Verizon sorry for supporting mountaintop removal

Verizon Wireless has formally said "I can hear you now" to a coalition of 47 conservation and faith organisations who sent a group letter asking the company to withdraw its sponsorship of an anti-environmental Labour Day rally put on by the coal industry in West Virginia.

Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, has received a letter from Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, stating that the company’s sponsorship of the rally was “not an expression of support for mountaintop removal coal mining or in opposition to climate legislation” and that “Verizon supports the goals of policy makers who are committed to reducing carbon emissions and protecting the environment.” The letter was dated September 10, 2009.

While thanking Verizon for its statement in favor of greenhouse gas pollution reduction, Suckling, however, raised concerns that the company chose to not withdraw support for the rally and did not issue its pro-environmental statement until after the anti-environmental rally was over.

“Verizon is a large corporation and we appreciate the impossibility of being able to review or even know about every decision of its regional offices. Once the controversy became public, however, the national office did know about and did decide to continue participation in the rally. Indeed, Verizon is listed as a “sponsor” to this day on the rally’s official Web site, which continues to present the purpose as denouncing “environmental extremists” who believe in global warming and oppose mountaintop mining. Verizon has not asked Massey Energy Corporation to remove it from the sponsor list, thus it is a sponsor despite its efforts to nuance the situation otherwise. Thus our objection, and the objection of the more than 81,000 people who contacted you, is not satisfied by the invocation of local decision-making,"

Suckling also noted that Verizon, in direct contradiction of it own corporate responsibility policy, justified ignoring the rally’s environmentally damaging impact because it was able to make a profit doing so

However, in recognition that Verizon did apologise to some degree, Suckling informed McAdam that the Center would not unilaterally drop its Verizon phone service as previously threatened. Instead, it will put the question to its 225,000 members and supporters to decide: