Greenwash This

Jed Greer and Kenny Bruno’s book Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism expanded on the reports they had written for “Greenpeace Report on Greenwash” that was presented at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

For quite a few months now I’ve been contributing to actions intended to keep fracking out of Illinois. One of the most frustrating aspects of this work involves the choice by several very large environmental organizations to support efforts to regulate fracking. The majority of grass roots environmental groups in Illinois are promoting a fracking ban. To our great frustration, Illinois’ well-known environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Illinois Environmental Council believe that laws and regulations can be written to somehow keep fracking operations from polluting our environment and threatening the health of people and animals living in proximity to fracking sites.

Biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, born in Illinois but now fighting fracking in New York, knows all too well how effective legal opportunities for citizen feedback on fracking really are. Frustrated by the State of New York’s unwillingness to take the testimony of scientists seriously, Steingraber and other New York activists chose to block a corporate driveway rather than allow Inergy to proceed with its fracking storage operation. Informed and educated comments about fracking dangers were dismissed by state authorities. Steingraber felt only civil disobedience could communicate her message as widely as she believed it needed to be heard. She deliberately broke the law in New York and currently sits in a New York jail because she realized that current opportunities for citizens to provide their point of view on fracking were useless.

How is it that grass roots activists like Steingraber understand the futility of regulating fracking, or of participating in existing citizen comment procedures, while some large activist organizations still seem to think that fracking can happen safely if only the right regulations are written to control it?

The question brings me back to Greer and Bruno’s  book Greenwash. The oil and gas companies having mastered greenwashing techniques in the ‘90’s are again applying them to fracking. The problem is that the country seems to have developed amnesia when it comes to the concept of greenwashing. Maddeningly, many of the same corporations, those revealed to be destroying environments with one hand while they put out reports and ads describing their environmental responsibility with the other hand, are involved in the fracking industry. Shell and Mobil were separate entities in the ‘90’s. Now they are married to each other. And, unbelievable as it may sound, the marketing claims they foisted on us in the ‘90’s are being trotted out again in this decade.

And no one seems to notice that all of this is made possible by advertising agencies that design the glossy pieces meant to becalm troubled citizen hearts. The ad agencies get the up-with-people photographs taken, they work with corporate management and lawyers to write the language that, if not read very carefully, can sound like the corporations are really working to better their environmental records even as the same words promise absolutely nothing.

Don’t I seem to recall that business schools were going to teach ethics more effectively to their students following the Enron scandal? Who’s teaching these marketers and ad execs ethics these days? Ad execs should be termed media mercenaries, or creative hired guns, who will design a pretty brochure for any company regardless of its true contribution to climate change, pollution, or negative effects to human and animal health. Global energy corporations now create their public images using global advertising agencies.

And sadly, there is no attempt to rein in the indiscriminate creative genius of the ad agencies—in spite of our culture’s awareness that effective advertising can bring great harm. The U.S. may regulate what kind of advertising children are exposed to, or where cigarette or alcohol ads can appear, but that tacit recognition of the power of advertising does not extend to corporations that threaten the very existence of our planet.

Take a look at the language in a ‘90’s Shell advertisement:

“Caring for the world is a responsibility we all share. And it’s one we take seriously at Shell. . . In fact, as long as the earth needs someone to care for it, you can be sure of Shell.”

With this language comes a photo of a sweet little girl hugging a globe.

Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who lived amidst the devastation left by Shell operations in his country, had this to say about Shell:

“At the root of my travails lies Shell, which has exploited, traduced, and driven the Ogoni to extinction in the last three decades. The company has… left a completely devastated environment and a trail of human misery… I have one suggestion for those whose conscience has been disturbed by my story: boycott all Shell products.”

Mobil’s approach to public relations challenges took a more direct approach to the issue with this language in its 1991 Mobil World:

“[M]arketing is the part of Mobil’s business that’s most visible to the public. Most people…see advertising. This presents Mobil’s marketers with a unique opportunity to deliver their environmental message—an opportunity they’ve seized.”

Mobil in the ‘90’s claimed it intended to “target: environmental excellence.” Targeting extended to the firing of employees who dared to report on Mobil’s environmental missteps. Valcar Bowman, a former Mobil environmental affairs manager was fired when he refused to remove incriminating documents about air pollution from Mobil’s Torrance refinery. Bowman sued and eventually was awarded $1.375 million in damages.

How do we as a nation forget this stuff? And how in the world can any environmental group—or oil and gas company—possibly expect us to believe that with fracking everything will be different? The companies have already demonstrated in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Ohio and North Dakota how detrimental fracking is for those states. Even the promises of jobs that are supposed to accompany fracking have failed to materialize.

And Illinois hopes to regulate this industry? Only oil and gas companies with their inordinate ad budgets could have gotten a fracking regulation law as far along in Illinois as this.

We need a moratorium on fracking—and on the public relations blitz that accompanies this mess of an industry. Promises that were false in the ‘90’s are still false, no matter how glossy the photos or sweet-sounding the hype.