How Should Corporations Deal with Env Scepticism

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

How Should Corporations Deal withEnvironmental Scepticism?

Peter Jacques*Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, USA

ABSTRACTEnvironmental scepticism, or the effort to ‘debunk’ environmental claims, is gainingvisibility in world affairs. This complicates the position of corporations that aregenuine in their efforts for conscientious productive work. This article explains someof the primary movements found in scepticism and argues that the truth of the scep-tical claims is sufficiently contested that corporations should err on the side of cautionand treat environmental scepticism as a political movement with a narrow supportbase, not as a scientific basis for policy. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltdand ERP Environment.

Received 2 January 2005; revised 10 February 2005; accepted 22 February 2005

Keywords: Lomborg; environmental scepticism; corporate responsibility; environmental politics; conservatism; political move-

ments; environmental policy; corporate legitimacy; corporate credibility

Introduction

ENVIRONMENTAL SCEPTICISM IS THE POSITION THAT MOST OR ALL ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS ARE

unfounded and are used to drum up fear to reinforce the power of environmental groups, acad-

emics and activists. Environmental scepticism is nothing new, but this does not make the claims

of scepticism less confusing and complex for corporations.

This article operates off the premise that environmental scepticism presents a relatively complex set

of problems for corporations, particularly in extractive, polluting, or other environmentally high-impact

industries, because it may be in their short term interest to support this literature in order to pursue

de-regulation and fewer environmental limits. However, this article discusses why scepticism is suffi-

ciently contested and narrowly conceived that supporting scepticism will appear partisan. Thus, this

essay argues that corporations should treat environmental scepticism like a political movement.

The following points will be made throughout the paper. First, environmental scepticism and its key

components will be described. Then scepticism will be placed in the position of ‘outlier’ within scien-

tific consensus in order to understand what is at stake. It will then be argued that scepticism fits the

criteria of a political movement through two key points, including how it comes from a relatively unified

ideology, and that it makes a unified call to action for free markets and free enterprise, thereby orga-

nizing a coherent group of people to act consistently with these values. Since the same cannot be said

* Correspondence to: Peter Jacques, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, P.O. Box 161356, 4000 Central FloridaBoulevard, Orlando, FL 32816-1356, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental ManagementCorp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. 13, 25–36 (2006)Published online 17 May 2005 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/csr.089

26 P. Jacques

of environmental concern, environmental scepticism is in violation of a broad public interest in some

important ways, and supporting scepticism will entail the dangers of violating this interest. Finally, con-

cluding suggestions are made for corporations that genuinely wish to serve a non-partisan public inter-

est and that wish to realize long-term stability, credibility and security.

Environmental Scepticism

Environmental scepticism is a set of conceptual propositions that challenge and are distrustful of the

basic articulations of environmental scholarship, policy and activism. This distrust is founded in the two

core elements of contemporary conservatism, evangelical Protestantism and free market political eco-

nomic advocacy. Unlike overt anti-environmental politics, some environmental scepticism hides its

motives, but the thrust is typically to undermine environmental populism1 and very often environmen-

tal scepticism is part and parcel of overt anti-environmental groups described by Switzer (1997) (e.g.

Arnold and Gottlieb, 1994; Driessen, 2003).

This differs from disputing a particular environmental claim, because environmental scepticism is

more interested in ‘questioning the basic premises and goals’ of ecological socio-political sympathies,

as was the practice of the Reagan administration (Kraft and Vig, 1984, p. 415). Further, environmental

scepticism is a response to growing global environmental concerns that implicate a wider problem of

global sustainability (or lack thereof) (McCright and Dunlap, 2000).

John Cobb (1999) has described scepticism as ‘economism’, which is distinctly opposed to what he

calls ‘ecologism’. He defines economism as follows:

Economistic thinkers typically believe that there is no problem about the indefinite expansion of the

economy. Indeed, this indefinite expansion is their goal. They met the warnings of physical scien-

tists with scepticism. History has shown to their satisfaction that the technology that is such an

important part of capital can solve the many problems that natural limits are supposed to put in the

way of continuing economic growth. They point to many past instances that illustrate this (p. 39).

