The main problem criticized in the article that you mention is greenwashing: "For Chevron, having Jared Diamond and the World Wildlife Fund (on whose board he sits) on their side amounts to a public relations coup" (at <http://counterpunch.org/proyect05092005.html>). It is precisely because it is not the case that nothing can be learned from Jared Diamond and the WWF that they are useful for corporations like Chevron for the purpose of greenwashing. Getting praised by Dick Cheney, the American Enterprise Institute, and the like for being a good corporate environmental citizen doesn't help corporations, but being lent credibility by such well-known scientists like Diamond and respectable environmental organizations like the WWF is priceless for Chevron and its likes.
The article that Lou published in CounterPunch is the fourth installment of his series of notes on "Collapse" (posted to the PEN-l and marxism lists). In part 2 is included this link to a Salon interview with Diamond:
<blockquote>Is there an environmental award that is given to businesses that do well? Is Home Depot being recognized for what it's done?
[Jared Diamond] They're recognized within the World Wildlife Fund, on whose board I sit. I don't know if the general public has an appreciation for what Home Depot is doing. The general public certainly does not have wide sympathy for what the oil companies are doing. And partly that's the result of history. And there still are oil spills; there's been a bad oil spill within the last two weeks. But you have to read the newspaper carefully. That oil spill was not a tanker belonging to ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil; it was a tanker belonging to a private oil carrier, and it's the private carriers that are still using the single-hull tankers and are adhering to low standards. So they give the oil industry a bad name. I'm not saying that the oil industry is a saint; there are still big problems with oil industries operating in dictatorial countries, but the public should also understand the very high standards to which some oil companies are adhering.
Like Chevron.
[Jared Diamond] Like Chevron in Papua New Guinea. Now I can't swear that Chevron is being clean everywhere in the world, but I've talked with lots of Chevron employees who told me about how Chevron operates, for example, in Bahrain and Dubai and Kuwait, and it sounds, from what I'm told, that their standards there are as high as their standards in Papua New Guinea.
(Oliver Broudy, "Are We Doomed?" 7 Jan. 2005, <http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/index1.html>)</blockquote>
Does Chevron truly deserve Diamond's endorsement? -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>