They promote GMOs, defend toxic chemicals, and attack people who raise concerns about those products as ‘anti-science’. But behind the slick ‘astroturf’ PR fronts lurk some very dubious funders: the same arch-conservative foundations that finance climate science denial.
The funders behind climate-science denial also bankroll a network of PR operatives who have built careers spinning science to deny the health risks of toxic chemicals in the food we eat and products we use every day.
British writer George Monbiot has a warning for those of us trying to grasp the new political realities in the US and the UK.
“We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates”, he wrote in the Guardian.
Corporate America may have been slow to warm up to Donald Trump, but once Trump secured the nomination, “the big money began to recognize an unprecedented opportunity”, Monbiot wrote.
“His incoherence was not a liability, but an opening: his agenda could be shaped. And the dark money network already developed by some American corporations was perfectly positioned to shape […]
People keep railing about the players and what they’re doing to our governments, the institutions that our parents fought and died for. It’s about the back room boys; or, follow the dark money, the right wingers and this ‘n that. NO. It’s the economic system. There’s only one way to shut this toxic economic system down and that is for a new meme to take hold in everyone’s mind’s eye. Bring The Money Home. Yes, that means taking out your stocks, bonds, (RRSP’s, GIC’s TFSA’s if you’re a Canuck) all the money products that you think will ensure your retirement. Build real community where you, your families, your friends and strangers live work and die. The ice is not waiting.
Just remember that Obama signed the bill that in effect concealed GMO ingredients from consumers.
Keep your eye on the system, not its players.