OIL / GREENWASH

Can an oil company change? Kenny Bruno examines what’s behind the glossy, eco-friendly ads the oil companies are churning out.

Before you read this article take a look at the oil company ads reproduced here. You may not be able to see the fine print but you get the idea. These are companies trying to pass themselves off as born-again saviours of the environment.

But how do you react to that? Are you optimistic that these mammoth companies are re-inventing themselves as environmentally responsible corporations, perhaps focusing their considerable talents on avoiding catastrophic climate change? Or are you confused about whether BP’s ‘cleaner fuel’ really means less global warming. Or whether Shell’s renewables ‘commitment’ means less use of oil and gas? Or whether Chevron’s concern for the bald eagle will stop it exploring for oil in natural wildlife preserves?

If you’re confused or puzzled, you’re not the only one. There is mass confusion, especially about climate change, aka global warming. Some folks believe it’s only about rising temperatures, when its effects include more frequent and severe storms, flooding, spread of disease and growing numbers of environmental refugees.

There’s even more confusion about the solution. In part this is because it’s hard to face the realization that oil and gas, the lifeblood of industrialized economies, are also the main source of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas. The fundamental solution is simple, though enormously challenging.

We need to move away from fossil fuels if we are to avoid destructive climate change.

But the oil companies are doing their best to feed this confusion. And they’ve done so with a deliberate strategy: deny, delay and dupe.

The Hard-liners
ExxonMobil, representing the hard-liners, continues to deny the evidence and you’ll see few ads touting the company’s environmental purity. It maintains that fears of global warming ‘are based on completely unproven climate models or more often on sheer speculation without a reliable scientific basis’. ExxonMobil believes that current scientific understanding does not justify ‘mandatory restrictions on the use of fossil fuels’. The scientific uncertainty they point to is contrasted with their certainty ‘that large economic hardships would result from reducing fuel availability to consumers’.

However, the only scientific uncertainty about climate change is how severe it will be, not whether it will happen. ExxonMobil uses this to argue against taking action, opting for precaution in the economic rather than the environmental realm.

But because the evidence is so overwhelming, straightforward denial is no longer credible – except in George W Bush’s White House and possibly in parts of the Middle East. Shell and BP, as European-based companies, have been quicker to understand this. They know that the world is desperate to get the oil majors on the side of climate protection.

Their current rhetoric plays to our desperate hope for good news. But it also continues a pattern of confusing information. It’s a confusion that echoes through the mainstream media, leading to a general paralysis of citizenry and government. Which is exactly how the corporate climate culprits want it.

The Greenwashers
BP, Shell and Chevron’s ads are in the time-honored tradition of ‘greenwash’. They feature beautiful natural images, reverence for wildness and lingo worthy of Greenpeace – carefully presented to hide a reality of environmental destructiveness. BP and Shell in particular have parted ways with US companies like ExxonMobil by acknowledging that global warming is real and pledging to take steps to address it. At a minimum these statements do give credibility to the campaigns to protect the climate and the positions of countries pushing for real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

But just how significant are the steps taken by Shell and BP? There are two ways to measure this. The first is against their own rhetoric; the second is to measure against what is needed to combat global warming.

Let’s take the Shell ad first. It seems reasonable, honest and caring. In the fine print Shell asks: ‘Is the burning of fossil fuels and increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the air a serious threat or just a lot of hot air?’ After all the years of obfuscation by the oil industry this amounts to perpetuating a confusion which no longer need exist – confusion which serves the delaying tactics of the oil industry.

Shell says it has renewed its commitment ‘not only to meet the agreed Kyoto targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to exceed them’. This is a worthy step, often noted by journalists evaluating Shell’s environmental record. But it is largely symbolic. Shell is not a country. Reducing its own emissions is laudable but the company’s main impact on global climate is from the oil and gas that it produces. The vast majority of carbon emissions from Shell’s fossil-fuel products result from consumers further downstream. If we measure those emissions, Shell alone accounts for more carbon dioxide than most countries in the world. Yet Shell prefers to ignore this far larger role, preferring instead to intensify its worldwide effort to locate more oil and gas. On a symbolic level, Shell has broken with ExxonMobil and embraced a goal derived from the Kyoto Protocol. But on the practical level, Shell remains as committed as its hard-line counterpart to exploring for more oil and gas anywhere and everywhere.

