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Saturday, September 06, 2008
Tom Borelli :: Townhall.com Columnist
Corporate Irresponsibility: Dow Chemical Promotes Climate Hype Instead of Drill, Drill, Drill
by Tom Borelli
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Nature abhors a vacuum and Al Gore – Mother Nature himself – is filling the pro-drilling advertising void with TV ads promoting the mystical goal of generating 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free energy sources within 10 years. The Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit started by Gore, announced it will allocate $300 million in advertising to promote government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The public is being bombarded with anti-fossil fuel messages from activists like Gore and CEOs like Liveris.

Most likely, Liveris was hoping that cap-and-trade legislation would result in a manageable escalation in energy prices that would allow him to use carbon credits earned from U.S. plant closings to pay for the cost of shipping jobs overseas, where energy is cheap. The unforeseen spike in energy prices caught him unprepared.

Astonishingly, given Dow’s lobbying for cap-and-trade energy restrictions, in a recent interview Liveris blamed the U.S. for what he considers a failed energy policy that “decided to restrict supply of our natural resources of this country.” He further said Dow would move jobs to “countries like the Middle East, countries like China, countries like Russia… these are countries that are worked out that their natural resources need to be value added in their country to create meaningful high-paying jobs.”

Liveris, born in Australia and not a U.S. citizen, has no loyalty to America.

To Liveris, corporate responsibility means using government force to subsidize the moving of American jobs to countries that oppose liberty.

If Dow was really responsible, its “Human Element” campaign would be replaced by “Energy Reality” ads promoting energy policies that would benefit the company, its stockholders and the U.S. economy.

If Congress prevents development of domestic natural resources, liberal CEOs like Liveris will share much of the blame.

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About The Author

Thomas J. Borelli, PhD. is the editor of FreeEnterpriser.com and Director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

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More about PR than $$...
Dow is trying to recruit the next generation of chemical engineers and scientists. In order to prevent automatic dismissal of a career in chemistry by thousands of otherwise smart people, they need to seem caring about the environment. I have worked for Dow for nearly 10 years, and the corporate leaders all walk in lockstep once the talking points are put out. We now have a group that will keep saying the right things to make it ok to work for a company and an industry that has a poor public perception. Even though modern life depends on chemicals, most people in the western world look at this industry with loathing only exceeded by that for nuclear, defense and big oil. If that is what it takes to keep in the game, so be it. Truth is always the first casualty in war.

Interesting Take....
As a former Dow Chemical employee of 18 years, I find their new found take on Corporate Responsibility interesting. Dow has missed many opportunities to be more profitable and this current stance is a real surprise. Petroleum based products make up the bulk of their building blocks for their products. This makes this stance even more puzzling.
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