Greenwash & Public Relations

Entergy Nuclear (part of the broader Entergy energy family) is spinning off its northeastern U.S.-based nuclear power plants into a related limited liability corporation, Enexus. Stakeholders in Vermont, home of the Yankee Nuclear power plant, are less than happy, with Entergy also reneging on prior commitments to cover eventual plant decommissioning costs, potentially stranding taxpayers with much of the bill. Read More

Touted as the first step in a major regional integration project, the 225-kilometer TransCaribe pipeline travels underground across Colombia's Guajira Peninsula to the gas refineries of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Protesting the mega project's impacts on the peninsula's indigenous communities, the Wayúu community of Mashiis-Manaa is leading the struggle against oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela. Read More

The old American Smelting and Refining Company (Asarco) copper smelter in El Paso, Texas, which has spewed out toxins for over a century, has been granted a new five-year permit. This is despite the fact that it violates international laws by polluting communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Read More

SHELL has abandoned its sponsorship of one of Britain's most prestigious wildlife photography exhibitions after protests by environmental groups. Read More

A new ski complex is being constructed in the environmentally sensitive Seven Lakes region of the snow-capped Rila mountains of south-western Bulgaria. Yet authorities have not been able to produce any planning permits nor have the investors produced any documentation of who is funding the construction. Read More

On the Indonesian island of Bali, thousands of senior government officials are negotiating a plan to slow global warming. The coal, gas and oil companies that are major producers of greenhouse gases are finally taking notice of these high-level political discussions, and many have mounted spirited public relations exercises to defend themselves. Read More

Early this August, Rosina Phillipe and Ruby Ancar drove from the government-issued trailers where they are still living two years after Katrina, to a boat landing at the end of a long dirt road. You have to go by boat to get to their tiny town of Grand Bayou, a "wetland community" in Plaquemines Parish, not far from where the Mississippi River empties out into the Gulf of Mexico.   Read More

Over a year after a torrent of liquid mud at an Indonesian oil exploration site inundated four villages, killing almost 100 people, the local community is still awaiting clean-up and proper compensation. This is despite the fact that the drilling company is owned by the family of a senior Indonesian minister. Read More

The U.N.'s Global Compact with international big business "at the moment is so voluntary that it really is a happy-go-lucky club," says Ramesh Singh, chief executive of ActionAid, a non-governmental organisation. The controversy has come to a boiling point because of the Global Compact Leaders' Summit being held in Geneva on Thursday and Friday, at which over 1,000 representatives of multinational companies are taking part, in addition to well-known civil society figures like Irene Khan, the secretary general of AI; Mary Robinson, president of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative; Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation; and Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International. Read More

Starbucks, the world's largest coffee shop chain, and the Ethiopian government are on the verge of unveiling a deal that the company hopes will end attacks on the company's carefully constructed ethical image. Read More