize their responsibilities for providing benefits such as health care. (Michele Simon documented more of these lobbying efforts in an Al Jazeera America column last year.)

A prominent member of the NRA, McDonald’s has been working with the trade group on many of these policy fights. Advocates at its meeting, including those from the Food Chain Workers Alliance and the Restaurants Opportunities Center, pointed out how the company is undermining worker welfare. The corporation’s “Standards of Business Conduct” report pledges to treat its employees with “fairness, respect and dignity”(PDF) and to “pay fair, competitive wages.” But as a member of the NRA, McDonald’s has helped to fund one of the biggest lobbying efforts to obstruct a national minimum wage increase in decades. Through the International Franchise Association, it’s also suing the city of Seattle for moving to increase the minimum wage to $15 there, claiming franchises, such as McDonald’s operations, are unfairly classified as “large” employers when they should be considered “small” businesses.

Advocates at the meeting pointed to this lobbying activity and to McDonald’s own shortfalls in improving worker wages and benefits. While the corporation was proud to announce a wage hike earlier this year for its workers, only a fraction actually received it: The hike covered just company-owned restaurants, where only about 10 percent of all U.S.-based employees work; the rest work for franchisees. (A projected 1,300 cooks and cashiers at McDonald’s and other major fast-food companies are convening this weekend in Detroit to strategize about such lackluster moves.)

Chicago Teachers Union vice president Jesse Sharkey also spoke of “the growing concerns from people across the globe regarding the devastating impact McDonald’s is having on workers, our food system and the health of our children.” And representatives from Corporate Accountability International, with whom I work, spoke out against the practices and lobbying efforts, especially with the NRA, that undermine the very values the corporation says it holds dear.

The Standards of Business Conduct report, subtitled “the Promise of the Golden Arches,” quotes McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc describing the company as “ethical, truthful and dependable” and committed to its “people.” But with its longstanding relationship with the NRA ensuring it has been a key force in limiting the compensation for low-wage workers — very much its people — it doesn’t appear that McDonald’s is going to make good on those promises any time soon.

Originally published in Al Jazeera America

Photo by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

The post McDonald’s Two-Faced Talk appeared first on Real Food Media.

by Anna Lappé 

“Doubt is our product,” wrote executives for tobacco giant Brown & Williamson in a now infamous 1969 memo on industry communications strategy. The memo was revealed during discovery in class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies that would eventually yield a trove of 85 million pages. Among those pages are details about the public relations playbook of an industry that — as far back as 1958 — knew that smoking caused cancer and used public relations to fight regulation for decades.

“Merchants of Doubt,” a brilliant new film from documentarian Robert Kenner (of “Food Inc.” fame), reveals this spin and tracks how other industries, from chemical manufacturers to pharmaceuticals, are ripping pages from Big Tobacco’s playbook to fight their own regulation and public scrutiny.

Based on the book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, the film reveals, in particular, Big Oil’s role in climate change denialism. It makes the argument that the world’s biggest energy companies funded PR and lobbying firms that fomented doubt about climate science and thereby stalled action on climate policy. The film pulls back the curtain on the backstage battle to win the hearts and minds of the American public, with nothing short of a stable climate in the balance.

Big Oil’s PR machine

When I was writing “Diet for a Hot Planet,” my book about the connections between the food industry and climate change, my editor suggested I cut the chapter addressing climate change denial.

“Anna,” she said, “the debate is settled. Denial is over.”

You can’t blame her for thinking so. It was 2006. “An Inconvenient Truth” had just come out. Al Gore’s painstakingly researched film about global warming, which would go on to gross $24 million and win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, built its message on years of accumulating clarity about the crisis. As far back as 1979, scientists Steve Schneider and Roger Revelle had testified before Congress about global warming. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen made front-page news for bringing the global warming crisis to the national spotlight. In front of a Congressional committee, he testified that evidence proved, with 99-percent certainty, that global warming was the result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The same year, future-President George H.W. Bush said on the campaign trail, “In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House … We will talk about global warming … And we will act.”

But as “Merchants of Doubt” shows, and what my editor didn’t know, is that the Big Oil PR machine was just greasing its wheels. The offensive had yet to come.

Big Oil developed a well-funded communications campaign inspired by Big Tobacco’s techniques — funding fake science, think tanks and front groups with innocuous-sounding names such as the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). Supported by energy companies such as Shell Oil, Exxon and BP, the GCC lobbied on Capitol Hill, fighting a global climate treaty and domestic climate legislation by producing issue briefs with the patina of truthiness.

