The Firebreak Celebrates One Year
So much achieved, so much to do
The Firebreak was born a year ago this month and it has been an eventful start. The challenge was clear. NGOs, foundations and activist scientists have been running irresponsible campaigns and the media have not been doing their job of scrutinizing them. To the contrary, often the media have played a role in the campaigns, often funded by the same interest groups, and often using their influence to set and control the narrative. The Firebreak was created to have a place where we could call these opportunists to task.
The term “firebreak” was chosen as an example of an effective risk management tool. When fighting or preventing fires, a firebreak is a zone meant to stop the spread (via controlled burns or earth barriers). The nature of environmental-health activism in a social media-driven policy environment spreads out of control much like a wildfire on a dry, windy day. Their campaigns aim to accentuate hyperbole (to lie), dramatize emotional arguments and manipulate every tool and every actor in their playbook. Led by zealots influencing armies of outraged and terrified followers, today’s campaigns are well-funded and driven to win at any cost. The Firebreak is meant to be a barrier to slow down or stop campaign wildfires spread rapidly by activist arsonists.
The objective then is to continue to do what I have been doing under the pseudonym: The Risk-Monger. But The Risk-Monger is identified with me personally. I want to develop a site where others can contribute, to grow it into a place where experts who are fed up can share their experiences and where narratives can be challenged with facts. Also, what I had learnt from the glyphosate battles in Brussels, as many campaigns are funded in the US and are spreading globally, The Firebreak should take a more North American perspective.
In only one year
It is hard to have imagined in July, 2023 what the Firebreak could have achieved in the first year. There are nine guest writers on our roster. Every day, dozens of readers subscribe to the site and the discussions are reaching wider audiences. We have been spotlighting irresponsible media bias in organizations from The New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post to the Associated Press while our articles and research have been cited in Politico, Epoch Times and many specialty and trade magazines.
Firebreak series have exposed serious issues and activist abuses behind the debates, like how:
activist scientists are using dark donor-advised funds to channel money non-transparently. We exposed the Heartland Health Research Alliance and how it was used as a non-disclosed partner to a small group of scientists’ universities to fund publications without revealing the sources of the interest groups behind them.
foundations are taking a more active role, not only in funding NGOs, but in managing them. Fund managers are now engaging fiscal sponsors to manage campaigns in place of funding or setting up NGOs.
many large media outlets are being discretely financed by foundations with funding earmarked to publishing articles related to their objectives and projects.
international agencies like the World Health Organization are beholden to activists and foundations imposing their interests on global health policies.
US tort law firms interfere with policy, research and public discourse, working with NGOs and activist scientists to manufacture fear and outrage for the purpose of developing new lines of litigation.
On a positive note, the Firebreak has started a Legends series to interview and pay tribute to the many great scientists and influencers who have tempered the temperature of many controversial debates.
As these fires are spreading out of control, the Firebreak will need to do a lot more to turn back the damage these activist ideologues are capable of doing to consumers, economies and social well-being. Fear and outrage always burn faster than facts and reason.
Upcoming Developments
In year two, expect more of the same, with hopefully a snowballing of the success and influence. But that will clearly not be sufficient.
It is not enough to merely moan about how irresponsible and biased the mainstream media is, to complain about their ignorance or complicity in the activist campaigns or to ridicule them. Often journalists lack the time or the access to reliable information making them vulnerable to abuse by manipulative political actors.
Entering the second year, it is time to be proactive and offer solutions. This summer the Firebreak will be rolling out a series of supports for journalists in the form of a Media Toolkit. An easily accessible page where journalists can quickly source general information to support what they may be writing on.
Two of the initial tools to be developed in the coming months are:
The Firebreak Fearometer
It is far easier to scare someone than to inform them but who benefits from such fear campaigns? Who funds them and for what interest? Is there a pattern to these tactics and how can we know? The Firebreak Fearometer will present an issue, the interested parties and the benefits they will gain from the fearmongering. It will measure where the campaign presently is in the process of taking a fear to fruition.
The hope is that journalists who take the time to check their sources might begin to see where the game is and how they themselves are being played.
The Chemical Contextualizer
When people hear the word “chemical”, they often run for the hills. Chemicals, though, are not simply man-made; rather, man is made of chemicals and many natural chemicals are much more toxic than the ones chemists designed to do the required job more safely.
People need to understand the toxic equivalence of many of the chemicals that activists tell us are bad. For example, the herbicide, glyphosate, is far less toxic than many of the common ingredients found in the cookies we feed our children, but the way the media reports on it, we must be dealing with some Chemogeddon that is killing off humanity.
The Chemical Contextualizer will provide simple illustrations so journalists can understand the real risks and how the fearmongers are playing on public ignorance and prejudice.
It will be a busy summer.