What we're doing wrong

“You could say that black is the new green”

5th April 2010

Amusing stunt from activists in London (the same behind the Oilympics) as part of the annual “Fossil Fools” pranks on British energy and oil companies. In line with British Petroleum’s new investments in the Sunrise project in the Alberta oil sands a London “PR agency” re-designed BP’s logo to drip with black oil – “shifting it away from sustainability and away from green” – and delivered 22,000 copies to the London head office.

Their point: to echo BP’s marketing campaign to rebrand itself ten years ago as “beyond petroleum” with a spiffy green logo.

Two important points:

One, BP is not technically moving “back to black”. They never stopped investing in traditional fossil fuel energy sources, or being “black” as campaigners put it.

Even in 2008 The Guardian labeled BP’s rebranding campaign as “greenwash“. Not only was the company returning to the oil sands (after pulling out in 1999), its “alternative energy” sources – which include natural gas – amounted to only seven per cent of the company’s investments. In June 2009 the company shut its Alternative Energy offices in London.

And now BP is increasing commitments in the oil sands. A shareholder resolution being tabled at BP’s AGM in two weeks will challenge these investments as financially unsound (as well as detrimental).

View of Suncor Millennium tarsands mining operations north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, July 2009. Photo Credit: Jiri Rezac, Courtesy of Greenpeace

However their rebranding campaign – estimated by Sourcewatch to have cost $200 million – has been very successful at persuading the public that BP is one of the greener energy companies.

Regardless of whether or not investments in wind and solar energy are more prudent than investments in the oil sands, the fact remains that BP never moved “beyond petroleum”. It is, simply put, an untruth.

The second key point to note is this is a case of British activists targeting a big British company. International protests against the seal hunt are widely perceived in Canada as little more than a preachy, sentimental objection to the harming of cute things with brown eyes. (Bottom trawling rarely receives such high-profile attention).

Working class hunters are small fish, so to speak, compared to one of the world’s richest energy companies.

• Tags:
• Activism
• Canada
• Energy
• Oil
• Tar Sands
• UK

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