Environmental scepticism is apparently growing in influence, for example through its fairly success-

ful bid to question global warming (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). The most credible sceptic is Bjørn

Lomborg, who publishes his work through Cambridge University Press (CUP). His work has gone

through the rigours of peer review and his enormously controversial The Skeptical Environmentalist (TSE)

was received with initial praise. Lomborg’s writing was clear, he used graphs to illustrate his points and

he had extensive evidence to substantiate his claims.

Lomborg’s conclusions apparently come from his discovery of Julian Simon’s work, who was an influ-

ential sceptic at the University of Maryland. Simon’s premise is found in several volumes (Simon, 1981,

1995, 1999; Simon and Kahn, 1984), which state that even as almost everything in modernity demon-

strates human improvement, people will continue to believe they are getting worse. Lomborg discov-

ered Simon’s work, and said he thought it would be easy to challenge. However, the more ‘facts’ he

found, the more obvious it was to him that Simon was actually correct and he became disenfranchised

with the conventional environmental position. His book notes that from global warming to hunger to

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. 13, 25–36 (2006)DOI: 10.1002/csr

1 Kirkman (2002) argues that this is not true, but the rhetoric in the literature points against his conclusion. Some sceptics may want merelya weakened set of environmental policies, but sceptics by definition are working to make a broad point about the illegitimacy of a great dealof environmental concern.

Dealing with Environmental Scepticism 27

pollution, environmental conditions may not be ‘good enough’ but they are all getting better. He con-

cludes after analysing a terrific amount of evidence:

Thus, this is the very message of the book: children born today – in both the industrialized world

and developing countries – will live longer and be healthier, they will get more food, a better edu-

cation, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities – without the global

environment being destroyed (Lomborg, 2001, pp. 351–352).

His work touched a nerve for the environmental community, probably because Lomborg’s work ques-

tioned the general premise and sympathies that environmental studies are very often based upon.

However, it was probably because he published through this elite venue that he received a great deal of

attention, and his work became the centre of a very large scandal both for him and for CUP. Not long

after the publication, TSE was nominated for a case with the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishon-

esty, a government group that investigates crimes of scientific bias. They found that Lomborg was guilty

of committing some degree of dishonesty for selecting and distorting information in a way that was

incriminating. Later, the Danish committee was itself incriminated by the Danish government, which

overturned the ruling because the case was ‘devoid of argumentation’. Nonetheless, it is clear that the

Lomborg’s work faces systematic and consistent challenges from social and physical scientists who reject

his conclusions and argue that he has misused statistical evidence. This has come to the fore in some

of the most respected scientific journals including Nature, Scientific American and Conservation Biology,

to name a few (see, e.g., Union of Concerned Scientists, 2003; Brockington, 2003; Besley and

Shanahan, 2004; Gleick, 2001; Pimm and Harvey, 2001; Simberloff, 2002; Moomaw, 2002; Rennie etal., 2002).

There are legitimate reasons for grievances with the way Lomborg framed and analysed his data in

TSE, but the censure against him appeared to be disingenuous in part because Lomborg’s own defense

was apparently dismissed. Further, it is irrelevant if Lomborg is biased, since everyone is in some way

biased by their own language, culture, era, personal hopes and desires, and ideological commitment.

Thus, bias in and of itself is insufficient grounds for dismissing a knowledge claim. What is important

is the political meaning of the bias within the context of the larger intellectual community in which the

claim exists combined with the weight of the argument. I disagree profoundly with Lomborg, as does

the vast majority of the scientific community as far as I can judge, but that in itself does not make him

or other sceptics wrong. Moreover, while none of these debates and deliberations are apolitical, that does

not mean the arguments about environmental scepticism are automatically equivalent or nihilistic.

Scientific Agreement as Politics

Let me elaborate on this latter point. The weight of an argument through the thoroughness and com-

pulsion of relevant evidence is a critical part of a ‘truth claim’. However, if we assume that everyone

comes from a particular ideology, then all claims will have a degree of ideological affiliation.2 Thus, like

scientific evidence itself, the scientific community is forced to throw out outliers because the ultimate

arbiter of legitimate knowledge is community acceptance (an overtly political issue), which is partly deter-

mined by consistency of findings in the scientific community – even though the outlier may be correct.


