Shell’s global advertising deal with LEGO is part of a carefully thought-out strategy by Shell to buy friends who can make its controversial Arctic drilling plans look acceptable and misleadingly associate it with positive values. LEGO is one of the most beloved and admired toy companies in the world, and Shell knows that this deal will not only increase profits, but also improve the reputation of a company known for recklessly threatening the fragile Arctic ecosystem.
As part of the co-promotion, LEGO has branded Shell’s logo on a special set of its toys. By placing its logo in the hands of millions of children, Shell is building brand loyalty with the next generation of consumers. Shell has launched an invasion of children’s playrooms in order to prop up its public image, while threatening the Arctic with a deadly oil spill. We can’t let Shell get away with it.
If we convince LEGO to cut ties with Shell, it will be a major blow to Shell’s strategy of using deals with popular brands to distract from its Arctic drilling. As millions stand up to expose Shell’s true face, it will become harder and harder for Shell to get the public support it needs to destroy the Arctic.
Until we show fossil fuel companies that we’re ready for something new, pipelines like Keystone XL are going to keep coming back like an ex-boyfriend who won’t get the hint.
Now is the time to end our unhealthy relationship with dirty energy, and the first step in this breakup is cutting them off.
Help us end subsidies to fossil fuel companies and keep Tar Sands oil in the ground. Find out more: http://postcarbon.org/breakup
I’m back from a short canoe trip on a small lake just an hour’s drive from our house. The weather was warm & dry, the conversation lively, the food delicious (despite not catching any fish) and we only had to flee from the mosquitoes around dusk.
Here’s what’s coming across my desk as I catch up on the week’s climate change news:
Bill McKibbon published a hard-hitting article in Rolling Stone magazine this week, Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three Simple Numbers That Add Up To Global Catastrophe – And Make it Clear Who The Real Enemy Is. Here’s an excerpt:
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.
…To make a real difference – to keep us under a temperature increase of two degrees – you’d need to change carbon pricing in Washington, and then use that victory to leverage similar shifts around the world. At this point, what happens in the U.S. is most important for how it will influence China and India, where emissions are growing fastest. (In early June, researchers concluded that China has probably under-reported its emissions by up to 20 percent.) The three numbers I’ve described are daunting – they may define an essentially impossible future. But at least they provide intellectual clarity about the greatest challenge humans have ever faced. We know how much we can burn, and we know who’s planning to burn more. Climate change operates on a geological scale and time frame, but it’s not an impersonal force of nature; the more carefully you do the math, the more thoroughly you realize that this is, at bottom, a moral issue; we have met the enemy and they is Shell.
Meanwhile the tide of numbers continues. The week after the Rio conference limped to its conclusion, Arctic sea ice hit the lowest level ever recorded for that date. Last month, on a single weekend, Tropical Storm Debby dumped more than 20 inches of rain on Florida – the earliest the season’s fourth-named cyclone has ever arrived. At the same time, the largest fire in New Mexico history burned on, and the most destructive fire in Colorado’s annals claimed 346 homes in Colorado Springs – breaking a record set the week before in Fort Collins. This month, scientists issued a new study concluding that global warming has dramatically increased the likelihood of severe heat and drought – days after a heat wave across the Plains and Midwest broke records that had stood since the Dust Bowl, threatening this year’s harvest. You want a big number? In the course of this month, a quadrillion kernels of corn need to pollinate across the grain belt, something they can’t do if temperatures remain off the charts. Just like us, our crops are adapted to the Holocene, the 11,000-year period of climatic stability we’re now leaving… in the dust. Click here to read the full article.
Arctic Ready: Shell Advertisement by egilaslak
Feel like jumping off a cliff after reading that? Here’s some links to great editorial cartoons, a little bit of humour to help you through the rest of your day:
And some good news for Canadians: the court challenge brought by the Council of Canadians with regard to seven ridings where the election results in the last federal election were close enough to have been affected by the robocalls made to NDP and Liberal voters has been given the green light to proceed, despite being opposed by the seven Conservative MPs who won those seats. Read the full story on CBC.ca If you want to learn more about election fraud and Canada, you can read an interesting article, Vote-moving Canadian Election Fraud, on Rabble.ca.
This week, Greenpeace and The Yes Men got some more fun out of their Arctic-Ready website, a parody of Shell that pokes (well-deserved) fun at their environmental record and their plans to drill in the pristine Arctic. The first stage of the campaign was launched several weeks ago when a video was released, purporting to be taken during a Shell Arctic launch gone wrong (see here). That was revealed as a spoof, but the activists weren’t done getting attention and mileage out of this action:
Not to be discouraged, Yes Labs released a fake press release from “Shell” threatening to take legal action against the campaign’s originator.
It was sent from the email address alerts@shell.com, included a false quotes from a real company spokesperson and warned journalists against the “counterfeit website” at ArcticReady.com.
Here’s a video about the real story behind the initial parody video, a private send-off for Shell’s arctic rigs (Kulluk and Noble Discoverer) at the Seattle Space Needle:
Via Occupy Seattle, a close-up glimpse at the folks our governments are trusting to keep our Arctic pristine and untouched. They can’t even run a launch party without a spill:
Occupy Seattle’s website says that Logan Price, a Seattle Occupier who’s now living in New York, managed to infiltrate a private party thrown by Shell Oil at the Space Needle to celebrate the launch of its Arctic drilling program, and caught this video. It gets more interesting because there’s also a website, arcticready.com, that looks a lot like a Shell Oil home page. It reads:
We’ve all heard about global climate change and the challenges it brings, especially to the most vulnerable among us.
For example, 300,000 people already perish each year from climate-change-related causes, mostly in the world’s poorest areas, according to the foundation of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. And evidence suggests that further disruption of our planet’s delicate climate could well result in incredibly dire consequences.
We at Shell are as concerned about this as everyone else. But we also recognize that even the most vulnerable need ever-growing fossil fuel resources for their travel, leisure, scientific, and infrastructure expansion needs, and that all of us, no matter where we live, need to explore every alternative at our disposal in order to one day have the hope of achieving a balanced, sustainable approach to energy production—let alone to deal with the potential consequences of climate change.
That’s why we at Shell are committed to not only recognize the challenges that climate change brings, but to take advantage of its tremendous opportunities. And what’s the biggest opportunity we’ve got today? The melting Arctic.
At least it’s clear who’s setting the agenda at this weekend’s meeting of Provincial and Federal Ministers of Energy and Mines. It turns out the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Oil Sands Developers Group are the major sponsors of the annual meeting of energy and mines ministers in Kananaskis, Alberta. On the agenda is Canada’s energy future and the path towards a national energy strategy.
It is unusual to allow any corporate sponsorship of these meetings, never mind to the tune of nearly $200,000. The last energy ministers meeting held in Western Canada in 2008 received a total of $3000 from one corporate sponsor, and when the ministers met last year in Montreal the organizers chose not to accept any funding from the private sector. In contrast, oil companies are bankrolling this weekend’s meeting to the tune of $180,000, roughly 1/3 of the entire conference costs.
In the second decade of the 21st century, Canadians are facing a choice between an energy future built around a rapid expansion of the Alberta tar sands and an alternative vision that would serve all Canadians (not just those with investments in the tar sands), one that would make Canada a leader in clean energy and ensure that Canada does its fair share to reduce global warming pollution. What are the chances that a clean, renewable future will be chosen when this meeting is paid for by Big Oil?
