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TechnoratiShell Rebuked For 'Greenwash' Over Ad For Polluting Oil Project
The Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell misled the public about the green credentials of a vastly polluting oil project in Canada, in an attempt to assure consumers of its good environmental record, a media watchdog will rule today.
In an embarrassing rejection of Shell's "greenwash", the Advertising Standards Authority said the company should not have used the word "sustainable" for its controversial tar sands project and a second scheme to build North America's biggest oil refinery. Both projects would lead to the emission of more greenhouse gases, the ASA said, ruling the advert had breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims.
Carried by the Financial Times on 1 February to accompany Shell's financial results, the company claimed: "We invest today's profits in tomorrow's solutions."
The advert continued: "A growing world needs more energy, but at the same time we need to find new ways of managing carbon emissions to limit climate change. Continued investment in technology is one of the key ways we are able to address this challenge, and continue to secure a profitable and sustainable future."
Shell explained it was harnessing its technical expertise "to unlock the potential of the vast Canadian oil sands deposits".
The WWF (formerly the Worldwide Fund for Nature) complained that extracting low-grade bitumen from sand was highly inefficient and destroyed huge tracts of virgin forest. In its defence, Shell maintained that new technology was reducing pollution from the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta in which it owns a 60 per cent stake.
Shell quoted a critical WWF report as rating its Muskeg River Mine one of the least damaging coal-tar sands projects because it sought to limit emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and organic compounds.
Making its ruling, the ASA quoted Canada's independent National Energy Board that oil sand developments had considerable social and economic impacts on water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, land disturbance and waste management.
David Norman, the WWF's director of campaigns, said: "The ASA's decision to uphold WWF's complaint sends a strong signal to business and industry that greenwash is unacceptable."
© 2008 The Independent
13 Comments so far
Show AllBOYCOTT!!! Shell and ExxonMobil. BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! Hit their 'wallets'...the only language they'll ever understand.
Shill "explained it was harnessing its technical expertise"
This phrase represents two crimes. Shill is "harnessing" for the wrong reason - profit over people. That's one crime, and the second crime is Shill is cultivating and exploiting the people's ignorance with such a phrase to further build the exploitation potential.
We don't need to consume more energy. We need to consume less energy, which can and should be produced at the local scale from renewable, zero-carbon sources.
The pursuit of mining the oil sands in Canada and the oil shales in the western U.S. while sidetracking alternative energy development, highlights the contempt for our planet by the energy cartels. Their extraction require massive amounts of energy which compounds their contributions to greenhouse gasses and related pollution. The environmental destruction resulting from their massive excavations, and wasteful consumption of water only add to their ddisasterous effects.
Oil Shale interests are well represented in the current administration who have continuously opposed real measures for conservation & carbon warming mitigation. Until we replace this administration with one that will detooth these thugs and invoke needed reforms, the degradation to our habitat from their reckless environmental policies can only accelerate.
Remember when Shell's gasoline additives burned out MILLIONS of car engines a few years back? remember when Shell paid for the Nigerian kangaroo court that sentenced Nobel laureate Ken Saro-Wiwa to death?
Keep that in mind when you hear the Shell slogan: "Shell helps."
If it's oil sands then you wouldn't need a shovel to scoop it out of the ground like it was coal.
I don't buy shell gas as they are one of the first to jump the price and the last to go down.
Hey Commondreams.org, say "Tar Sands" in the title, not the oil industry's "oilsands".
Otherwise, soon you'll have to say "Cuddly Wuddly Iraq War".
Big Oil has always done this kind of greenwashing ever since they were given a lopsided playing field to themselves. If HEMP were allowed to compete with Big Oil, we the people would have scored economic and environmental victories instead of being forced to sacrifice one over the other. This ad is nothing new.
Did the ad get pulled? If it didn't, it already did its job.
And yet you will still hear egregious corporate media whores like Kudlow on CNBC and Hannity talking about tar sands and oil shale like they are solutions. No mention by them of EROEI, massive water pollution and depletion and the greenhouse gases such operations will emit and result in.
I am so sick of these people desperately trying to prop up their obsolete reality and dragging the rest of us down with them. They are adolescent brats who are sssooo existentially insane that the idea that they are allowed to pollute the airwaves with their mental garbage is a perfect example of how sick our present culture is.
To hell with Shell" as my old man used to say, Nigeria, being the measure of corpoRat complicity in murder
Shell - "We invest today's profits in tomorrow's solutions."
Unfortunately, "tomorrows solutions" are massive bank accounts for its executives to fall back on once the world's gas and oil run out.
Substantiation and truthfulness do not exist in advertising's lexicon.