2 I do not exclude myself from this statement. I come from a pacifist green ideology, though I believe that my treatment of scepticism in thisarticle, even though I find most of its claims rather callous and incorrect, is not as something that is patently false. In other words, it is irrel-evant to this article’s argument whether or not scepticism is largely correct or incorrect.

28 P. Jacques


The weight of evidence in a particular scientific case is also important in how it impacts the views of

the majority of scientists who are important to the issue at hand.

Naomi Oreskes (2004a) provides one of the more important discussions about scientific acceptance

within the context of plate tectonics. She notes that while the theory of continental drift and plate tec-

tonics had overwhelming evidence, direct proof was not forthcoming for many decades after the theory

was accepted. Most geophysical scientists at the time considered the theory ‘true’ based on indirect evi-

dence and abductive reasoning, though there were (and apparently still are) sceptics. Had the issue been

relevant or important to policy, she notes that even more sceptics would have been produced, supported

and brought to the public’s attention by interested parties who had something at stake. Would these/do

these sceptics mean that the geophysical community needs to wait for these ‘recalcitrant individuals to

be convinced? Should implementation of our hypothetical policy been deferred? Of course not: scien-

tific knowledge would not progress if such severe standards were enforced’ (p. 372). In fact, Oreskes

defines the community and science itself as this amorphous confluence of belief:

. . . the appropriate standard for judging science is neither proof, nor certainty, not unanimity, but

a broad and firm consensus of the relevant experts in the field. The reason is simply this: Scientific

knowledge is the intellectual and social consensus of affiliated experts based on the weight of avail-

able empirical evidence, and evaluated according to accepted methodologies (Oreskes, 2004a).

This community operates and decides what is true in face of sceptics on a regular basis by dismissing

outliers, even though there is an open ended opportunity for the outliers to vindicate themselves later

in time. Outliers may, in the end, be ‘correct’. However, based on contemporary and admittedly dynamic

and inter-subjective standards of scientific communities, sceptics are alienated from what is accepted as

true, and the communities trudge on.

In environmental affairs the details of scientific agreement are very often in contest (Jasonoff, 1993),

and science is consistently manipulated by a variety of national and international political agendas, inter-

ests and policies (Harrison and Bryner, 2004). There is no question that scientific work is regularly

shaped to fit these interests (Harrison and Bryner, 2004). However, in several general conditions sci-

entists have a strong consensus. For example, there is a now well established and quantifiable scientific

consensus about climate change (Oreskes, 2004b); there are climate sceptics, but they are clearly out-

liers. Also, the declining condition of world fisheries, coral reefs, ozone depletion, soil erosion and

increased nitrogen fixing, the loss of grasslands and other key global scale environmental concerns such

as land conversion, water use and pollution, the loss of biodiversity as we enter the ‘sixth mass extinc-

tion event of life on Earth, and the first one caused by human activities’ have a wide margin of scien-

tific support (Lubchenco, 2003, p. 24).

All of these concerns imply a limit to human sustainability and the need for immediate and strong

protective measures, which includes regulations and restrictions that will devalue or reduce some cor-

porate profits. Thus, it appears on the face of it that opposing and undermining the claims that support

these limits will be advantageous to firms and their bottom line, particularly if they are in extractive,

polluting or related industries that are directly affected by environmental regulations and limits.

The move to support environmental scepticism, even for these key industries, is not necessarily an

easy decision. First, it will not escape many people’s notice that when petroleum companies lobby against

carbon emission limits related to global warming they are profiteering at the expense of the public inter-

est. This is but a thin veil, and few, I think, are really fooled.

Environmental concern is broadly supported around the world (Dunlap et al., 1993). Further, envi-

ronmentalism is not contained by any one demographic group. Some sceptics say that environmental-

ists are rich and White Americans. The evidence shows that this is true, but they are also every other


demographic group, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, income, education or age. The only demographic

that affects environmental concern at an important statistically significant level is ideology and parti-

sanship. Moreover, it turns out that this difference of opinion within (conservative) partisanship in the

general public is relatively small, since most conservatives share an environmental concern with other

groups, even if what to do about this concern is of vital difference (Dunlap et al., 2001; Guber, 2003).

