How corporate denial harms our world and continues to threaten our
future.
Corporations faced with proof that they are hurting people or the planet
have a long history of denying evidence, blaming victims, complaining of
witch hunts, attacking their critics' motives, and otherwise
rationalizing their harmful activities. Denial campaigns have let
corporations continue dangerous practices that cause widespread
suffering, death, and environmental destruction. And, by undermining
social trust in science and government, corporate denial has made it
harder for our democracy to function.
Barbara Freese, an environmental attorney, confronted corporate denial
years ago when cross-examining coal industry witnesses who were
disputing the science of climate change. She set out to discover how far
from reality corporate denial had led society in the past and what
damage it had done.
Her resulting, deeply-researched book is an epic tour through eight
campaigns of denial waged by industries defending the slave trade,
radium consumption, unsafe cars, leaded gasoline, ozone-destroying
chemicals, tobacco, the investment products that caused the financial
crisis, and the fossil fuels destabilizing our climate. Some of the
denials are appalling (slave ships are festive). Some are absurd
(nicotine is not addictive). Some are dangerously comforting (natural
systems prevent ozone depletion). Together they reveal much about the
group dynamics of delusion and deception.
Industrial-Strength Denial delves into the larger social dramas
surrounding these denials, including how people outside the industries
fought back using evidence and the tools of democracy. It also explores
what it is about the corporation itself that reliably promotes such
denial, drawing on psychological research into how cognition and
morality are altered by tribalism, power, conflict, anonymity, social
norms, market ideology, and of course, money. Industrial-Strength
Denial warns that the corporate form gives people tremendous power to
inadvertently cause harm while making it especially hard for them to
recognize and feel responsible for that harm.
