greenwashing

This is Part One of a three-part series on the political greenwashing of the tar sands in Canada.

When I hatched the idea to write a book about the use of spin and propaganda in the battle over the tar sands, a close friend of mine suggested I avoid the term “tar sands.” His logic was simple: using this term, which has become a pejorative, would turn some people off, people who might benefit, he said, from reading my book.

His recommendation was meant to be helpful, but it speaks to the power of manipulating language to make people believe something appears to be something that it is not. “Greenwashing” refers to the strategy of intentionally exaggerating a product’s environmental credentials in order to sell it, and nowhere has greenwashing been more generously used than in the promotion of the tar sands and the new and bigger pipelines that proponents hope will carry it around the world.

Greenwashing is fairly recent phenomenon—it was only added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1999—but it has become commonplace as public concern has grown over the spate of environmental problems we now face, and as consumers demand “greener” products as a means of solving them. The most recent analysis by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that although the number of green products is growing, the marketing of more than 95 per cent of them still commits one the seven sins of greenwashing.

At the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008, former Vice President Al Gore called the possibility of fossil fuel corporations extracting oil shale "utter insanity." 

Insanity, though, doesn't serve as a hinderance for deeply entrenched and powerful fossil fuel interests.

Oil shale, also known as kerogen, should not be confused with shale gas or shale oil, two fossil fuels best known from Josh Fox's "Gasland." As explained in a report by the Checks and Balances Project,

Oil shale itself is a misnomer. It is actually rock containing an organic substance called kerogen. The rocks haven’t been in the ground for enough time or under enough pressure to become oil. Oil companies need to recreate geological forces to produce any energy from it. Ideas for developing oil shale have included baking acres of land at 700 degrees for three to four years and even detonating an atomic bomb underground.

The really "insane" part of the equation: oil shale production, which has yet to begin, would be ecologically destructive to the extreme.

"Because oil shale is a rock, commercial production would release 25% to 75% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil," wrote the Western Resource Advocates. Furthermore, like tar sands production and shale oil/gas production, oil shale production is a water-intensive process.

Adding insult to injury, in the 100 years of attempted commercial production of oil shale, the fossil fuel industry has yet to seal the deal, motivating an April 2012 report by Checks and Balances titled "A Century of Failure."

Conservation International is embroiled in a devastating scandal over the greenwashing services it offered to undercover British journalists posing as Lockheed Martin employees looking for help sanitizing the public image of the leading arms dealer's deadly weapons systems. 

The journalists from London-based outlet Don't Panic approached Conservation International (CI) with a truly outrageous request for its greenwashing services. In the video below, you'll learn from their undercover footage of meetings with a senior CI representative that CI was more than ready to help "Lockheed" develop a program to greenwash its image, and the examples of what the CI rep dangled in front of the prospective clients must be seen to be believed.

Watch below:

Are you sick and tired of the greenwashing efforts by the Alberta government and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to paint Canada’s toxic tar sands as ‘clean’?

Greenpeace Canada is launching an ad-jamming contest to combat the greenwashing campaign launched by CAPP in a series of print and video ads. 

“It is time to show CAPP that any attempt to greenwash the tar sands will not go unchecked,” say Greenpeace organizers, who have set up a Facebook group to “Put a CAPP on Tar Sands Greenwashing.”