Guest Commentary

Global Warming Deniers: Sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

By Dave Chase, SunValleyOnline, Guest Writer, 9-23-07

“FUDding” (i.e., sowing fear, uncertainty & doubt) is a common tactic in the information technology industry. Typically it is used by market leaders/incumbents who are trying to defend their legacy business in the face of a tectonic shift in the marketplace. It can be highly effective in delaying the onset of a market shift. I’ve seen the tactic used from both sides of the equation (i.e., challenger & incumbent) and will explain below how Exxon et al are effectively leveraging the failings of environmentalists communications strategies to gain the support of those opposed to the environmental movement.

During the late 80’s and into 90’s, there was a major shift away from so-called “host computing” (i.e., mainframes & minicomputers). That shift nearly killed IBM and did kill a host of other 2nd tier players. IBM did all it could to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt with customers to get them to slow down their migration away from mainframes. This period saw the rise of companies like Sun, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and others who took advantage of the shift though it would have happened much quicker had IBM not been so effective with FUD. I was at Microsoft at the time and we saw how IBM was very effective at using FUD with market analysts through the commission of studies and using their PR machine to highlight problems with the mainframe alternatives as well as several other tactics for 1:1 situations.

More recently, the tables were turned where Microsoft was the incumbent market leader and it faced upstarts like Google as well as free open source software such as Linux. Among the studies they commissioned, they have been out to prove that free isn’t really free. As we speak, they are trying to thwart Google who has a package to challenge Microsoft Office with FUD as a centerpiece of their strategy.

Why do I share this? When I read this article in Newsweek entitled “Global-warming Deniers: A well-funded machine“, it struck me that Exxon and other incumbent businesses are using exactly the tactics that IBM and Microsoft. Don’t get me wrong. I love capitalism and I don’t think they’ve done anything illegal. I just believe that it’s important to see it for what it is. Like IBM and Microsoft before it, they are virtually printing money with their current business model. Moving from their centralized model to a more distributed set of energy resources can only harm their business. They have a great reason to protect their model and are investing accordingly as their shareholders would expect. In the past, only a small percentage of companies successfully maintain leadership. For example, IBM is the only company from the mainframe/minicomputer era still having any success because while they were using FUD, they were also hedging their bets by pursuing other lines of business relevant to the next generation.

Global-warming deniers have also been very adept at leveraging the byproduct of what Michael Shellenberger lays out in his controversial paper “The Death of Environmentalism” (PDF summarized here).

These “post-environmental movement” thinkers argue that the ecological crises the human species faces in the 21st century are qualitatively different from the problems the environmental movement was created to address in the 1960s and 1970s. Climate change and habitat destruction, they argue, are global, more complex, and demand far deeper transformations of the economy, the culture and political life. The consequence of environmentalism’s outdated and arbitrary definition, they argue, is political irrelevancy.

The political irrelevancy is a painful reality for the environmental movement which reflects ineffective strategies that has created a perception that all environmentalists are ELF-like extremists. Consequently, the incumbent energy companies have gained unwitting allies who think they are battling environmental extremists when in fact they are fighting an emergence of next-generation energy companies. In the process, they have set the stage to handover the economic dominance of the U.S. One only has to study the history of energy to understand how major energy shifts have created dominant economic forces. Britain used coal to emerge as the global leader during the 1800’s and into the 1900’s only to be usurped by the U.S. when some Texans struck oil that set the stage for U.S. dominance.

Having said that. The tidal wave of investment and innovation in newer, more efficient energy sources excites me. Over time, that will trump the incumbents. The Stone Age didn’t end when we ran out of stones nor will the Oil Age end when we run out of oil. At a certain point, the new models will overcome the market barriers that have been erected. The key question is whether American companies will be leaders as they have in other major new industries such as aerospace, telecommunication and the Internet where the government played an appropriate role and then got out of the way. This led to American companies being the dominant players. Unfortunately, we’ve fallen behind the Germans, Danes & Japanese in key new areas that will eventually be mainstream.

Like I.T. managers in the 80’s and 90’s who were hoodwinked by IBM, I’m afraid many of our public officials at the state and federal level are similarly getting hoodwinked. As a result, we aren’t the market leaders we ought to be.

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