Last month, Greenpeace head Russel Norman surrendered his speaking slot at an EPA conference to student climate activist Sorcha Carr, who told the EPA exactly what she thought of them. It was a bold move, which confronted both regulators and polluters (or, as the EPA calls them, "stakeholders") with the voices they were ignoring. The EPA's reaction was astounding:
“[EPA CEO] Allan Freeth publicly chastised her [the student] for lack of ‘politeness’ and the inappropriateness of the speech – seemingly more concerned about the offence caused to other ‘invited guests’. From what I witnessed, I believe he was particularly acknowledging a rep from the oil and gas industry, who not only shouted at Sorcha during and after her speech, but immediately stormed out and accosted senior EPA staff to express his outrage at the ‘ridiculousness’, inappropriateness and ‘bad taste’ of her speech.”
The event was described as an annual update where central and local government, industry and community groups were invited to hear what the EPA had been doing and an opportunity for the EPA to understand "what is of concern and interest to our stakeholders". Norman was a guest speaker.
Freeth later sent a letter to attendees apologising for “a person’s poor and disrespectful behaviour”. He was referring to either Norman or Carr, not the oil industry representative who spoke over Carr.
What this shows is a regulatory agency which is completely and totally captured by the industry it purports to regulate. It shares their values, and their sense of offence at being confronted with a message they do not want to hear. And by doing so, it has ceased to be a neutral, professional public service agency, and has effectively become an industry lobby group within government.
Such unprofessional and corrupt conduct should not be tolerated. Freeth needs to resign or be sacked. As for the EPA, if they are this captured and this compromised, they need to be disbanded. Raze it to the ground and start again from a clean slate, because clearly they're no fucking good to anyone but the polluters they protect.
