Chevron Thinks We're Stupid: the step-by-step guide.

A colleague of mine sent me a great collection of links pertaining to a recent Chevron greenwashing campaign, and it is with great pleasure that I repost them here.



It's really worth visiting the Chevron YouTube Channel to view the comments associated with this video, which include the following most popular comments, as voted by viewers of the above video: "In California, Chevron spent $4.1 million lobbying legislators to change regulations so it can refine a dirtier grade of oil at its facility in Richmond without conducting any environmental review on what the change would mean for the low-income community surrounding it." and "In Washington, Chevron spends millions each year lobbying Congress to make sure we don't get a cap-and-trade bill, or anything else that might harm their profit margins.In the Arctic, it wants to drill for oil even though knowing such operations would be risky and hard to clean up.It's also one of the chief sources of funding for disinformation about the causes of global warming."

As is becoming more and more prevalent, there has been a response to this ad, this time found at Funny or Die, and apparently credited to the Yes Men (there is more information on the campaign on their website).

 

Chevron Thinks We're Stupid from The Yes Men

And to drive the point home, sketch comedy style:

Anatomy of a Greenwash from Paul Scheer

Diversity Fail

I love the fine folks at Corporate Knights, I do. However, something jumped out at me while viewing pictures from the recent publicity around the Corporate Knight Cleantech 10(tm) TSX event -  the dearth of female and non-white faces in the photos.

I recognize this mostly lies well outside the hands of CK - they serve as a messenger for CSR and Enterprise sustainability, not the direction of it - but it still serves as a signal all isn't well in Corporate-Canada - even Green Corporate Canada. Granted, just prior to seeing this image, I had read an article on the search for female authority in university classrooms, another about the 30-year anniversary of women winning the right to serve as firefighters (spoiler: it's still not easy being recognised), a rather superficial post on Big Think about Women in Finance, and, most applicable, a succinct Business Week article addressing the issue of Why There Are So Few Women in Tech. So maybe I was primed to notice this wee gender (and race) imbalance when I got around to reading this particular post.

I'm not going to address the deep and challenging issue of diversity in Corporate Canada on this wee post (though I do have a lovely presentation on the topic) - but I will humbly point out the ad that appeared on the same page as the Corporate Knight Cleantech 10(tm)  image...

Update: the folks at Corporate Knights also noticed the issue of diversity at this event and an "article in upcoming issue will ask why [the] green movement lacks [diversity]".You can check out their most recent  report of diversity in Corporate Canada here. Or, for fun times with spreadsheets, download a spreadsheet with all the companies within the index and count the "0.00%" until your eyes bleed.

300 Years of Fossil-Fueled Addiction in 5 Minutes

A public service announcement from the Post Carbon Institute.

The piece is written and narrated by PCI Senior Fellow and "Peak Everything" author, Richard Heinberg, and animated by Monstro Design.

Converting Plastics into Oil

More on the theme of energy being everywhere, and in keeping with Braungart and McDonough's Cradle to Cradle, "Waste = Food" concept, below is a short presentation featuring Akinori Ito of Blest Co, a Japanese company that has developed a machine that is able to convert plastics back to fuel oil.

More details on the concept can be found at the World 2.0 website.