Why to look behind the label

This year, with the little matter of global warming finally getting its moment in the sun, the nuclear energy industry saw an opening. No U.S. nuclear power plant has been built for three decades now, and the industry would like to pick up a shovel. Nuke plants may be costly to construct, melt down on rare occasions, and present us with a spent-fuel problem, but they don’t pollute the air. So how to green up the image?

To that end the Nuclear Energy Institute, with the help of Hill & Knowlton, formed something called the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. To co-chair it the institute hired a pair of environmental consultants, a duet to sing pro-nuclear songs. Christine Todd Whitman, of Whitman Strategy Group (which “can help businesses to successfully interact with government to further their goals,” according to its Web site), and Patrick Moore, of Greenspirit Strategies, were hired for their résumés: Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, is known as the outdoorsy and moderate Republican who ran the Environmental Protection Agency for two years under George W. Bush; Moore was a cofounder of Greenpeace in the 1970s. Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press would peg them as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders, rather than as paid spokespeople.

And the press came through. The Washington Post quite properly noted in the bio box of an op-ed by Moore on April 16 — going nuclear; a green makes the case — that he and Whitman co-chair a nuclear-industry-funded effort. But in a May 25 article the Post simply referred to Moore as an “environmentalist” and a cofounder of Greenpeace — without mentioning any industry ties. The Boston Globe ran a Whitman/Moore op-ed on May 15, identifying them as “co-chairs of the Clean and Safe Industry Coalition” without giving readers a clue to what that coalition is. And in some stories, columns, and editorials, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Herald, the Baltimore Sun, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Rocky Mountain News, The New York Times, and CBS News all referred to Moore as either a Greenpeace founder or an environmentalist, without mentioning that he is also a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry.

One can be both, certainly. But the records here are complicated. Moore’s firm, Greenspirit Strategies, has labored for such causes as pesticides, flame retardants, and mining companies accused of fouling villages with cyanide. He notes in a 1994 essay posted on Greenspirit’s Web site that Bob Hunter, a fellow Greenpeace founder, refers to him as an “eco-Judas,” and that his name has appeared in The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations. (The essay is about the rise of “eco-extremism,” which Moore sees as antihuman, antitechnology, anti-free enterprise, etc.)

Whitman’s environmental record in New Jersey, according to the Bergen County Record, was decidedly mixed. While she put aside funding to acquire a million acres of land for open space and took a hard line against the coal-burning plants of the Midwest that pollute East Coast air, the paper said in an editorial, “Mrs. Whitman made heavy staff and budget cutbacks at the Department of Environmental Protection. She ended what had been a war on polluters in one of the most heavily polluted states in the nation. She bent over backward to accommodate industry.” Her EPA record, too, was mixed.

Life is complicated. So are front people for industry causes — or any cause, in a world of increasingly sophisticated p.r. We have no position on nuclear power. We just find it maddening that Hill & Knowlton, which has an $8 million account with the nuclear industry, should have such an easy time working the press.