Environmental sceptics are even outliers within the conservative ideology from which they spring.

This means that firms that think they are going to profit from undermining environmental concern

will likely be seen as coming from an ideological and partisan (extreme conservative) position. I dare

say that while some CEOs may share this affiliation, their consumer base clearly does not.

Controversy as a Political Movement

As noted above, we are left to the formation of scientific consensus in order to understand what is

‘accepted’ scientific knowledge, and this may be less than satisfying to some because it is terribly con-

ditional. Science will hopefully always have outliers – people willing to push the edge of knowledge out

from normal understanding. Human history is full of renegades turned scientific heroes who are

admired for their persistence and their belief in something only they belief is true.

Environmental scepticism has and will continue to add to our environmental understanding, and I

suspect that there are few relatively dispassionate thinkers – Robert Kirkman (2003) strikes me as one

example. The vast majority, however, is not so idealistically centred on finding ‘truth,’ but is instead

found eating heartily at the table of politics, as evidenced by their polemics and their dubious lack of

criticism against conservative efforts (e.g. Arnold and Gottlieb, 1994; O’Leary, 2003; Bast et al., 1994;

Beckerman, 1995; Driessen, 2003; Milloy, 2001; Bolch and Lyons, 1993). There are even delightful man-

ifestos that overtly declare that environmental scepticism is part of the contemporary conservative reper-

toire (Dunn and Kinney, 1996; Huber, 1999).

That being said, environmental scepticism is a political movement, but not because it is about alter-

native and controversial propositions. Environmental scepticism is a political movement because of two

primary categorical conditions. First, environmental scepticism is unified in its ideological orientation.

Second, environmental scepticism has a unified, if not unanimous, call to action. This observation leads

to the conclusion that sceptics are sceptical about deteriorating ecological conditions because of what it

means for policy, in particular to political economy, not because of some elephant in the room that only

they see or to some obligation to the public good towards enlightenment. I will now cover each point in

detail.

The Sceptical Movement as Ideology

Identifying environmental scepticism within an ideological context is not pejorative, though environ-

mental sceptics will likely see it as an effort to undermine them because they employ a dichotomy of

‘truth versus ideology’ regularly as a part of their movement. Inasmuch as ideology is the identification

and pursuit of ‘the good life’ it provides a context for values, vision and action which permit, justify and

reproduce discussions of truth and moral right, all of which are critical to controversies of environ-

mentalism.

More precisely, environmental scepticism fits neatly within the ‘conservative movement’ (McCright

and Dunlap, 2003, 2000; Saloma, 1984). McCright and Dunlap describe this conservative movement

as one represented by an ‘elite-driven network of private foundations, policy-planning think tanks and


30 P. Jacques

individual intellectuals and activists that directly or indirectly attempt to advance social traditionalism

and economic liberalism on a national level’ (McCright and Dunlap, 2003, p. 352).

More specifically, environmental scepticism is part of ‘contemporary conservatism’. Schumaker et al.(1997) and King (1987) discuss contemporary conservatism as a mixture of traditional conservatism and

classical liberalism. Schumaker et al. note that the most important outlet for this view is the NationalInterest, and that it is seen through think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has

published several contrarian arguments (Bailey, 1995, 2000). Further, they note that contemporary con-

servatives’ central goal is to promote and extend free market capitalism, with secondary goals of empha-

sizing a work ethic, private virtue and the family as the core unit. This secondary aspect includes the

conservative religious values that are often used in scepticism to cast environmentalism within a reli-

gious war or struggle that is anti-Christian because it is pantheistic or even under the influence of Satan

(see for example Huber, 1999; O’Leary, 2003).

Sunderlin (2003) writes that ideology is inclusive and universal in the sense that everyone is subject

to ideology, for better or worse:

Ideologies may be succinctly defined as the basis of the social representation shared by members of agroup. This means that ideologies allow people, as group members, to organize the multitude of

social beliefs about what is the case, good or bad, right or wrong, for them, and to act accordingly.

