Each year, Earth Day brings a flurry of messages about sustainability and the importance of protecting our planet. Subject lines range from “Ten tips to reduce your carbon footprint” to “The fossil fuel industry cures cancer and rescues kittens stuck in trees.” The deluge can leave you dazed and maybe feeling a little guilty, as if it’s your fault that our forests are burning and our coral reefs are bleaching.
While some Earth Day messaging is genuine and useful, it’s important to recognize that many companies may be co-opting this opportunity to falsely promote their own agendas or to greenwash. Greenwashing is the practice of leading people to think that a company’s actions are more sustainable — more environmentally responsible — than they actually are.
Alongside greenwashing is the more subtle but equally troubling practice of convincing the public that it is individuals who are causing our global environmental woes rather than major industries putting profits over people and the planet. While, yes, there are significant choices you and I can make that matter, the most powerful actions are those we take together to end the fossil fuel industry, to become a powerful green force in politics and to hold those in power accountable for polluting and degrading our environment.
Oil and gas companies pair positive imagery with deceptive claims that gas is “cleaner,” while hiding the fact that the gas industry generates nearly a quarter of all climate pollution worldwide.
Identifying greenwashing and blame-deflection can be tricky because companies spend millions of dollars honing their messaging to make their operations and products appear sustainable to the public. Unsubstantiated claims abound. A company may call its product “all natural,” but such a statement is essentially meaningless. All things are “natural” in some way or another, and there’s no official arbiter of what does and does not warrant the label. Similarly, companies make irrelevant claims and ignore hidden tradeoffs when they practice greenwashing. This means that they tout the sustainable aspects of their product but hide the overall destructive impact. Oil and gas companies are experts at this. They pair positive imagery with deceptive claims that gas is “cleaner,” while hiding the fact that the gas industry generates nearly a quarter of all climate pollution worldwide.
The practices of greenwashing and promoting the narrative that we the people are the problem create a distraction from corporate accountability. They veil companies’ responsibility and divert attention from their pollution of our environment. Imagine if polluting corporations spent their budgets cleaning up their acts instead of placing the responsibility on the backs of everyday people.
Instead of blindly accepting greenwashing at face value, we need to act. To protect our environment, we need to organize. This can look like writing to our elected officials to advocate for strong environmental policy that will hamstring corporate pollution. It can also look like supporting local environmental organizations and building power in our own communities. We must mobilize for change. As the executive director of Clean Air Council, I have had the privilege of seeing what the future holds for us when we organize and fight back against corporate polluters: when we fight, we win.
