According to Green Car Reports, Royal Dutch Shell is safeguarding future profits by acquiring NewMotion, a Dutch electric-car charging station firm with more than 30,000 electric-car charging stations across Europe. The company specializes in converting normal parking spaces into charging points for electric cars.
In the past year, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and France have all laid out plans to phase out the internal-combustion engine by no later than 2040. The regulations hit home for European oil producers Shell and BP more than Exxon or Chevron, both U.S.-based companies.
Shell is predicting global oil demand could peak by 2020. This is consistent with most studies predicting it will peak sometime within the next 5-15 years.
Culture Jamming (def) – a tactic used by anticorporate social movements to expose corporate “methods of domination” by disrupting or subverting corporate media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions.
The Yes Men are Revolting is the third full length documentary by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (aka Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos). The Yes Men’s goal is to use satire and humor to underscore the total insanity of our present corporate-run society. For the first time, the 2014 film includes biographical material and frank discussion of Andy and Mike’s episodic despair over the difficulty of producing real change.
Most of their work relies on their elaborate impersonations of corporate oligarchs and government bureaucrats to portray the world as they believe it should be. The official and media reactions to the improbable causes their alter egos espouse are eye wateringly funny.
Among my favorites:
The one in which they impersonate a Chamber of Commerce (official oil industry lobby) at the National Press Club calling for a carbon tax.
Their campaign to liberate Barbie and Ken from oppressive gender stereotypes.
The time they impersonate Shell Oil officials and throw a lavish party to celebrate the immense profit potential of melting Arctic Sea ice.
The time they pose as Gazprom officials presenting a kidnapped polar bear to the Amsterdam zoo.* This was after the US government revoked Shell’s Arctic drilling permit and the company partnered with Gazprom intending to drill the Russian side of the Arctic Circle.
The Brokers and Police March they organized during Occupy Wall Street.
Their promotion of a special NYPD program in which black males receive a free McDonald’s Happy Meal after their third stop and frisk.
The documentary climaxes with their best and most outrageous prank. First they they reserve a spot on behalf of General Colin Powell’s office at a Homeland Security conference. Then they impersonate a Department of Energy spokesperson and propose to replace all fossil fuels with solar panels and wind turbines to be owned and operated by Native American reservations. The segment culminates with all the defense contractors circling the room in a traditional indigenous dance.
* Amsterdam is home to the corporate offices of Royal Dutch Shell.
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I must admit to being totally addicted to the Yes Men. Here are their earlier films if you haven’t seen them:
The following is a presentation by climate activist Bill McKibben about the global Break Free from Fossil Fuels movement. This is a global civil disobedience campaign directed at fossil fuel companies rather than government policy. Its aim is to pressure these companies to leave untapped coal, oil and gas reserves in the ground.
It’s a bad news/good news presentation. First McKibben gives us the bad news: despite all the hype, the outcome of the Paris climate change conference in 2015 was pure rhetoric. The treaty signed at the conference won’t lower carbon emissions sufficiently to prevent catastrophic climate change. See Global Civil Disobedience
However there is good news on two fronts: the speed at which many countries are transitioning to renewable energy and the remarkable success of the global Break Free campaign.
Among the successful actions McKibben describes: the 2015 Keystone civil disobedience at the White House that persuaded Obama to cancel the pipeline; the Australian campaign that blocked construction of the largest coal mine in the world; the Washington State campaign blocking construction of coal terminals in Longview and Cherry Point; the Seattle blockade of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig; and the global anti-fracking movement, which has led to a ban on fracking in New York, Quebec, Wales, Scotland and France.
The best part of the presentation concerns the recent Columbia School of Journalism expose revealing Exxon knew about climate change in 1977 and funded a massive public relations scam to convince the public it was a hoax. According to McKibben, the attorney generals of New York, California, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands are investigating Exxon for fraud over their role in the climate denial movement.
Disobedience is about the global movement (on six continents) to shut down the fossil fuel industry. The primary aim of the Break Free from Fossil Fuels movement is to end fossil fuel mining and shut down gas-fired power plants.
A major premise of the documentary is that the COP21 climate conference in December 2015 was a public relations stunt. Climate activists believe it accomplished virtually nothing towards preventing catastrophic climate change for two main reasons: 1) the national emissions targets agreed are purely voluntary and unenforceable and 2) despite agreeing to limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees C, the treaty’s carbon budget will result in 3.5 degrees warming.
President Lyndon Johnson was the first to warn the world, in 1965, of the link between heavy fossil fuel combustion, CO2 emissions and global warming. Ten years later, Exxon began planning for global warming by making their drilling rigs “climate proof.” In 1989, they switched tactics by co-founding the Climate Coalition and hiring a public relations firm (the same one that promoted the health benefits of smoking) to launch the climate denial movement.
Filmmakers include coverage from mass civil disobedience actions to shut down coal fired power plants in the Philippines and Turkey, tar sands production and export in Alberta and British Columbia and an open pit coal mine in Germany. Given that Germany is one of the world leaders in renewable energy production,* I was extremely surprised to learn they burn more lignite* *coal than any other country, including China and India.
The film also features footage from the Seattle blockade of a Shell Arctic oil exploration rig – which helped persuade Shell to abandon their plans to drill the Arctic for oil.
For the most part, these actions succeed by increasing the cost of doing business – especially now when low oil and gas prices are already denting profits.
*On May 16 Germany got nearly all its power from renewable energy.
**Lignite is often referred to as brown or “dirty” coal due to the high level of particulate and heavy metal pollution it produces.
On July 9, 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists released The Climate Deception Dossiers – collections of internal company and trade association documents revealing a three decade campaign by the world’s largest fossil fuel companies about the realities and risks of climate change. Some documents have been leaked to the public by industry whistleblowers. Others have come to light through lawsuits or Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.
Each dossier provides an illuminating inside look at this coordinated campaign of deception, an effort underwritten by ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, Peabody Energy, and other members of the fossil fuel industry.
Tactics employed by these companies include a million dollar contract supporting the work of climate contrarian aerospace engineer Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon:
The fossil fuel industry also forged documents and letters and formed fake “astroturf” groups that purported to act on behalf of taxpayers rather than oil companies:
As well as launching a sophisticated, multimillion dollar public relations campaign:
An Exxon whistleblower reveals his company first got interested in the greenhouse effect and global warming when it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia. An Exxon memo raises concern about it becoming the “largest point source of CO2 in the world.”
In 1995, the same whistleblower (working for Mobil) co-authored a memo to to the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a fossil fuel lobbying group. The memo, was distributed to other member companies and warned unequivocally that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming – that the relevant science “is well established and cannot be denied.”
Many of the same companies – including BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Mobil, Phillips, and Shell – were members of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in 1998 when the trade group drafted a plan to secretly support “independent” researchers to publicly dispute established climate science:
The Most Revolutionary Act 