Ideologies may also influence what is accepted as true or false, especially when such beliefs are

found to be relevant for the group (Dijk quoted by Sunderlin, 2003, p. 14, emphasis in original).

Thus, the values of an ideology provide the grounds for determining truth. Environmental sceptics

speak with such conviction about the (T)ruth of environmental conditions, that this rhetoric provides a

tip that there is a narrow band of values influencing this vision.

Politically astute citizens should be wary of anyone, environmentalist, anti-environmentalist or

someone in the middle, who declares they have an impossible God’s eye view. In addition to pointing

to a narrow band of values, claiming a God’s eye view concentrates legitimacy and influence within the

person claiming this Truth, implying those who disagree are professing a false ideology to delude the

public. Environmentalists are clearly guilty of this also, and work that implies a ‘true’ state of the world

from an environmentalist perspective should be viewed with equal doubt.

Environmental sceptics consistently claim they are ‘doomslaying’ because they are exposing the ‘fear

mongering’ of environmentalists. They are ‘debunking’ the fear with the truth as a public service. Take

for example Lomborg, whose subtitle to the TSE is ‘measuring the real state of the world’ (emphasis

added). It is this vision of the truth that provides a justification for their call to action. Since many envi-

ronmental policies and regulations are based on the premise of protecting environmental systems from

abuse and further decline, if the truth of the matter is that these environmental systems are fine, then

the regulations are unnecessary or worse. Further, since environmental scepticism is so certain, oppo-

sition to scepticism is illegitimate.

Some environmental scepticism is more honest about its orientation than this hidden agenda and its

political movement. Peter Huber (1999) is a columnist for Forbes, and a Senior Fellow at the conserva-

tive and influential Manhattan Institute. The title of his book, Hard Green: Saving the Environment fromthe Environmentalists – a Conservative Manifesto, clarifies the connection of contemporary conservatism

and environmental scepticism. Huber describes his conservativism as something that is actually more

environmentally sound, which he calls ‘hard green’ as opposed to the typical environmentalist position

of ‘soft green’. Huber advances a plan that is different from most sceptics in that he believes preserv-

ing wilderness is a legitimate goal because the preservation of wilderness is concrete, not based on invis-



ible assumptions about toxic chemicals or abstract species loss or climate change. However, his program

for environmental preservation does not move away from the goals of free enterprise:

To Hard Green minds, green does not emerge from big computer models or from large govern-

ment agencies. Green objectives are effectively advanced only by dispersed control, free markets,

and traditional ethics, the conservative instruments for managing the problems of scarcity, disper-

sion, complexity, greed, growth, consumption, fecundity, and human voracity (p. xxix).

Another explicit expression of scepticism as conservatism is the work of Dunn and Kinney (1996)

titled Conservative Environmentalism. Dunn and Kinney identify themselves as [contemporary] conserv-

atives and make their case for several recurrent claims. They note that they are concerned about envi-

ronmental affairs, but like Lomborg they call for a reassessment of priorities through an environmental

‘ledger’ to indicate costs/benefits of expenditure. Also like Lomborg, they use UN statistics for the bases

of most of their conclusions, and argue that things have progressively improved over time environ-

mentally and socially despite the misplaced warnings of environmental leaders. They believe that ecol-

ogism is akin to Marxism and is irrationally anti-capitalist and anti-free-market.

Many environmental leaders from the political Left owe their orientation to writings and philoso-

phies of Karl Marx. From Marx, they got hatred of free enterprise along with scepticism about the

ability of individuals to make decisions beneficial to the societies in which they live (p. 3).

This brings us to the second point about environmental scepticism as a political movement, which is a

unified call to action for libertarian economics and support for policies that satisfy strict cost–benefit

requirements.

