Shell Oil and the Institutions Greenwashing Them Feel the ‘Heat’ on Climate Change, in Bristol

Sat­ur­day, Decem­ber 15th 2007

Effec­tive Direct Action and Pub­lic Protests Mark Exhibition’s Release in Bris­tol

It hasn’t been an easy week for the organ­is­ers of the Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award and the Bris­tol Muse­um, or their spon­sor and proud wildlife destroy­er— sug­ar­dad­dy Shell Oil Com­pa­ny. All week, con­cerned indi­vid­u­als from around Bris­tol have been expos­ing the truth about Shell and the pub­lic insti­tu­tions who are help­ing to green­wash them.

On Tues­day, activists staged a protest in the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine in Broad­mead, bring­ing work to a halt and reviv­ing con­tro­ver­sy with­in the orga­ni­za­tion about their rela­tion­ship with the oil indus­try. See fur­ther details of this action in pre­vi­ous arti­cle

On Fri­day evening, Bris­tol Muse­um host­ed a pri­vate, posh wine and cheese recep­tion to kick off their host­ing of Shell’s exhib­it, with atten­dees includ­ing Dawn Pri­maro­la, Labour MP from South Bris­tol and Helen Hol­land, leader of the Bris­tol City Coun­cil, who were all pat­ting them­selves on the back for car­ing about wildlife. Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide activists, dressed up to the nines, were admit­ted to the event under fake names, with one activist gain­ing access to the mic, and pos­ing as the Shell pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor. He then launched into a two minute speech (in the style of the yes men) thank­ing the city coun­cil and muse­um for help­ing to allow Shell’s destruc­tion of wildlife to con­tin­ue and call­ing the melt­ing of the Arc­tic ice cap a “tremen­dous busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty” by allow­ing access to mil­lions of bar­rels of oil under the ice cap. Amaz­ing­ly the mic was kept on through the entire­ty of the speech. (Full text of speech and video below)

Sat­ur­day saw a high­ly suc­cess­ful and well-attend­ed protest, mark­ing the open­ing of the SHELL spon­sored Wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the year exhi­bi­tion. Dozens of humans, about a dozen polar bears, a snow leop­ard, and a tiger gath­ered, com­plete with the Wild Lie counter-exhib­it. Pro­test­ers gath­ered in front of the muse­um, hand­ed out leaflets, cre­at­ing quite a spec­ta­cle. Some even­tu­al­ly made their way into the exhi­bi­tion hall, where Shell’s crimes were recount­ed, and a die-in took place to sym­bol­ize all the wildlife who have been killed because of oil greed, and who con­tin­ue to suf­fer the effects of cli­mate change. The protest, orga­nized by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, Friends of the Earth, and Peo­ple and Plan­et, showed that Bris­to­lians will not be qui­et in the face of cor­po­rate green­wash in our pub­lic insti­tu­tions.

Protests are expect­ed to con­tin­ue at the muse­um through Jan. 13, in an effort to edu­cate the pub­lic about the true nature of Shell’s activ­i­ties, and to main­tain pres­sure on the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine and Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to drop Shell as a spon­sor. Peo­ple are encour­aged to go and see the pho­tographs and let the muse­um know about their dis­plea­sure about allow­ing a Shell spon­sored exhib­it space in a city-owned muse­um.

The protest today also coin­cid­ed with a shock­ing report in this week­end’s Finan­cial Times. It high­lights Shel­l’s role in the immi­nent dev­as­ta­tion of the athabas­ca tar sands.
See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53058af8-aaaf-11dc-a779-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Bri­an Straub, Shell Canada’s vice-pres­i­dent for oil sands makes the com­pa­nies posi­tion very clear: “We’re clear­ly putting all we have across the Shell world toward devel­op­ing this resource. If we weren’t here it would just be woods”

Take action:

If you want to protest about Bris­tol Muse­um and the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine green­wash­ing Shell then please write briefly to each of these organ­i­sa­tions. There will be many with­in each organ­i­sa­tion sym­pa­thet­ic to our stance — let­ters will sup­port their posi­tion.

Bris­tol Coun­cil: customer.services@bristol.gov.uk

Bris­tol Muse­um: general.museum@bristol.gov.uk

BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine: wildlifemagazine@bbcmagazinesbristol.com

Edi­tor Evening Post: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144933&command=newPage

Read more about Shell’s hor­rif­ic envi­ron­men­tal record and the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing oil com­pa­ny spon­sor­ship of cul­tur­al events:

“Shell Wildlife Destroy­er of the Year”, Friends of the Earth,
Octo­ber 2006
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/shell_wildlife_destroyer.pdf

Arc­tic Ice Free by 2013: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

Trag­ic His­to­ry Muse­um: http://www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk/

Art Not Oil: http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/shell

Full text of speech read by Der­rick Leavus­sum, “pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor for Shell”

Good evening my name is Derek Leavus­sum, pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor for Shell. I want to wel­come you all to the 2007 Shell Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award. As you can imag­ine- I don’t have an easy job, what with all this fuss about melt­ing glac­i­ers, extreme weath­er and wildlife extinc­tions. I’d like to thank the Bris­tol City Coun­cil, BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine and the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um for mak­ing my job all that much eas­i­er by allow­ing us to spon­sor your wild lie- I mean wildlife- exhi­bi­tion.

We pre­fer not to see the melt­ing of the Arc­tic ice cap as a threat to human civ­i­liza­tion. We see it as a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. After all, there are mil­lions of bar­rels of oil under there just wait­ing to be extract­ed. And we’ll need all the ener­gy we can get since we’ve just aban­doned our solar pro­gram. When you see the Shell logo, we don’t want you to think about the whale habi­tat we’re destroy­ing in Siberia and Ire­land, human rights vio­la­tions in Nige­ria, and espe­cial­ly not cli­mate change. This may all be true but the fact is that the world needs oil and this is sim­ply the price of progress.

Some say it’s iron­ic that the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny is spon­sor­ing a wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion- but Shell is tru­ly com­mit­ted to preser­va­tion of the polar bear and oth­er wildlife- in pho­tographs if not in the real world. Some say it’s the end of the oil age- but we say it’s just the begin­ning- we’re thrilled about dig­ging into Canada’s oil sands and with your help we can con­tin­ue to deceive the pub­lic into think­ing we’re a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen. Thank you all for com­ing tonight and we hope you enjoy view­ing these amaz­ing pho­tographs of wildlife that Shell is destroy­ing- I mean con­serv­ing.

Also a spe­cial thanks to Dawn Pri­maro­la and the Labour par­ty for sup­port­ing a third run­way at Heathrow and ensur­ing that there remains a healthy demand for our prod­ucts.

The rev­o­lu­tion will not be motorised!

Video of Der­rick Leavus­some, Shell “pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor” speaks to the posh recep­tion at Bris­tol Muse­um.

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol