Environmentalists shouldn’t join any company’s environmental initiative, according to an article on AlterNet by Phil Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First. Instead, Mattera argues that human activists should be leading the effort to clean up the planet, and corporations should be made to follow their lead.
Mattera worries that there is a risk that the heightened level of collaboration between corporations and activists will undermine the justification for an independent environmental movement. “Why pay dues to a green group if its agenda is virtually identical to that of GE and DuPont?”
“It would behoove enviros to be more skeptical of corporate green claims and less eager to jump into bed with business,” Mattera writes. “It certainly makes sense to seek specific concessions from corporations and to offer moderate praise when they comply, but activists should maintain an arm’s-length relationship to business and not see themselves as partners.”