A Free Market Call to Action

Sunderlin notes that ‘conservative environmentalism’ is ‘. . . predicated on the belief that humans have

a legitimate role in controlling nature, that humans are self-interested, that science and technology are

key to overcoming scarcities, that economic growth and industrialization are good, and that there is no

need to change lifestyles’ (Sunderlin, 2003, p. 189). On the other hand, ecologism is ‘. . . the one ideol-

ogy that has, at its core, the removal of humans from the moral pedestal, thereby setting it apart from

traditional western schools of thought’ (Garner, 2003, p. 242), and it is apparent why there is a great

deal of tension and struggle between environmental scepticism and ecologism.

Another clue that environmental scepticism is a political movement is its unified call to action for

free enterprise and libertarian government policy. With the deep commitment to free enterprise, authors

such as Bailey (1993) try to connect environmental concern with Marxism as an obvious failure of its

programme:

For the many modern leftists the ‘global environmental crisis’ is the new ‘agent’ of history which

will eventually destroy capitalism. In the reinterpreted radical vision, capitalism, instead of stran-

gling itself to death on its class contradictions, will choke to death on its own wastes. Radical envi-

ronmentalists are now the earth’s vanguard class who will lead the struggle to bury capitalism and

Western materialism (p. 6).

This antipathy to environmental concern because environmental signals indict the current capitalist

system is shared by a vast majority of the environmental sceptics. Further, there is an apparently unan-


32 P. Jacques

imous agreement that the free market is being unduly constrained. Sceptics may disagree to what degree,

but they all seem to take this latter point as part of the movement.

Simon (1999), Lomborg (2001), Arnold and Gottlieb (1994), Bailey (1994), Driessen (2003) and others

all call for a reform of environmental policy to favour free markets more. Simon called for a ‘truth lobby’

that defended industry by exposing fraudulent environmental claims that hurt the market. Bailey sees

the free market as obvious and obstructions to it evidence for radicalism. Driessen calls for more edu-

cation and defence of free markets as a way to protect the lives of people around the world from the

fraudulent and even harmful claims of environmentalism. Arnold and Gottlieb write how environmen-

talism is ‘trashing’ the economy, and are both overt leaders to anti-environmentalism sentiments lob-

bying for unrestricted extractive policies on US federal lands and the abolition of policies such as the

Endangered Species Act in the name of private property and market protections.

Lomborg, like the overtly conservative Dunn and Kinney (1996), calls for a strict cost–benefit analy-

sis of environmental policies. One the face of it, this sounds rather apolitical, but there are several warn-

ings about this approach. First, cost–benefit analysis is dependent on the inputs allowed and the outputs

counted. Lomborg admits he is concerned about animals and the environment, but his focus is humans.

Thus, environmental policies only make sense to him if they save enough lives compared to other places

where money can be spent – and where this works out to be efficient, he supports government action.

Because of this position, I consider him to be a moderate sceptic when compared with the polemics of

some other more vehement sceptics. However, this calculus hides how hard it is to actually meet this

bar.

For example, if we weigh the issue of Glen Canyon Dam – a dam on the Colorado River in the US

just upstream from Grand Canyon National Park – the decision clearly favours the existence of the dam

to store water for people in an arid climate while glossing over other important considerations.3 Glen

Canyon Dam’s presence will not save any lives, nor will its dismantling. On this condition, Lomborg

implies and other sceptics more forcefully argue that the free market does best to decide. Thus we ignore

a whole host of other issues that are important to different environmentalists, which do not make the

bar of Lomborg’s scale of importance. For example, the beauty of the now submerged Glen Canyon was

said to be among the nation’s most breathtaking treasures. Rainbow Bridge, a sacred American Indian

site, is now accessible to tourists, and several species of fish have been threatened, such as the

Humpback Chub. None of these make the bar of Lomborg’s cost–benefit, which would be required to

interfere in the market. Thus, the burden of proof is so high that it vastly favours market-based values

and therefore policies. For this reason, I refer to this orientation as ‘deep anthropocentrism’, where the

center of analysis is a very restricted human measure; this is even opposed to ‘enlightened anthro-

pocentrism’, which would favour many environmental protections based on less severe and indirect

benefits to people, such as future medicine. Because there will be very few legitimate reasons to inter-

fere in the market, Lomborg’s position is quite conservative, and this is probably why he was embraced

by conservatives in the US and Europe; further, this was probably why he was as taken on to lead the

Danish Environmental Assessment Institute by the neoliberal government led by Fogh Rasmussen in

Denmark that removed the Left-leaning social democratic party in its worst upset in 50 years (Jamison,

2004).