In other ads Shell touts its commitment to renewable energy and stresses that it has created a division called Shell Renewables. At last, one might think, here’s something substantial, real money into a real solution. Well, not quite. Shell spends just 0.6 per cent of its annual investments on renewables.

The story is similar for BP which recently rebranded itself. BP’s identity as British Petroleum has been shelved and company ads now proclaim that BP has found a new identity ‘Beyond Petroleum’. For the world’s second largest oil company to move beyond petroleum would be a boon for a world so addicted to oil. But what does BP mean by this phrase? Their ad says ‘Beyond Petroleum’ means ‘being a global leader in producing the cleanest burning fossil fuel: natural gas’.

It is true that natural gas is not oil; however, its impact on the world’s climate and on local communities is similar. Natural gas can lead to lower carbon emissions than oil. But if you count fugitive emissions (mainly from pipeline leaks and flaring) the difference between gas and oil is slim to none. Natural gas is at best an incremental improvement over oil; and at worst a distraction from the real challenges of moving our economies away from fossil fuels altogether.

Moreover, virtually every oil company is focusing on natural gas these days. To say natural gas is ‘beyond petroleum’ is pretentious. To call it ‘cleaner burning fuel’ in the context of global warming is misleading.

BP’s claim to be ‘the largest producer of solar energy in the world’ is more impressive. Sad to say, becoming number one was not very difficult. The company got there by spending $45 million to buy the Solarex Corporation. Compare that to the $36.5 billion it spent to buy ARCO. Or the $5 billion it will spend over the next five years on oil exploration in Alaska. According to SANE BP, a group of environment-ally-conscious shareholders, the company spent more on its new eco-friendly logo last year than on renewable energy.

The Oil Conundrum
ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, believes that global oil and gas demand will rise 30 per cent by the year 2010. It intends to help fill that demand – a decision that will certainly worsen global warming. That might be considered irresponsible, even shocking, in an ecologically aware world. But it’s even more shocking to find that Shell and BP, self-styled environmentalists, take exactly the same position. According to BP boss, John Browne, inevitable growth in oil and gas use ‘isn’t an assertion on behalf of the oil and gas industry. It’s a fact.’

Shell and BP have moved away from the stance of ExxonMobil with sophisticated, soothing rhetoric and with shifts in public policy. They have moved cautiously into renewable energy, an important step. But they remain caught in a conundrum as powerful and unyielding as that of ExxonMobil. In order to avoid catastrophic climate change, we must radically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Even if solar energy use were to rise 100-fold, the earth’s climate would still be in trouble if coal, oil and gas use also rose.

Yet these companies and others, are continuing the search for undiscovered oil and gas, developing new technologies to drill in the deepest seas and remotest rainforests. And they are doing this even though we cannot safely burn the oil we’ve already discovered. They are fiddling while Rome burns. And so are the rest of us.

Last year the Chairman of Ford Motors, William Clay Ford (who thinks of himself as a ‘green’ corporate leader) admitted that Ford’s best-selling, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) are bad for the environment. But he said the company will continue making them anyway because they are essential to corporate profits and competitiveness.

And today, some of us will get into one of those SUVs, powered by ExxonMobil, Shell, BP or Chevron and drive off.

Our society is in a state of extreme confusion, guilt and paralysis over the issue of climate change. We go to great lengths to avoid accepting that we must severely limit fossil-fuel use. And that suits the oil giants just fine.

is a writer/activist living in New York City. He is co-author of the Greenhouse Gangsters vs Climate Justice report published by the Transnational Resource and Action Center in Berkeley, California.