The 4th Green­peace Busi­ness Lec­ture took place on Tues­day 25th Jan­u­ary 2005 at the Roy­al Soci­ety of Arts and was deliv­ered by Lord Oxburgh, Chair­man of Shell. Green­peace Busi­ness said in advance that “The lec­ture will focus on the future of oil com­pa­nies in the light of grow­ing evi­dence on the dan­gers of cli­mate change.”

Wear­ing pro­tec­tive radi­a­tion suits and wield­ing top-of-the-range (home-made more like) green­wash detec­tion and clean-up equip­ment, The Green­wash Guer­ril­las were on site to declare the event a ‘Tox­ic Green­wash Haz­ard’. Passers-by and would-be atten­dees were advised to move away from the build­ing, while those insist­ing on entry were warned that direct phys­i­cal con­tact with the lev­els of “Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty” (CSR) antic­i­pat­ed could cause long-term dam­age to spir­i­tu­al health. Not to men­tion the like­li­hood of becom­ing a bit-play­er in a Shell-chore­o­graphed CSR soap opera. Sad­ly, none took this advice — per­haps the gas masks made it too hard to deci­pher.

A ban­ner read­ing “TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD” (with the “A” of “GREENWASH” an oil der­rick pump­ing out flames and clouds of CO2) was tied to the rail­ings of the very fan­cy Roy­al Soci­ety of Arts. One oper­a­tive detect­ed high lev­els of green­wash below street lev­el. “They“re smug­gling Oxburgh in through the sew­er!” cried anoth­er, a the­o­ry which could not be ver­i­fied at time of writ­ing.

At one point, who should be seen step­ping from a black cab but Dr. Robin Bid­well, Chair­man of Envi­ron­men­tal Resources Man­age­ment (about whom, see our spoof web­site of a few years back at www.erm-concerns.com) He expressed no regrets for his company“s com­plic­i­ty in laun­der­ing BP“s Baku-Cey­han pipeline, and wouldn“t be drawn about the num­ber of con­tracts with BP had been lost since his offices were occu­pied in 2002/3.

Soon after, the freez­ing Guer­ril­las were thrilled to feel the heat of right­eous indig­na­tion cours­ing through their veins as a Shell pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive emerged onto the steps and began to insti­gate a lit­tle dia­logue. “Oil com­pa­nies can save the plan­et, (if their share­hold­ers will let them)”, he declared, before being wrapped in haz­ard tape…through which he kept spout­ing top-draw­er corp-speak, swear­ing on his mother“s SUV that Shell was “try­ing real­ly hard”, and “real­ly, real­ly cared” about the cli­mate. The GG“s were stunned into silence by this bare-faced dis­play – either that or they were smart enough not to be lulled by the prospect of “hav­ing their say” at the big mahogany board­room table of pow­er. (One who was tempt­ed had to be dis­in­fect­ed by a less cred­u­lous col­league.)

Rumours that this Shell rep was a plant to cre­ate a lit­tle fris­son of a full and frank exchange of views are a shock­ing bar­rel of lies.

Most atten­dees were drawn from the world of oil com­pa­nies, renew­ables com­pa­nies, big NGOs, media and pol­i­tics. Almost all accept­ed a non-tox­ic leaflet while some stopped to talk through the issues, often implaca­bly opposed to Shell and deter­mined to throw Oxburgh a tough ques­tion. One asked if we were Green­peace pick­et­ing Shell, as did an Inde­pen­dent reporter; there“s noth­ing like a lit­tle con­fu­sion to get the issues to show up in a clear­er light.

As the pun­ters queued to enter the lec­ture, a few GGs took advan­tage of their pro­tec­tive cloth­ing to accept a Green­peace Busi­ness offer to come inside and watch the lec­ture on the live video feed. At first they just checked the room for high but man­age­able lev­els of green­wash. But once Oxburgh came on screen, the equip­ment was under too much pres­sure, so they beat a swift retreat. This equip­ment is cut­ting edge, high-tech pro­to­type stuff on its first out­ing, and we need it to be in good order for the doubt­less large num­bers of events which we will have to attend and con­tribute our unpaid, unsung pub­lic ser­vice. This is the year of the G8 in the UK after all, so unprece­dent­ed lev­els of cli­mate-relat­ed green­wash will be stick­ing to our shoes all the way to July at least.

