Smoke and mirrors

New Scientist
Saturday 23/12/2006 Page: 25

Don't be fooled by oil and car companies' attempts to appear green. They are still a major obstacle to tackling climate change, warns George Monbiot

IF YOU were the chief executive of an oil company hoping to defend your business against environmental campaigners, there are several ways you might go about it. The most direct approach, as adopted by ExxonMobil, would be to fund groups that claim climate change isn't happening and urge the White House to remove the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But you wouldn't do this if you had any sense: Exxon's tactics, while successful in the short term, have backfired spectacularly, confirming many people's impressions that the oil industry is a threat to life on Earth. If you were smart, you would follow BP and Shell's tactics. Rather than denying that climate change is happening, they have repositioned themselves as friends of the environment. Their new advertisements (including ones in this magazine) seek to persuade us that they have left the bad old days behind.

They do this by emphasising their investments in low-carbon energy: wind, solar and hydrogen. BP is now promoting carbon offset schemes, assuring its customers that "it is now possible to drive in neutral". Other companies have followed suit. Total promotes its investments in wind power and biofuels, while Chevron claims that by exploiting Canada's tar sands it is saving the world from another problem: the threat that global oil production will soon peak.

Have they left the bad old days behind? Quite the opposite. By repositioning themselves in this way as environmentally responsible, I believe these companies have become far more dangerous than ExxonMobil. They have created the impression that a large and growing oil industry is compatible with preventing runaway climate change. BP in particular now looks more like an environmental pressure group than an oil company.

The whole tenor of these companies' adverts, like BP's slogan "Beyond petroleum", is misleading. It overlooks the fact that an oil company's share price depends on the current and future value of its assets, and to sustain this value it will aim to replace whatever oil it produces with new discoveries and production. While Shell is struggling to keep up, BP has so far managed to meet this target. In other words, it will continue in the future to pump as much oil as it does today, regardless of what it spends on alternative technologies.

Indeed, BP's carbon offset campaign is designed to allow sales of oil products to increase, persuading customers that they can buy them with a clear conscience. But growing oil sales are impossible to reconcile with action on climate change, however many biodigesters and low-energy light bulbs are installed to mop up their effects.

The adverts, in other words, all appear to be examples of greenwash: companies attempting to distract attention from the environmental impacts of their activities.

It is not just oil companies that are guilty of this. Car manufacturers have started to join in. Volkswagen has recently been promoting its Golf GT with the slogan "High performance. Low emissions". Yet read the small print and you'll find that the GT produces 175 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, compared with the national average for new cars in the UK of 170 grams.

Similarly, Toyota's new adverts are headlined "aim: zero emissions" and claim that the company is seeking to preserve "the delicate balance between man and nature". This is news to anyone who has bought one of its planet-eating 4x4s. Even its famously efficient hybrid, the Prius, is less impressive than the ads suggest. On the highway it manages, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 51 miles per gallon. In 1983, the standard Peugeot 205 made 72.

I have been unable to find any major company whose green claims stand up to scrutiny. The big firm with the best environmental reputation in the UK is the home improvement retailer B&Q.

It has recently been promoting solar panels and micro wind turbines, and maintains that "environmental and ethical responsibility... is an integral part of the way we think about ourselves and our business". This is hard to reconcile with its promotions this summer. It knocked 15 per cent off the price of patio heaters and 20 per cent off air-conditioning units, helping customers to save money while frying the planet. It sells a huge range of light bulbs, but few are energy-efficient.

There's nothing wrong with companies advertising their green credentials. If these are exaggerated, however, busy consumers have no means of distinguishing between good firms and bad ones, and are easily led into doing things they believe are helping the environment but in fact are damaging it. The examples I have given suggest that we need stiffer rules about the green claims made in advertisements, as well as mandatory "sustainability" standards. Until then, I would advise you not to believe anything a company tells you about its environmental performance.


George Monbiot is the author of Heat: How to stop the planet burning (Allen Lane, 2006). He has recently launched a website exposing greenwash at www.turnuptheheat.org