Media Disinformation on Biomass

- by Chris Mat­era, Mass­a­chu­setts For­est Watch 

Some peo­ple might call it a media fail­ure that tree-fueled bio­mass ener­gy, one of the dirt­i­est, most car­bon-inten­sive forms of ener­gy that exists, has a “clean” and “green” rep­u­ta­tion with much of the public. 

It is not a media fail­ure, it is a media suc­cess when we acknowl­edge that the main­stream media does not work for the pub­lic, or for uncov­er­ing the truth about mat­ters of impor­tance, and has devolved into noth­ing but paid dis­trib­u­tors of mis­in­for­ma­tion used to ben­e­fit their cor­po­rate masters. 

That so many can be led to believe that a dras­tic increase in cut­ting and burn­ing of forests is going to “low­er” car­bon emis­sions, and “help” the envi­ron­ment, in spite of indis­putable, strong sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and com­mon sense to the con­trary, is a sad tes­ti­mo­ny to this malev­o­lent power. 

This seri­ous prob­lem of media dis­in­for­ma­tion at the ser­vice of wealthy and pow­er­ful inter­ests cuts across all issues of impor­tance to the pub­lic. If called upon to do so by their pay­mas­ters, these “pressti­tutes” will dili­gent­ly work to con­vince the pub­lic of any­thing, even that water runs uphill. 

With bio­mass ener­gy, even the label “bio­mass” is indica­tive of the spin applied to most issues today. If the pub­lic were told they are going to be forced to sub­si­dize a mas­sive increase of cut­ting and burn­ing of forests to “help” the envi­ron­ment, they would like­ly object. 

Instead they are sold indus­try fund­ed, think tank cre­at­ed, focus group test­ed fuzzy labels like “bio­mass” and con­vinced that fact is fic­tion, and yet again, soci­ety march­es off on the exact oppo­site path we need to be on, in order to do the bid­ding of a few self serv­ing vest­ed interests. 

In this case, the tim­ber and ener­gy indus­tries, with the cru­cial sup­port of the “pressti­tute” media, have snook­ered a well inten­tioned pub­lic into think­ing they are sac­ri­fic­ing to help our envi­ron­ment, when in fact, under a “green” fog, they are lit­er­al­ly pay­ing the plan­et wreck­ers to increase cut­ting and burn­ing of forests, which is just about the worst thing pos­si­ble for glob­al warm­ing, air pol­lu­tion and for­est protection.