Climatewash - Greenwash 2.0. Simple, cheap and no real change needed - great for big business!
Live Earth was great for raising awareness on climate change
andpromoting ways everyone can help. To see global megastars urging
actionon climate change to an audience of billions warms the heart
of many ahardened Greenpeace climate campaigner. Today is certainly
light years awayfrom when we first started campaigning nearly 20
years ago on what was then a little known issue.
Awareness raised, but where's the corporate action?
This year has seen the science debate (artificially prolonged by
dirtyenergy funded front groups)
settled. And Live Earth helped raiseawareness of the problem in
many countries to an unprecedented level.But even a quick scan of
the Live Earth sponsors reveals many companieswho, while spending
millions on appearing to be concerned about climatechange, are
profiting from climate changing business as usual.
Just down the road from our international office in Amsterdam is
a majorDutch energy company called Nuon, which sponsored the Dutch Live Earth event.
Butwhat Nuon isn't so keen to highlight is that it's one of the
companiespushing ahead with the building of five new coal power
plants in theNetherlands.
If built these willguarantee the Dutch government's 30 percent
CO2 reduction by 2020 target willnot be met. Dirty, polluting
business as usual.
As coal power stations are one of the biggest single causes of
climatechange no new ones should be being built. That's the sort of
seriousaction required. Yet most big power companies are trying to
forge ahead withplans for massive new coal plants in Europe, Asia
and the Americas. Thevery same companies you pay your energy bill
to are telling you theycare, but spending that money like they
never knew coal was a bad idea.
Many big oil companies (now marketing themselves as 'energy'
companies)like BP, Shell and even Exxon are throwing the odd
million or severalat websites and ad campaigns to say they are
looking for solutions toclimate change. But in fact they are
spending billions finding andextracting more oil.
Exxon even still funds the climate skeptic frontgroups that
exist to attempt to muddy the water and stall action onclimate
change.
Green cars?
General Motors (owner of Chevy) and DaimlerChrysler (owner of
the Smartcar brand) were two massive car makers hoping for some
positiveassociation with Live Earth. However, what you won't see
onDaimlerChrysler's website is the fact that their (and other big
Germancar makers) lobbying was crucial in preventing the European
Union fromimposing tough new efficiency regulations on cars in
2006. Carmanufactures had eight years to comply with previous
voluntary targets(that they mostly failed miserably to meet), hence
the EU proposal fornew strict legally binding rules. Yet, European
car manufactures(supported by US car firms, like General Motors)
lobbied successfullythat there should be significantly weaker
efficiency regulations, ascar companies should be free to sell lots
of big, inefficient andpolluting cars. (Report on car
industry EU lobbying).
That's the real sign of how companies like DaimlerChrysler have
failed to change in response to the climate challenge.
The lights are on, but there's no climate champion home
One big area where a simple and significant win for the climate
can bemade is lighting. Old style incandescent bulbs are so
inefficient thatby just switching from old to new efficient
lighting technology in theEU we could close down 25 medium sized
power plants, and possibly saveEurope 3-5 billion euros.
Right now major lighting manufactures like Phillips, GE and
Osram havemumbled about a possible incandescent phase out in maybe
10 years time.But being the makers of most of the
inefficient lightbulbs on theglobal market it's time they were
more ambitious. Why not a bold climatemove now - stop making
incandescent bulbs to focus solely on sellingmore efficient
lighting. As the companies obviously need some pressureto take this
step you can
write to them now.
"Business as usual is no longer an option"
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
That was the UN head talking about the need for a new
politicalagreement on climate change, but he could just have easily
beenaddressing business leaders.
If we are to have any chance to meeting the necessary carbon
emissionreductions required to prevent a climate crisis there must
to be majorchanges now. No new coal plants should be approved. Old
inefficientlighting must be made a thing of the past. Gas guzzling
cars belong onthe scrap heap.
While we can all do our bit individually to combat climate
change it'scompanies taking real action that can massively magnify
our individualactions and be themselves ahead of the competition
when governmentregulation on climate is enforced.
To date the signs have not been promising. Examples of real
action arefew. Some power companies have dropped plans for a
handful of coalplants in places like the US and New Zealand. A
handful of retailers,like Currys in the UK, have stopped selling
wasteful incandescentbulbs.
But given the scale of the climate crisis facing us all it's high timebig companies stopped just talking green and took action to make theirbusiness climate friendly. Anything less just results in more hot air.
Take action
Take personal action and pressure companies to make real changes to tackle climate change by taking our 7 Steps.
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