Second, this cost–benefit analysis favours certain groups over others. As Wendy Espeland (1998) has

noted in her landmark study on the decision not to build a different dam in Arizona, the Yavapai

American Indian tribe lobbied against its construction because it would have alienated from their land,

which was incommensurable to the other values at play. One teenager she interviewed from the tribe

in question remarked that the land was family and there is no price that is acceptable to put on family.


3 Note that I am not arguing against Glen Canyon Dam; I am only using it as an example.


The cost–benefit analysis that Lomborg is arguing for is conservative in the way that it favours indus-

try and market groups because their concerns are commensurable and easily measured in abstractions

such as money. The Tribes’ concerns described by Espeland, in addition to wilderness advocates, biore-

gionalists, animal liberationists, back-to-the landers and several other different kinds of environmentally

concerned groups’ interests, are not abstractions that make sense in terms of money or in terms of costs

and benefits. These concerns are incommensurable and not readily compared. Moreover, on a more

serious point, as much as scepticism is a response to growing global environmental concerns, ecosys-

tems that are related to survival for the poor, such as coastal mangroves or coral reefs, are utterly incom-

mensurable with monetary equivalents (Guha and Martinez-Alier, 1997). All of these concerns will have

a hard time making this level of environmental concern count. On this second level, Lomborg’s

cost–benefit analysis is extraordinarily conservative.

In conclusion, environmental scepticism is a political movement. It has a remarkably narrow voice

from which it speaks, almost exclusively originating from a contemporary conservative ideology. Further,

sceptics all call for fewer restrictions on free enterprise and free markets.

How Should Corporations Treat Environmental Scepticism?

Corporations are beset with this problem articulated at the beginning of the article: supporting envi-

ronmental scepticism may in fact provide larger profits in the short run. Activist corporations support-

ing environmental scepticism as a basis for less regulation may gain more profit in the short run. It is

obvious how this can be very tempting for firms. It seems compatible with the profit motive; however,

as we will see, it is not compatible with a larger public interest, and therefore any serious attempt to

work towards a genuine responsible corporate citizenship, and may even detract from long term profits

as environmental conditions become more clear over time.

This is because short term gains may come at the expense of the corporation’s credibility. As climate

change science becomes more and more certain, as it has over time, corporations who support the

‘debunking’ of climate change are uncovered as unreliable and working against a public interest. This

problem was identified early on by British Petrolem (BP), led by John Browne, who, in 1997, declared

a break from the industry’s Cooler Heads Coalition, admitted climate change was real and agreed upon

and even admitted responsibility for aiding and abetting the problem, as it were (Lowe and Harris, 1997).

From there, BP developed a corporate action plan to decrease their own emissions to 10% below

1990 levels, and to work on alternative energy. BP is still a giant petroleum company, but they saw it

as in their long term interest to take on global warming more directly, and in a way that builds BP’s

credibility.

While notions of corporate citizenship probably run the gamut of commitment to a public interest,

corporate citizenship cannot be in contradiction to a public interest without damaging the legitimacy of

that corporation and therefore its long term profitability. Can a company easily exist and grow outside

legitimacy? My sense of this is that it is a very large risk that has the potential to play against the secu-

rity of the company and, of course, the security of the community within which the company exists,

given that it may be forced to endure larger environmental problems than if there were a genuine sense

of environmental stewardship within the operation of firms.

The answer provided in this paper to the larger question of ‘how to treat environmental scepticism’

is not that all corporations should reject environmental scepticism outright. This is too simple, too black

and white, and not representative of the larger complexity that the problem presents to firms.

No, instead, corporations should treat environmental scepticism like a political movement. This then

places the issue into a framework that is familiar for corporations but is not oversimplified. Corpora-


34 P. Jacques

tions are used to dealing with political movements in the sense that they are surrounded by them

throughout time, they are frequent and invasive, and each corporation has to decide to deal with (prob-

ably each set of) movements separately and individually. I assume that corporations typically have an

attitude or corporate culture that specifically addresses how that corporation expects to deal with poli-

tics and political movements, even if this policy is informal. If a corporation has decided to engage the

Right or the Left and support one side or the other, environmental scepticism comes from the Right

and corporations have a clear mandate.

