Rupert Murdoch's climate crusade: "Surprise initiative...is sweeping and serious."

[DeepModem Mom]

CNNMoney/Fortune: Rupert Murdoch's climate crusade
News Corp.'s campaign against global warming includes free light bulbs, subsidized hybrids and babes in green, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
August 15 2007

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Readers of the The Sun, a British tabloid best known for its bare-breasted Page Three girls, opened their newspapers to see a young woman named Keeley Hazell wearing only green paint. Ms. Hazell is the face - well, not just the face - of the paper's campaign against global warming. When subscribers to the British satellite TV provider BSkyB order new set-top boxes, some installers now also deliver, at no additional charge, three energy-efficient light bulbs and a low-flow shower head. Viewers of Fox-owned TV stations in the United States, meanwhile, are urged in news stories to join the FOX-e (pronounced foxy) energy team, to save money and the environment. ("Switch off lights and turn off basic appliances when you're not using them...")

What all these audiences are witnessing is a major media company tackling the problem of climate change. The surprise is that the initiative - which is sweeping and serious - comes from Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp. and purveyor of Fox News, The New York Post and The Weekly Standard, none of which are generally regarded as friends of the earth. Soon Murdoch will own The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages rarely find much to admire about the likes of Al Gore....Murdoch has boldly promised to make News Corp. carbon neutral by 2010 and to weave environmental issues and themes into his newspapers, TV shows, movies and online properties - a tricky business, particularly when it comes to news....

***

Murdoch's evolution into a climate change crusader took time. Australia, where he grew up and still owns newspapers, has been experiencing its worst drought in a century. Closer to home, his son James Murdoch, who drives a Prius to work and a hybrid SUV on weekends, has been influential. James is the chief executive of BSkyB, which became carbon neutral in 2006. "This had enormous appeal to their subscribers and employees," (Roy Bahat, the News Corp. executive who has led the efforts on energy use and climate change) said.

About a year ago, Murdoch hosted an all-star team of environmental leaders at a News Corp. management conference in Pebble Beach, Ca. They included then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, AL GORE, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, energy strategist Amory Lovins and solar power evangelist Bill Gross.

News Corp. hired a consultant and learned that its own carbon emissions amounted to 641,150 tons. It has promised to reduce that by 10 percent by 2012, mostly through energy efficiency measures and by buying renewable power. It will offset the rest by investing in projects to reduce emissions elsewhere; this year, News Corp. purchased its first offsets, which ended up helping to finance a wind energy project in the state of Maharashtra, India. The climate change initiative is being felt in many corners of the Murdoch empire. Working with Wal-Mart, Fox's home video unit has reduced the cardboard used in packaging DVDs. HarperCollins UK replaced its car service provider with one that uses only hybrids. Fox employees are getting incentives to buy hybrid vehicles. A MySpace channel called OurPlanet has about 120,000 "friends."...

http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/14/news/companies/pluggedin_gunther_murdoch.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007081506

[iconoclastic cat]

1. He may be evil and insidious, but he's not stupid.

Moloch--er, Murdoch can see where the climate crisis is going. He's going to cash in on an inevitable disaster.