The Wall Street Journal's Anti-Business Agenda

(This article first appeared in the Guardian (UK) under the headline Rupert Murdoch's Black Sheep.)

When Rupert Murdoch crowned his media empire with his acquisition of the Wall Street Journal last December, he took little serious notice of one piece of dangerous editorial baggage he inherited, an explosive trunk that could undermine the NewsCorp brand. The trunk contains the Wall Street Journal's well-known position on global warming -- unrepentant denialism coupled with rabid free-market advocacy of business-as-usual. And in today's changed context, it's tantamount to an anti-business agenda.

While other champion denialists now voice their opinions much more carefully, the Journal's editorial page -- led by Paul Gigot -- remains vociferous and unrelenting.

Next week, global warming denialists from around the world are converging for a conference of their own in New York. It's being sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a free-market front group for tobacco and fossil fuel interests which has received $800,000 in funding from Exxon since 1998. Right on cue -- as if executing a PR strategy on behalf of favored clients -- a Journal editorial is providing free publicity to the conference, and is challenging critics to give the convocation of denialists a fair hearing.

You'd think this would be a rich time for debate on the issue of climate change. But it's precisely as sweeping change on climate policy is becoming likely that many people have decided the time for debate is over.

As if the Journal ever permitted open debate on its editorial pages. Denialists spoon feed content to the Journal regularly, and it's a safe bet the paper will lend plenty of its column inches to attendees of the the denialist conference, despite the intellectually dishonest and suspect nature of the entire enterprise.

Most immediately, this poses a challenge to the NewsCorp brand, which is now defined in part by its commitment to becoming a carbon neutral company by 2010. Murdoch himself has said "climate change poses clear catastrophic threats." The Journal likes to call people who voice such opinions "global warmists" and "alarmists." None of its editorial writers has yet been imprudent enough to slap the label on Father Murdoch, and so far he has been tolerant of the wayward behavior of his most recently adopted child.

Thus in early January, Murdoch countenanced this foolishness from columnist Holman Jenkins, Jr., who complained about US adoption of a 35mpg auto efficiency standard:

No mileage rules designed by Congress would ever have the slightest impact on global warming or bring any nearer to thee the false god of "energy independence"......We'll save for another day the political deconstruction of how anything as useless and perverse.....became a bipartisan triumph of the "common good."

A month later, the page fulminated about biofuels and the environmentalists who "stir up a panic about global warming," There's no evidence Murdoch even took notice. But this latest editorial, published yesterday, raises the stakes with its strident defense of the Exxon climate clan that's riding into New York next week.

Let's hope it isn't too much longer before Murdoch's patience wears thin. His fiduciary duty to NewsCorp shareholders will require it. Gigot-ism is out of step with history and in financial terms creates exposure to maximum risk and loss.

The rest of the civilized world is progressing toward solutions to global warming and after the next elections even the United States is certain to join the effort. Continued adherence to denialism -- and all the intellectual dishonesty that it implies -- will undermine the Journal's profitability.

Gigot's position is thus glaringly -- and ironically -- anti-business. Connect some dots in the conservative political universe -- where climate action is being embraced by evangelicals as "creation care," for example -- and his denialism also becomes anti-Christian and anti-family. Those are not values that can uphold the integrity of a conservative brand in America for long.

The world is witnessing a global economic and financial transformation, one that is being well-documented on a daily basis in the Journal's very own news pages. Gigot can hardly plead ignorance about the action afoot to put a price on carbon and to capitalize upon the opportunity and the challenge. It's the hottest business story there is and he's refusing responsible engagement with it.

Even the chief spokesman of the electric utility industry -- Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn -- had this to say in his annual speech to Wall Street recently:

This year may mark a watershed in the way that our nation thinks about and addresses energy—how we get it, how we use it, and how much it costs. What is happening in our industry is the beginning of a transformation. And much of this transformation is the result of the need to address the issue of global climate change.

Bank of America has decided to include a $20 to $40 per ton cost for carbon in its risk assessment for loans for coal-fired power plant construction. That followed close on the heels of an announcement from Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, which adopted "carbon principles," similar in effect. The movement to properly internalize the cost of carbon has become fundamental to the business acumen of the world's most powerful financial institutions.

And even T. Boone Pickens, a Texas oilman with impeccable right wing credentials -- he bankrolled the Swift Boat attack on John Kerry in 2004 -- now embraces sustainable development, too. He's sinking $10 billion to build the world's biggest wind farm, and here's why:

I like wind because it’s renewable and it’s clean and you know you are not going to be dealing with a production decline curve. Decline curves finally wore me out in the oil business.

The business world is in almost universal movement to address global warming, the biggest market failure of all time. You'd think Gigot and his crew would offer sage advice on how to navigate through this changing epoch. Instead they say in essence, "No, no, nothing needs to be done. The market will solve everything," and lend succor to those who aim to retard progress with pseudo-science and misinformation disguised as constructive free speech.

It is reckless stuff, and we can only hope Mr. Murdoch will prove to be a worthy new owner and rid himself of this malignant inheritance staining an otherwise noble newspaper.

The sooner the better. There's no upside to waiting.

Related Stories

Greenhouse Asses at the Wall Street Journal

Mr. Murdoch, Please Make the Wall Street Journal Carbon Neutral

Pressing Murdoch on the Journal's Climate Views (NYT)

WSJ Launches New Environment Blog (CJR)

Signal Fading from Wall Street Journal's Alternate Climate Universe?

Case Study: How Climate Skeptics Spoon Feed the Wall Street Journal

• ‹ previous
• up
• next ›