On the other hand, in corporations that have decided to engage politics minimally or not at all, affil-

iation with environmental scepticism should be avoided.

Further, corporations who wish to engage a broad support of the public interest that is neither Left

nor Right should reject scepticism as a narrow movement within a particular ideology. Environmental

concern is far more in sync with a broad public interest. Even the larger source of scepticism, contem-

porary conservativism, is not predisposed to environmental scepticism (Hay, 2002). One only need

acknowledge that the enormously important Garrett Hardin was an avowed ‘eco-conservative’ in addi-

tion to other authors such as Gordon Durnil (1995), and John Bliese (2001), not to mention the earlier

Republican presidencies in Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, who vigorously pursued environmen-

tal protections.4 This is because environmentalism is supported by nearly all ideological positions, but

environmental scepticism is not.

In fact, ‘Because of the wide scope of environmental problems, from wilderness and wildlife preser-

vation to air pollution and water contamination, environmentalism is valued by nearly everyone’ (Guber,

2003, p. 87). Thus, to the degree that public opinion is a representation of a kind of public interest, envi-

ronmental concern is in concert, and corporations can engage this public interest without being parti-

san – but they cannot support environmental scepticism without being partisan, and this is the key point

for firms when they are developing their image and substance of environmental citizenship.

Discussion and Conclusions

Environmental issues are among today’s more pressing concerns, in part because several global level

ecological structures indicate decline and unsustainable changes (Lubechenco, 2003). Several of these

same ecological conditions have historic corollaries that have pushed past civilizations into social col-

lapse (Chew, 2001; Diamond, 2004). Much of the time, there were clues to the impending failure that

governing elites decided to ignore (Diamond, 2004) in an old fashioned scepticism.

Scepticism as a method of inquiry is an academic mainstay, and wholly reputable perhaps because,

in the end, if the evidence is strong a sceptic is persuadable. Contemporary environmental scepticism

does not demonstrate this quality because it is not a method, but a coherent globalizing social move-

ment. Corporations are part of this movement, such as with the corporations found in the Cooler Heads

Coalition. However, this position has large risks. One risk is that the corporations are conspicuously set

against the broad international support for environmental concern and established agreement within

scientific communities. Only a small minority of consumers will see this as credible. Admittedly, public

opinion is malleable, but contemporary conservative sceptics will not be the only ones working to make

their case.

Where to go from here? Active and genuine corporate citizenship is inconsistent with environmen-

tal scepticism. Thus, corporations wanting to ‘do good while doing well’ should work to minimize the


4 This note about Roosevelt and Nixon should not be overplayed, however, because it is evident that today’s contemporary conservative Repub-licans have changed their values since Nixon, in particular with the rise of Goldwater in the party (Schumaker et al., 1997).


problems of sustainability that are relevant to their own industry, where they will have the most impact

– just as BP has done. BP has a unique opportunity to address climate change. Moreover, since BP is

an international organization and every industrial country except the US and Australia has ratified the

Kyoto Protocol, BP will be subject to these limits and its early advances puts it ahead of the rest of the

industry to adapt to Kyoto-based changes. Working to make their corporation compatible with a post-

Kyoto world and reality also seems to be a position people can warm up to and admire, and it is one

that is compatible with making substantial advances and protections against authentic threats to global

scale sustainability problems. As in ecology where connections create a tangible interdependence

between agents and habitat, corporate positions on scepticism can come full circle one way or another

in the political habitat and CEOs will do well if they keep this in mind when deciding how to cope with

short term temptations offered in environmental politics.

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Biography

Peter Jacques is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida, where he

teaches multiple environmental courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His research is in

environmental scepticism, sustainability, and ocean politics. His new book, Globalization and the WorldOcean, is due out by Altamira Press in 2005.


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How Should Corporations Deal with Env Scepticism