As Kenner shows, such front groups claimed that global warming advocates were manufacturing the crisis as a Trojan Horse for greater government intervention, a claim that riled up the libertarian base and conservative groups such as Americans for Prosperity. The ascendancy of the Tea Party in the mid-2000s stoked fear among conservative candidates that speaking out about climate would make them unpopular with this increasingly powerful voting bloc. This was how the false notion that there was “no consensus” on climate change began to take hold in the public consciousness.

In 2009, 31,478 scientists allegedly signed a petition claiming there was “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of … greenhouse gases is causing … catastrophic … disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Ron Paul quoted from it in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives that year. Never mind that among those signatories, only 39 were climatologists and many were non-experts (including people on the payroll of Big Oil). Some were even obviously fake names, such as members of the Spice Girls (the mention of which produced my favorite B-roll moment in the film).

But the damage was already done. By late 2009, the Pew Center was reporting a “sharp decline” in Americans who believe that there is “solid evidence” of human-caused climate change: Only 36 percent of respondents agreed that “global temperatures are rising as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels” — down from nearly half just one year earlier.

It has been nearly three decades since Hansen’s warnings about global warming. But you can watch C-SPAN footage — from just two months ago — of Sen. James Inhofe throwing a snowball on the Senate floor to poke fun at climate science. (Inhofe, mind you, is the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.) You can also read the news about Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on using the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” under any circumstance.

The spin machine of the oil industry, in other words, is alive and well. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) — whose members include BP, Chevron, Exxon and Shell — is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in California. Since 2009, it has spent millions of dollars in lobbying and in supporting a tangled web of front groups, including Californians for Energy Independence, California Drivers Alliance, Californians Against Higher Taxes, Kern Citizens for Energy and Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation — all groups that are promoting the interests of the trade association. Doubt is the product, indeed.

Learn from Big Tobacco

Still, if Big Oil can learn from tobacco, so can we. As documented in a forthcoming companion piece to Kenner’s film, the fight against Big Tobacco was won largely because of sustained organizing that exposed what the industry knew — and when it knew it — about the harms of smoking. Groups such as Corporate Accountability International (for which I am a strategic advisor) and the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals succeeded in blocking the tobacco industry from participating in international treaty talks. It took decades of organizing, but the World Health Organization’s tobacco treaty finally entered into force in 2005. So far, it has been ratified by 179 countries.

There’s a shot in “Merchants of Doubt” of a woman smoking in a hospital bed, with baby monitors attached to her pregnant belly. Today’s reaction to that image — a gasp of disbelief — is a sign that while it took 50 years, the truth about tobacco finally won out.

The more climate chaos we experience — deadly hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and cold shocks — the more Big Oil and its ilk will spend to peddle doubt. The only trouble is, as Oreskes says in the film, we don’t have 50 years to win back the public.

Originally published in Al Jazeera America

Photo by Septentria/Flickr

The post The Long, Dirty Trail of Fake Science appeared first on Real Food Media.

by Anna Lappé

At 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 21, the 400,000 people gathered for the People’s Climate March in New York City took a moment of silence for those whose lives have already been lost because of climate change. The silence swept up Central Park West from Columbus Circle to 85th Street. A quiet fell among the Indigenous activists and solar power advocates, the high school students and octogenarians, all packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Ten seconds, 20 seconds, nearly a minute passed. Then, in the distance, a sound, quiet at first, but growing second-by-second until it surrounded us: shouts, hollers, and whoops sounding the alarm about our overheating planet. People around me cheered and hugged, tears streaming down faces. It was heartbreaking; it was exhilarating. We were not alone. We were legion.

The People’s Climate March in New York City in September was the largest expression of popular concern about the climate crisis the world has ever seen. But a march alone doesn’t make history.

Organizers called the New York City march the largest climate demonstration ever. Add to that the 2,646 satellite demonstrations from Berlin to Burundi, and the day’s actions were certainly the largest expression of popular concern about the crisis the world has ever seen.

Of course, a march alone doesn’t make history. To do that will require directly confronting the powerful fossil fuel interests that are central culprits in the crisis. Such a confrontation will, among other things, mean kicking the carbon polluters out of the climate negotiating rooms. A huge task, for sure. But we can take courage, and learn lessons, from the brave public-health activists who took on Big Tobacco.

