Can a public relations group both claim to support climate-change initiatives and run campaigns for climate deniers? Marc Gunther takes a look at a company that’s trying to do both

A 1930s union song, popularized by the late great Pete Seeger, asks pointedly: “Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?”

On the issue of climate change, that question now confronts Edelman, one of the world’s largest and most admired public relations companies.

In the wake of a survey of the top 25 global PR firms by the Guardian and the Climate Investigations Center, released 4 August, the company scrambled to revise its ambivalent stance on representing companies that deny climate change. Backpedaling on the equivocation that it takes clients on a case-by-case basis, on 8 August, Edelman asked to submit a new response to the question, “Does your company acknowledge the threat and challenge of climate change?” Their reconsidered response:

Edelman fully recognizes the reality of, and science behind, climate change, and believes it represents one of the most important global challenges facing society, business and government today. To be clear, we do not accept client assignments that aim to deny climate change.

Beyond that, for nearly a decade, Edelman has built a reputation as the go-to PR firm for corporate sustainability by managing campaigns for the likes of GE (“Ecomagination”), Walmart and Unilever. Richard Edelman, the firm’s high-profile president and CEO, blogs about having dinner at the home of Jeffrey Sachs, his Harvard classmate and a noted climate hawk, and quotes Sachs as saying that “the world is on a very dangerous path.”

And yet.

The Edelman firm works for the American Petroleum Institute, the Washington-based trade association for the oil and gas industry, which opposed the 2009 Waxman-Markey climate change bill favored by some energy companies and utilities, supports the Keystone XL pipeline and exploration of the Canadian tar sands and says, in limp language on its website, that burning fossil fuels “may be helping to warm our planet.”

Until recently, Edelman worked for the Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports, a coalition of coal, mining and railroad interests that promotes coal-export terminals in the Pacific Northwest that are strongly opposed by environmental groups. Another Edelman client is said to be ALEC, a conservative lobbying group that opposes regulations on carbon pollution. GE, Walmart and Unilever are among about 70 companies that have reportedly cut their ties with ALEC, although not over the climate issue.

So … which side are you on, boys?

This is by no means only an Edelman problem. Among other PR firms, Burson-Marsteller touts the virtues of coal for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as Kate Sheppard reported with help from the Climate Investigatons Center, even as it says that “sustainable development is no longer an option, it’s a necessity.”

Investments banks Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, which say all the right things about climate, helped underwrite a public share offering by Coal India despite its dismal environmental record, as we reported last fall. And you can be sure that other professional services firms – law firms, ad agencies and accountants – will soon be asked to declare whether they, too, work for “climate deniers”.

Like the proverbial cobbler whose children go barefoot because he’s making shoes for others, Edelman has bungled the PR around the climate survey, as Brian Merchant and others have gleefully reported. Edelman only made matters worse with this blog post, for which it subsequently apologized, identifying the “opportunity” created by the suicide of Robin Williams.



But this is more than a kerfuffle about a PR firm’s gaffes. The tougher challenge for Edelman, and for others, going forward will be to stake out a position on climate change, arguably the defining issue of our time.

One problem is the term “climate denial,” which is imprecise and not helpful. It is customarily used to denigrate a small number of scientists and their allies who reject the consensus view that man-made greenhouse gas emissions pose a serious threat to the planet. Conceivably, Edelman could argue that the American Petroleum Institute, ALEC and the coalition lobbying for coal exports are not deniers.

Even Kert Davies of the Climate Investigations Center acknowledges: “They’ve left themselves wiggle room.”

But, he adds: “Our definition of denial is anyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy.”

That broad definition would include API, but perhaps not Shell, which supports the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, or Chevron, which is unequivocal about the science but vague on policy. Both, as it happens, are Edelman clients, as is GE, an advocate of natural gas, fracking and the Keystone pipeline.

Will the next survey by climate activists borrow from the divestment campaign led by Bill McKibben and ask PR companies to eliminate any and all fossil fuel companies from their client list?

There is precedent. Edelman won’t work for tobacco companies or gun makers, says Ben Boyd, who is president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman. Now the company, which has more than 5,000 employees in 65 offices around the world, will have to clarify its stance on climate.

“One can’t come through the past two weeks and not look at our processes and guideposts,” Boyd told me. “We’re going to have a good, healthy internal debate.”

The stakes are high. The Nation reported in February that the API account was worth $51.9m to Edelman. (The firm would not confirm or deny that API is a client.) Energy-industry billings pay a lot of salaries at Edelman. Then again, Edelman has spent years building its own reputation as a company that understands sustainability, corporate citizenship and trust – a favorite word at Edelman.

But how can we trust a PR firm that claims to take the climate crisis seriously while putting its talents behind those fossil-fuel industry clients who are making matters worse?



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