The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report that says we can expect an increase in severe weather events thanks to global warming. Of course, most Republican policymakers will dismiss the report as deny there’s even a can to kick down the road and continue to bank campaign donations from oil and coal companies.
Boycotts haven’t really been tested as a way to eliminate corporate ownership of our government, but it’s fairly clear that it would be hard to effectively boycott the energy companies. Still, boycotts could send a message and help spur support for efforts to get money out of politics.
While poking around Google for hints on who and what to boycott, I came across this primer on sending a message to the Koch brothers, who are not only buying a lot of lawmakers but manipulating the political conversation by creating fake grassroots public interest groups. While the Kochs’ principal business is oil, they do own a lot of other kinds of businesses, many of which are easily shunned.
Others, meanwhile, are urging people move their money from big banks to smaller local banks or credit unions, which is a good idea for folks with the stamina to deal with all the hurdles involved in moving an account these days.
Choosing targets for boycotts can be complicated. In the first place, it’s almost impossible to find a company that doesn’t belong to a trade association or organization whose job it is to lobby for its clients before Congress. Take the frozen pizza people who persuaded Republicans to declare pizza a vegetable, for example. You can’t just switch from one brand of frozen pizza to another to make a statement — you have to boycott frozen pizza altogether (which might actually be a good thing). And then of course any given frozen pizza brand is probably owned by some conglomerate anyway, so to be really effective you have to do a little research. (Red Baron Pizza, for instance, is owned by the Schwan Food Company.)
One way to pick boycott targets is to watch Fox “News,” then choose from among its advertisers. Of course for the boycott to be effective, you have to get a few million of your friends to join in, or get the word out somehow. It’s also important to be aware of the possible unintended consequences of a boycott — layoffs that might result from slow sales of a particular product or service.
Getting money out of politics is going to take a long time, and in the end it will come down to electing candidates who promise reform, then hold them to it. Meanwhile, finding alternates to the Kochs’ Brawny paper towel brand is easy enough.
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