For much of the twentieth century, Big Tobacco had done what Big Oil and King Coal are doing now: stalling regulation of a product that was killing millions a year. By the 1980s, the outcry against Big Tobacco had resulted in movement at the global level as The World Health Assembly began to develop the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Civil society organizations such as Corporate Accountability International (for which I am an adviser) understood that in order to ensure the treaty had teeth, Big Tobacco couldn’t be involved in its framing. But there were divided camps. Some felt it would be impossible to kick Big Tobacco out of the negotiations. Others held steady – and they won. The result was 30 words that changed the tobacco fight for good. Article 5.3 in the Framework Convention states: “In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, parties shall act to protect these polices from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”

Compare Article 5.3 to what’s permissible in climate negotiations. At the annual climate meetings – called “Conference of Parties,” or COPs – Big Energy organizes pavilions, din- ners, and breakaway meetings. Some industry representatives have even attended COPs as official members of country delegations. Corporations have been granted official observer status and given key roles through industry trade associations. At last year’s COP in Poland, the World Coal Association partnered with the Polish Ministry of Economy to promote coal as a solution to climate change. At the 2011 COP in South Africa, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, made up of fossil fuel and power companies, lobbied for and won carbon credits for new coal plants, even though carbon offsets for coal are known to be counterproductive.

Hundreds of organizations from around the world are pressuring the United Nation to heed the lesson from tobacco advocates and end the cozy relationship between Big Energy and climate negotiators. As advocates wrote in a November 2013 letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “We urge you to look at such examples and take commensurate action to protect climate policy-making from the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry – or companies whose core business model depends on the excessive emission of greenhouse gases – and their attempts to undermine and subvert urgently needed action.”

After the raucous moment of celebration at the People’s Climate March, the Corporate Accountability International contingent nearby cheered: “1, 2, Article 5.3: Let’s kick out big energy!” I know, it’s not exactly the catchiest chant, but it does zero in on a key to helping us turn that energizing day in the streets into the real stuff of history making.

Originally published in Earth Island Journal

Photo by South Bend Voice/Flickr

The post Smoke ‘Em Out: Time to Kick Big Oil From the Global Climate Talks appeared first on Real Food Media.

Today hundreds of thousands of people around the world — from Burundi to Berlin to Brooklyn — will take to the streets in what organizers are calling the biggest climate march in history. This outpouring of action in the lead-up to this year’s global climate summit in Lima, Peru, is a reflection of the growing frustration with lack of progress in the fight against global warming, from stalemate on emission reductions to an impasse on commitments of support for affected communities.

Progress has been stalled in part because the biggest polluters in the world — those oil and gas companies responsible for the lion’s share of emissions, for example — have been given a seat at the negotiating table, treated as partners and stakeholders at the annual global meetings called the Conference of Parties, or COP. Over the years, these COPs have featured industry-sponsored pavilions, dinners and breakaway meetings. And companies have been granted official observer status through their industry trade associations, which are considered nongovernmental organizations under current climate meeting rules. Some have even attended as official members of country delegations. (For instance, a representative from Shell joined the Nigerian delegation to COP16 in 2010 and Brazil’s to COP14 in 2008.)

As climate activists call for governments to take real action on climate, the decades-long fight against Big Tobacco — specifically, how public health advocates successfully kept companies away from the negotiating table — holds powerful lessons for the role industries should have in these key talks.

Keeping Big Tobacco at Bay

It’s almost impossible to fathom it now, but the first state ban on smoking in hospitals passed only in 1989. By then, decades of research had long proved the connection between nicotine and addiction and shown that smoking causes harm to nearly every organ in the body. The science finally managed to break through industry-funded misinformation campaigns, and in 1998 the United States reached a master settlement with the tobacco industry, which included annual payouts to 46 states of $10 billion for education and public health programs and strict regulations on marketing and advertising cigarettes. Several years later, after still more campaigning, the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Since then, more than 179 countries have ratified it, including Iran and China, although notably not the United States.

Civil society organizations such as Corporate Accountability International (CAI), for which I am an adviser, understood that in order for the convention to have teeth, Big Tobacco could not be allowed to interfere. To that end, CAI and other civil society groups and governments — especially those of Panama, Thailand and South Africa — fought for and secured the inclusion of 30 words that were the jumping-off point for an extensive set of guidelines (PDF) that spurred serious government action. They state, in Article 5.3, “In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, parties shall act to protect these polices from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.” These guidelines were adopted unanimously at the 2008 COP (PDF) in Durban, South Africa.

