Publisher’s Notebook: BHP Billiton’s PR Bust

BY ANNE SOBLE

Pity the BHP Billiton public relations machine. All that money and all that expertise, and there’s no way to spin the 3000-page final Environmental Impact Report other than to say that it’s pleased to move on to the next stage. The fence-sitters and even the proponents of Cabrillo Port are faced with the reality that the project would have a major unmitigatable impact on air quality, the marine environment and aesthetics, not just for residents of the Malibu and Oxnard communities who are directly affected, but for the millions of beachgoers who come to the local coast, including those for whom “the beach” is the most accessible and affordable way to escape the rigors of daily life. The threat of smog-laden skies and whale carcasses drifting toward the shoreline cannot be dismissed as the polemic of radical enviros. By any standard of cost-benefit analysis, the risks associated with this project are too high. Those who carry signs, write letters and attend meetings are surrogates for a thousand-fold more who are unable to take on the labyrinthian world of corporate politics.

Although BHPB is doing its best to stack the bureaucratic deck in favor of Cabrillo Port, it’s clear that it is concerned that the final EIR and the international publicity being generated by high profile critics could interfere with the master plan to turn local waters into yet another cash cow for the energy and resources conglomerate. In addition to labeling analysis in the media that questions Cabrillo Port as the product of “biased” journalists and publications, hit pieces are now beginning to appear, including one under the name of a former Bush operative who didn’t bother to check the correct spelling of the name of the Malibu environmental activist he tries to besmirch, protesting “the kind of demagoguery that eco-terrorists routinely accuse energy interests of using,” while ignoring the fact that this is what energy interests routinely do as they equate their corporate profits with God and country. If this is the best the Billiton largess can produce, the behemoth is not as powerful as it thinks it is, and it is beatable. One way to try to facilitate this defeat is to close ranks and show up in large numbers at the three upcoming meetings that could help decide Cabrillo Port’s fate.