The League of Conservation Voters has launched a new campaign to counter Chevron’s newest greenwashed advertising blitz. In their new ads, Chevron asks, “Will You Join Us?” and gives examples of the things people can do on a personal level to stop global warming.
They don’t mention what they as a company have the power to do. Instead, they ask people to do things like take their golf clubs out of their trunk, replace light bulbs with CFLs, and “consider” buying a hybrid.
In a recent Businessweek article, Kim Jeffery the CEO of Nestlé Water North America, makers of Poland Spring waters, whines (yes, whines) that they are misunderstood and not given the credit they deserve. Clearly he thinks all the charges of greenwash are unfair.
But, are they? The article tells of all the environmentally preferable things that they had done but that no one knew about. The article then goes on to say:
Part of the reason Nestlé Waters wasn’t touting its environmental efforts, according to Jeffery, was that he and the rest of management considered such actions business as usual.
Yes! That’s the point. the “green” things Nestlé were doing were part of normal business operations, many of which saved the company lots of money. Are they good for the environment? Of course. But that’s not really what greenwashing is all about. Its about consumer marketing. This is where the real greenwashing occurs. Before I go on, I want to say that I truly applaud the industry for implementing eco-bottles. That said, it seems to be a blatant case of greenwash to position bottled water as being good for the environment. Water companies should tout eco-bottles, but they shouldn’t suggest that they are good for the environment. They should sell the water, not the the environmental friendliness of the packaging. I would like to ad, that Nestlé is not the worst offender of greenwashy bottled water ads and their ad campaigns are far less offensive than those for Fuji Water and Deer Park.
Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners have assembled along a train route in Germany to protest the annual convoy carrying tons of nuclear waste from France to a storage facility in northeastern Germany.
In what is becoming an annual ritual of civil resistance and direct action in Germany, more than 15,000 anti-nuclear protesters turned out along the route to Gorleben on Sunday—twice the number at a similar protest at the site two years ago—in the largest and most violent anti-nuclear protest in Germany since 2001.
The We Campaign, a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection — a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Al Gore, recently put together a 30-second TV ad called “Repower America.” It talks about the benefits of alternative energy. It says right upfront that we are “stuck with dirty and expensive energy” and asks how can it be so? In the end it points out that big oil and its lobbyists are the reason. It starts to make sense when you learn that in the first half of 2008 big oil spent $201.2 million on paid media and 45.6% of that was spent by the the seven top oil companies on TV ads (to the tune of $92.2 million). So, ABC refused to air the ad in an unjust and cowardly act. Why? Because big oil airs a lot of those ads on ABC.
Repower America Ad
So, its time to take action and ask ABC to reconsider their decision and air the Repower America ad. Send ABC an email via an easy to complete form at the We Campaign site. The pre-loaded email message is simple and to the point:
I am disappointed by ABC’s refusal to air the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America ad. The ad has the simple message that massive spending on ads by oil and coal companies — ads which your network airs — is a key reason our nation hasn’t switched to clean, renewable sources for energy.
It only takes 30 seconds to tell ABC we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! Go for it.
Environmentalists across the nation argue that too many fish get sucked up and killed in the cooling systems of nuclear power plants each year.
As the presidential election draws near, Americans will be voting on a number of key issues, among the most important, I think we all agree, is energy. Will we choose John McCain, the nuclear candidate, or Barack Obama, the wind, solar, and fuel-efficient car candidate?
One issue that ties in to this debate: the significant loss of lake, river & marine life that gets sucked into the cooling systems of many older nuclear power plants, battered against the sides of pipes, and heated to death by steam.
Is the Iraq War all about oil? Maybe not. But even former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has acknowledged the action was “essential” to protect the world’s access to oil. With many of the world’s top-producing oil and gas fields in decline, is it unreasonable to suggest there will be more military action to defend our “right” to fossil fuels?
Not according to the National Priorities Project, which today released a report that finds the U.S. is spending $97 billion to $215 billion a year on military efforts to defend oil and natural gas reserves around the world. That means as much as 30 percent of the U.S.’s military budget is aimed at protecting access to fossil fuels.
This is a guest post by Meg Hamill, a freelance writer, also working at the environmental non-profit LandPaths in Sonoma County, California
This summer at the University of Calgary in Canada, great strides were made in an air capture system, built to filter CO2 emissions from diffuse sources.
Professor David Keith, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy’s (ISEEE) at the University of Calgary, and his team, captured CO2 directly from the air using less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per ton of CO2.
Their custom-built tower captured the equivalent of about 20 tons per year of CO2 on a single square meter of scrubbing material. To put this in context: It’s about the average amount of emissions that one person would produce in a year in North America. The team’s hope and belief is that this technology can easily be perfected and made more efficient.
The air capture technology being researched at the University of Calgary, is significant, as it is said to be the only way to capture CO2 emissions from polluters such as cars and airplanes. These CO2 sources are referred to as “diffuse” sources, and make up about half of the greenhouse gases emitted on earth.
Every week sees so many developments and news stories about the environment, energy and sustainability, it’s impossible to cover them all in depth. So I thought it would be helpful to occasionally summarize some of the more interesting reports from the past week. Here are a few that caught my eye:
Two South African architects last week won the $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize for their unique energy-efficient housing design using timber framing and sandbags. Based on traditional mud-and-wattle construction, the timber-sandbag structures are also inexpensive and easy to build, with no electricity required.
The financial markets unraveled so rapidly last week, it’s still hard to process all the developments and likely consequences. But there’s no doubt that events on Wall Street carry serious implications for our energy and environmental future as well.
I can’t wrap my head around all the pieces yet (and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to), but here are some random thoughts about what the market meltdown might mean for oil prices, oil production, renewable energy development and climate change:
In a monumental ruling, a British jury acquitted six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage charges stemming from what the activists said was an attempt to shut down a coal-fired power plant. The jury decided that the activists’ action was justifiable because the plant, which emits 20,000 tons of CO2 every day, will hold some blame for immense damage caused by global warming in the future.
The ruling goes against years of convictions for similar actions and essentially praised the activists for their help in preventing global warming. To make their case, the defense argued that much of the lower-altitude areas that surround the plant could eventually be submerged in water from the effects of climate change.
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