Building on these guidelines (PDF), many governments around the world have gone further to keep the tobacco industry away from policymaking. Colombia passed laws barring tobacco industry representatives from policy negotiations. Australia strengthened transparency laws regarding government interactions with the industry. And in 2009, Norway was the first nation to divest government pension funds from tobacco stock in response to the World Health Organization guidelines that specified governments “should divest all holdings in tobacco companies in order to keep public health interests apart from economic influence.”

Big Tobacco is not granted official observer status at tobacco treaty meetings. In fact, tobacco companies and their trade groups are not allowed to attend or observe the meetings at all. This is made clear in the WHO’s memo (PDF) on attendance policies, which reads, “Persons affiliated or having any relations with the tobacco industry or entities working to further its interests would not be permitted to attend any session or meeting of the COP and its subsidiary bodies.” When industry representatives have attempted to use public badges to gain entry, they have been removed by the Secretariat. The WHO is working on screening public badges to prevent such breaches in the future.

This stark line between negotiators, governments and industry helped create a tobacco treaty with real impact. One of the most widely embraced treaties in U.N. history, it covers almost 90 percent of the world’s population and is projected to save as many as 200 million lives by 2050 — and many millions more thereafter.

As people take to the streets to demand substantial action on climate change, it’s time to take this lesson from the fight against Big Tobacco. Bold action on climate policy is possible only if a stark line is drawn between climate negotiators and the industries driving the crisis: no revolving doors between regulatory positions and corporations, no so-called partnerships with industry that constitute a conflict of interest, no seat at the table in writing the rules of regulation and transparency in all industry engagements with public officials.

Untangle Industry Involvement

Instead, the fossil fuel industry is deeply involved in and actively influencing climate negotiations. For example, the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (whose members include BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell, among other major oil and gas companies) has hosted official side events to the COPs, produced their own reports on strategies for adapting to climate change and advised governments on climate policy. Meanwhile, its members are working in direct opposition to reducing global emissions by expanding oil exploration: BP and Shell, for example, are moving into offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Its members have been at the forefront of undermining climate science, with ExxonMobil alone funneling at least $22 million toward climate denial efforts from 1998 to 2011, according to a Greenpeace investigation (PDF).

Last year’s COP19 in Poland saw the participation of the World Coal Association (whose members include General Electric, Rio Tinto and Glencore), including partnering with the Polish Ministry of Economy on an international coal summit to convince U.N. negotiators to embrace coal as a solution to climate change. Out of this partnership came the Warsaw Communiqué, which promotes so-called clean coal, a process that critics point out is no less polluting than standard coal production and is just “a blunt attempt to keep the coal industry in business while governments and taxpayers continue to foot the bill for the damage it causes.”

At 2011’s COP17 in Durban, South Africa, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, made up of fossil fuel and power companies such as Shell, GDF Suez and Siemens, lobbied for and won carbon capture credits for new coal plants, even though carbon offsets for dirty coal are known to be ineffective at reducing emissions.

Untangling industry’s involvement in global climate negotiations will require taking on some of the biggest trade groups in the world. Members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for example, have combined annual revenue of more than $7 trillion and include Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Shell, Duke Energy and BP. While the council presents its 200 corporate members “as part of the solution to climate change,” it has consistently lobbied against legally binding standards at every major United Nations environmental summit since the council was founded in 1992. And the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which has been granted privileged access at the United Nations, has “consistently blocked attempts at regulating emissions,” according to the Corporate Europe Observatory (PDF). Unsurprisingly, the ICC’s members consist of the world’s biggest polluters, including Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and Duke Energy.

The European Parliament, at least, has recognized the need to rein in such industry influence. In a resolution presented on the eve of the 2013 climate talks, it called for vigilance “concerning efforts by economic actors that emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases or benefit from burning fossil fuels to undermine or subvert climate protection efforts.”

After last year’s climate talks, 78 organizations from around the world penned an open letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, calling on them to “to protect climate policymaking from the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry.” Ban has announced he will be joining climate marchers in the street. Here’s hoping he also listens to the call to action. As sea levels rise and millions are displaced, as species disappear and extreme weather sweeps the globe, it’s ever more clear we need an Article 5.3 for climate talks — and we need it now.

Originally published in Al Jazeera America

Photo by Spielvogel/Wikimedia

The post What Climate Activists Can Learn From the Fight Against Big Tobacco appeared first on Real Food Media.