Greenwash & Public Relations

The United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil concluded this past weekend with no new government pledges. On the other hand, multinationals scored a public relations victory by claiming that they will implement $50 billion of sustainable changes to help save the environment. Read More

Aubrey McClendon, the founder and CEO of Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy, who championed natural gas to the extent of paying environmental groups to oppose coal, is facing angry shareholders for his profligate ways. Chesapeake is one of the leading users of fracking - an environmentally questionable method of extracting natural gas. Read More

President Barack Obama personally helped Shell obtain authorization to drill for oil in Alaska, according to a new article in the New York Times. This comes a day afer activists launched two reports on the environemental impact of the drilling plans at the company's annual meeting in the Hague. Read More

Protestors have rallied this week outside annual meetings of Barclays bank in London, Citibank in Dallas, Credit Suisse in Zurich and Wells Fargo in San Francisco. A surprising number of shareholders have rallied to their side to vote down excessive executive compensation, in an unexpected victory for the Occupy movement. Read More

Should lobbyists for biotech and food companies make the rules on what kind of food you have in your kitchen? Meet Mella Frewen, Suzy Renckens and Harry Kuiper: Three examples of how the industries take advantage of the European Food Safety Agency(EFSA) failure to properly regulate conflicts of interest. Read More

Is Walmart going green? Mike Duke, the company's CEO, says in a new 126 page report that the company is becoming more sustainable and responsible while "building meaningful, long-term change." Activists disagree. Walmart's "environmental impact has only grown over the last seven years" they say in a counter-report. Read More

Two controversial multinational projects in Orissa, an eastern Indian state, face high level decisions in the next few weeks: a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri hills planned by Vedanta of the UK and an iron and steel refinery in Jagatsinghpur being developed by POSCO of South Korea. Read More

Puerto Rican citizen groups are protesting two renewable energy projects: a 30 megawatt solar energy project in Yabucoa by Western Wind Energy corporation from Vancouver and a 75 megawatt windmill array in Santa Isabel by Pattern Energy of San Francisco. The reason: these projects will threaten scarce farm land on the food dependent island. Read More

An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities - such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha - without due process. Read More

Bell Pottinger, the London-based public relations firm, has been working for Yemen's National Awareness Authority, which is run by the nephew of Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The organization has been accused of spreading propaganda on behalf of the government. Read More