Kenneth A. Cook
Biography
Ken Cook brought a history of liberal political activism with him when he started the Environmental Working Group (EWG). A graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, he has authored dozens of articles, opinion pieces and reports promoting the lefty-environmental party line. Cook’s appointment to the board of directors at Environmental Media Services solidifies his place in the elite circle of professional environmental scaremongers.Cook got his start in the environmental movement in the late 1970s, serving as chief lobbyist (and later head of media relations) at the World Wildlife Fund. He also worked as a campaign aide for Michael Dukakis’s disastrous 1988 presidential run, helping to write the “What Not To Do” textbook for political campaigns. After Dukakis crashed and burned, Cook found a home in the offices of Island Press, a left-of-center environmental book publisher instituted by Andrew Mellon heiress Catherine Conover. Island Press also runs the Center for Resource Economics, where Cook held the title of Vice President for Policy and “incubated” the Environmental Working Group. Cook reorganized EWG in 1993 and placed it under the tax umbrella of the Tides Foundation.
Cook’s wife, Deb Callahan, is likewise no stranger to the environmental left. Callahan serves as president of the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental activist group. She also worked on green crusader Al Gore’s staff, back when he was a U.S. Senator.
Under Cook’s leadership, the Environmental Working Group has moved steadily to the left. Despite his ties to the DNC party structure, Cook pulled EWG out of a Clinton-era environmental advisory panel headed by then-Vice President Al Gore — saying of Clinton’s pesticide policy, “[health] risks have only gotten worse during the Clinton administration” and claiming that this generation’s most “progressive” White House actually “catered to the pesticide industry.” While Cook may not be the darling of the Democrats anymore, another political party just loves him: in 2000 an EWG report on farms was the basis of a glowing article in The Militant, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party.
Cook’s political adversaries and comrades alike have become accustomed to mudslinging. During the 2000 presidential primary season, Cook called for a boycott of GreenMountain.com, an alternative-minded energy company, after chairman Sam Wyly spent $2.5 million of his own money to run advertisements supporting candidate George W. Bush’s energy policy. “Be green without being red,” urged Mr. Wyly. “Lying… sleazy, political big-spender,” countered Cook, in a public statement containing enough errors to merit a retraction just four days later. Cook, true to form, apologized just long enough to satisfy his legal obligations before attacking Wyly yet again.
Background
Co-founder & president, Environmental Working Group; board member, Environmental Media Services; former vice pres., Ctr. for Resource Economics; former press dir., World Wildlife Fund; husband of League of Conservation Voters president Deb CallahanAssociated Organizations and Foundations
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