Shell Oil may still have plans to drill in the arctic, but thanks to Greenpeace’s pressure on Lego with this amazing video, the iconic toy company ended its partnership with the big oil company. It’s a must-watch video. 

Shell Oil may still have plans to drill in the arctic, but thanks to Greenpeace’s p

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Don’t click this link!

The best way to get a small child to want something is to tell them they can’t have it. And since we’re nothing but grown-up children, it works on us too. “Wet Paint – Don’t Touch!” usually elicits a poke with a finger. The more disinterested in us someone appears, the more attractive they usually become. We are fickle creatures, and we easily fall prey to reverse psychology.

In recent weeks Greenpeace has been making a huge number of people feel very stupid. In June they launched a website called Arctic Ready, a spoofed Shell publicity campaign (complete with near-identical website design) built around a user-generated advert competition that went in exactly the direction you’d expect…

What’s really fascinating is that after Greenpeace owned up to the stunt (including a fake Twitter account that is still remaining “in character”) and the stories faded from the front page of new sources, the website managed to fool an entirely new batch of readers and it went viral again. For Travis Nichols of the Greenpeace media team, the message was clear:

People wringing their hands over what is an obviously satirical campaign that rubs them the wrong way for a few seconds before they realize it’s fake pales in comparison with what Shell is doing, the hoax they’re perpetuating on the American public. It’s a creative campaign and we’re giving our supporters a voice to tell Shell what they think.   –  (Forbes) 

Of course that’s what he’d say – but it’s also a campaign designed to whip the public into a mud-slinging frenzy by lying to journalists and media outlets and then, via faked Shell social media accounts, threaten writers with (false) threats of legal action. Where’s the line over which it becomes flat-out defamation? Martin Robbins at the New Statesman thinks Greenpeace has scored such a huge own-goal that the smartest thing Shell could do is ignore it – which is exactly what it appears to be doing.

For a more elegant example of reverse psychology advertising, look to the city of Troy, Michigan. Last year its treasured public library was on the verge of running out of money, a situation a 0.7% citywide tax hike could remedy. In stepped the anti-taxation forces of the Tea Party, putting their substantial weight behind a “No” vote.  With the local election less than a month away, things looked grim. What the library needed was “something attention-getting, something audacious – maybe even vile.”

If you’re not cheering by the end of that video you’re not human – but why is this story far more palatable than Greenpeace’s stunt?

And in either case, do the ends really justify the means?

Image: Rghrous

The post Greenpeace Pretends It’s Shell: Lying And Threatening For A Good Cause? appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’ve been watching the growing condemnation of BP from all sides of the political spectrum and it’s making me mad as hell!

Now, don’t get me wrong – BP is no friend of mine. Some days I can’t bear to read the news coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, let alone look at the heart-wrenching images of oil-coated wildlife. It’s about to get worse with Tropical Storm Bonnie likely to spread the oil and migratory birds starting to fly south for winter, many of them via the Gulf.

There is no doubt that BP’s behavior has been appalling. It was evidently lax in its safety standards, it repeatedly attempted to play down the amount of oil gushing from the well, some of the comments by senior executives have been downright thoughtless, and its eagerness to find new places to drill before it’s fixed this problem is nothing short of obscene.

But here’s the truth: BP is no better or worse in its environmental or ethical practices than any other big oil company. Right now, BP is being made a scape-goat and that suits all the other oil companies just fine.

Right-wing darling Sarah Palin of “drill baby, drill” fame has bashed BP as a “foreign company”. Meanwhile President Obama and other government officials insist on calling it British Petroleum, when the company’s official name is BP and has been for more than a decade. Last I checked Britain and the United States were allies and being based in Britain wasn’t a corporate crime. Anyway, BP is a multinational and 39 percent of it is owned by Americans, with six Americans on the board of directors. It’s a slick trick.

Then there’s the whole brouhaha over BP’s latest deal in Libya and whether BP is responsible for the release of the Lockerbie bomber. It’s a fact that the U.S. and Europe don’t see eye to eye over Libya – I’m not about to defend the regime, but public perception of Libya is a whole lot worse in the US than it is across the pond. I don’t think BP has a particularly moral stance vis-à-vis Libya, but then oil companies are not usually known for their moral stances, are they? The Libya affair pales into insignificance next to Shell’s crimes in the Niger Delta. Or should we call it Royal Dutch Shell? Nor is it as dangerous for the world as U.S.-based Exxon Mobil pumping millions of dollars into spurious climate denial research.

Now I don’t really care if people want to say bad things about BP. The public anger is more than justified. What I do care about is that demonizing BP makes it easier for the other oil giants to get away with their evil-doing. They don’t even need to throw their hands up and say “don’t blame us, it’s all BP’s fault,” because we’re doing it for them.

Already, the Obama Administration has been unable to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf, after an appeals court judge branded the decision “arbitrary.” Arbitrary? Really? Does the judge truly think the decision was random or capricious? I would call it “sensible” myself. But then Obama did rather back himself into a corner by announcing an expansion to offshore oil drilling right before the BP disaster struck.

As difficult as it may be, we need to remember that Big Oil is the true enemy, not just BP. It’s the oil industry at large that is responsible for the mess in the Niger Delta, the oil pipeline explosion in China earlier last week, and the leaky oil tanker that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in April.

Off-shore drilling is inherently risky. It’s a miracle of modern engineering and human ingenuity that we’re able to do it at all. And when things go wrong, we’re at the mercy of natural forces and there’s not a whole lot we can do. It’s lunacy to even consider doing it somewhere remote, cold and pristine like the Alaskan wilderness, even if the waters are shallower. I don’t care if it’s not BP at the rig – I don’t trust Shell any more.

Public support for offshore drilling has eroded since the BP oil disaster. No wonder, after seeing shocking evidence of just how badly things can go wrong. What’s astonishing is that it’s still supported by the majority of those polled. And there’s a good chance that allowing BP to take all the blame while other oil companies go scot-free, could mean this trend is reversed and public support for offshore drilling once again continues to rise.

We need to end off-shore drilling for all oil companies, not just point fingers at BP. And if we don’t want to be dependent on foreign oil, well then that seems a good reason to wean ourselves off it altogether. How about we build windmills, invest in electric cars, move to sustainable farming methods and ditch the plastic addiction? Can we do it? Yes, we can!

Image: Fibonacci Blue

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