European-style greenwashing...

By Ugo Mattei for France-Soir - Published on May 14, 2024

Source : https://edition.francesoir.fr/opinions-tribunes/greenwahsing-l-ecoblanchiment-l-europeenne

TRIBUNE - The European Parliament is working on a directive of green proposals or allegations, which in fact amounts to disseminating manipulated information to give its approval and go so far as to create patents. The EU is involved in operations with a devastating environmental impact: incentives for intensive agriculture and excessive fuel consumption.

So-called greenwashing , a term that has become common in recent years, has led the European Parliament to work on a draft directive regarding green claims . In practice, this consists of offering manipulated or reductive information to dress up a product, an organization or a brand, with qualities such as ecology, organic, eco-sustainability, zero impact, etc. For example, electric vehicle manufacturers emphasize "zero emissions", as if producing a Tesla was part of the solution and not the problem. Of course, those who drive it in the city do not emit of CO2, but those who extract lithium and other rare metals to create batteries, which are very difficult to recycle, produce gigantic social and environmental impacts.

The ideological practice known as greenwashing and the fight against it have become particularly widespread in the neoliberal era in the face of the assumption that well-informed consumers would be capable of making virtuous choices capable of leading capitalism towards its destiny. grandiose and progressive. According to the European Parliament, which makes intensive use of communicative statistics, a practice consisting of sharing data in a biased way to advance a ready-made thesis, 86% of European consumers would like to know more about the environmental impact of products, in particularly on their durability. This is why a reform of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive to regulate green claims is still underway and in the final stages of a legislative journey. With the proposed reform of civil liability for damage caused by products, unchanged and insufficient since 1985, as well as the various regulations on "green" requirements for buildings, which from 2030 will impose very heavy burdens on owners accompanied by rules of absolute inalienability which are not respected, the directive on greenwashing is a pillar of the 20-30 agenda .

The critical observer cannot help but be perplexed by such ecological zeal on the part of a Europe engaged in operations which, regardless of any moral consideration, have a devastating impact on ecosystems and life. Just think of the supply of weapons and munitions in theaters of war, which release depleted uranium and other deadly toxic agents; excessive fuel consumption for warships and planes (like the ultra-technological ones that Leonardo (Italy's second largest industrial group) recently transferred to the Israeli army); the continued increase in tolerance thresholds for electromagnetic emissions; the benefits and incentives granted to intensive livestock farmers who supply meat to McDonald's-type chains; There are various strategies to authorize and effectively impose on European farmers the use of pesticides and GMOs produced by all-powerful multinationals like Bayer (which bought the infamous Monsanto). We could say, with (black) humor, that the directive on green proposals is in turn a greenwashing operation by the European institutions in the face of the continuous ecocides of which they are at least witnesses.

After all, the very concept of sustainable development, which has permeated the European institutional structure since Maastricht, contains the germ of greenwashing .

Personally, I began to think about the potential of greenwashing, as a means of adapting parasitic capitalism to the evolution of public awareness of the ecological catastrophe it engenders, when Draghi made a “green” turn in reform constitutionality of articles 9 (landscape/environment) and 41 (private economic initiative). Suddenly, the environment and future generations found their place in our Constitution, which should have delighted those who, like me, have worked for years to introduce common goods and future generations at the heart of our civil law, this with the aim of curbing unbridled privatization, according to the classification of the Rodotà Commission of 2007. However, going over codified law (that which really binds private individuals) in favor of the constitution constitutes a new Greenwashing in material, not only useless but also harmful. Indeed, the Council of State, in its judgment 8167 of 2022, uses Draghist greenwashing, without worrying about anything, in order to authorize the ecological ravages of green capitalism, from photovoltaics on the ground, to omnipresent wind turbines, through biofuels and carbon capture plants.

In reality, this strategy is not limited to green, but constitutes a broader phenomenon of disorientation of the opposition or dissidence which should be studied in depth in its economic, social and legal aspects. For example, the most radical fringes of the student movement attacking so-called patriarchy (another term that should be used after serious critical examination) denounce the so-called "pinkwashing" recently made famous and somewhat ridiculous by the exclusively female status of the University of Trento where I taught from 1985 to 1997!

Greenwashing is in fact a strategy of capturing (in the sense of regulatory capture theory) ideas, concepts and institutions that were born as radically critical and countercultural, but who know the sad fate of being incorporated and instrumentalized in the unstoppable process of capital accumulation. Among the political-legal notions most affected or victims of this process are common goods, created to exclude entire categories of goods from the market (for example, water) and reduced to bureaucratic regulations to convince a few private associations to paint benches or tending flower beds, under the approving gaze of a municipal council which at the same time preaches participation and practices exclusion.

Another example is the so-called b.corporation , born in American deep ecology circles as a radical proposal for democratic and inclusive governance of the economy. In the form of a for-profit company, it has been reduced to a purely cosmetic operation, presenting as a beneficial novelty what should be the physiological behavior of any healthy business (in the sense of not being harmful!). More recently, the co-option of counter-hegemony is facilitated by technology.

For example, the notion of public domain in intellectual property, once the battlehorse of counter-hegemonic thought in the political economy of law, is today supported by the giants of big tech who thus find rich reservoirs of free information that can be used well in their surveillance products. Finally, it is the principle of data transparency in public administration and especially in the health sector that is captured, because transparent data is perfect for teaching artificial intelligence.

In the society of spectacle, wrote Guy Debord, the true becomes false and the false true. Widespread secrecy lies behind this cacophony. In the society in which we live, the real rare commodity and the real common good is critical knowledge.