For that rea­son, (noth­ing at all to do with the bit­ing Jan­u­ary wind), we decid­ed to retreat tac­ti­cal­ly to a near­by hostel­ry to wash away dan­ger­ous inter­nal traces of Shell green­wash that might have evad­ed our anti-Shell suits ear­li­er on.

MESSAGE FROM THE GREENWASH GUERRILLAS (dis­trib­uted out­side lec­ture)

Shell vs. plan­et
WARNING! — you are with­in chok­ing dis­tance of a seri­ous spillage of ultra-pow­er­ful super-sophis­ti­cat­ed extra-tox­ic Shell green­wash. (Green­wash = envi­ron­men­tal white­wash.) Tonight, Lord Ron Oxburgh, Shell Chair­man, deliv­ers the Green­peace Busi­ness Lec­ture on “Peo­ple, Cli­mate and Nat­ur­al Resources”. We trust you have brought your gas mask & sick bag.

In terms of cli­mate chaos, the solu­tion is sim­ple: LPG (Leave Petro­le­um in the Ground). And in the bat­tle against green­wash, here“s anoth­er sim­ple acronym: DBI – Don“t Buy It. If not, then we will see the grad­ual sell­ing out of all mean­ing­ful oppo­si­tion to indus­try and gov­ern­ment-ped­dled fos­sil fuel mad­ness. You can“t put a price on the atmos­phere, and mar­ket envi­ron­men­tal­ism will not pre­vent mar­ket-dri­ven cat­a­stro­phes.

FOUR EXAMPLES FROM OVER A CENTURY OF PLUNDER:
* Growth at all costs? Shell “has promised to close the grow­ing gap with rivals such as BP and Exxon­Mo­bil by find­ing new reserves equal to 100 per cent of the oil and gas it pulls from the ground on aver­age for the next four years.”
Action aims to restore reserves, FT, 19.1.05.
* Niger­ian destruc­tion: 2005 is the 10th anniver­sary of the Shell-sanc­tioned mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa; “Shell“s com­mit­ment to cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty looks shal­low in the light of the sus­tained mis­ery of the peo­ple of the Niger Delta.”
Sus­tained mis­ery — Shell in the Niger Delta;www.christian-aid.org.uk
* Iraqi sell-off: “Oil majors, includ­ing Shell and BP, are mov­ing clos­er to estab­lish­ing a long-term pres­ence in Iraq…it emerged yes­ter­day.”
Shell advert seeks ‘our man in Iraq’, Gdn 11.8.04.
* Sakhalin sac­ri­ficed: “Clean up the oil spill, not just your image, cam­paign­ers tell Shell”;www.sakhalin.environment.ru/en/sakhalin2/msakhalin.html

With many civ­il soci­ety groups climb­ing into bed with rapa­cious, PR-savvy cor­po­ra­tions, it“s a relief to know that Green­peace will nev­er take cor­po­rate cash. But Shell has pulled off an invalu­able coup in appear­ing to have tamed the group best known for anti-oil direct action.
Since Big Oil“s triple bot­tom line is prof­it, prof­it & prof­it, since it is trained to lie to pro­tect that prof­it, and since it has no place in a sus­tain­able, social­ly just future, we look for­ward eager­ly to news of Green­peace and oth­er direct actions on Shell, (not to men­tion BP, Exxon, Sus­tain­Abil­i­ty et al) in the future. After all, there“s no such thing as a good oil com­pa­ny.

Let The Green­wash Guer­ril­las know what you think, c/o
Mal Brand­ed or Jude Boyn­ton from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide:
london@risingtide.org.uk c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, Lon­don E1 1ES
Tel: 07708 794665 londonrisingtide.org.uk See also risingtide.org.uk