Last week I told you that RAN supporters shut down interactive features on General Motor’s new greenwashing website, gmnext.com.

We posted pictures of student activists at the Detroit auto show protesting automakers on the site and thousands of RAN supporters flooded GM with comments supporting the students and asking the giant automaker to take real steps, not just greenwashing PR, on climate and green jobs.

Within a matter of hours GM shut down comments on the site.

Then, Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications Technology for GM, came to our blog and wrote that they turned of the interactive features because “‘dialogue’ does not mean ‘open to demagogues.’” One of his employees–who it seems didn’t realize that her IP address identified her as part of the GM PR machine–going by the name “betty” also commented on our blog and started a lively conversation.

I know, hilarious.

Anyhow, Mr Barger also promised that they “are planning to have an open forum — possibly even a series of them – in the coming weeks where we will address green jobs, the quest for 100 mpg cars and other pressing environmental issues.”

Well, to give him credit, GM has announced the first of those forums.

Mr. Barger left a note on our blog and everyone who left a comment on the site got an email today announcing that:

“GM executive Brent Dewar will be on hand to answer your questions about GM’s environmental policies and initiatives. The chat will take place Wednesday, February 6 from noon to 1 p.m. EST. To access the chat, go to http://www.gmnext.com/LiveChat.aspx and register with your e-mail address. On the day of the chat, click the “Enter Chat” button and join the conversation.”

Great! Let’s ask some questions! I’ll be in the chat and I hope to see lots of RAN supporters there asking GM why they are doing so little about global warming, green jobs and social justice.

Don’t expect a lot of candor or honesty, we are, afterall, dealing with the PR apparatus of one of the biggest corporations in the world. Instead, I expect more of the same–greenwashing slogans and little real action.

I’m in Honolulu this week, joining local organizers and activists outside the Major Economies Meeting (MEM) at the East-West Center on UH-Manoa’s campus. The 16 biggest carbon-emitting nations are here at President Bush’s request to discuss “Energy Security and Climate Change,” but the meetings are closed to the public, and hopes are not high that anything substantial will come out of these talks. As a matter of fact, this Major Economies Meeting is seen by many as the Bush administration’s diversion from any substantive agreements going forward in Bali last month.

Yesterday we were out in force in the pouring rain in front of the governor’s mansion in Honolulu, where she was holding a reception for the delegates of the MEM. The local message is that we need serious commitments to secure our climate, and no more false solutions like importing palm oil from South East Asia to fuel Hawaii’s electrical generation, which is exactly what the Hawaiian Electric Company here is proposing. They want to build two of the world’s largest biodiesel refineries on O’ahu and Maui sourcing palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia - generously supplied by our Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign’s corporate target, Cargill, and they are calling this a green energy solution. What they don’t know is that the public is savvy to the devastating impacts of palm oil on the climate and the world’s people. Read the Hawaii Palm Oil Release .

The words “People over Profit – No Palm Oil” were ringing in the delegates ears last night as they tried to sip their mai tais at the governor’s mansion. We met the delegates and the international press again this morning outside of their meeting at the East-West Center to make sure they know the whole world is watching.

This afternoon we’ll be drawing a blue chalk line in the streets of Manoa to demonstrate where the one meter rise in sea level would wipe out entire sections of Honolulu, including all of Waikiki. For people living on the front lines of climate crisis, there’s no time for useless talks with no real action.

Last week RAN supports shut down one of the biggest and most ambitious online corporate greenwashing campaigns.

To mark its 100th anniversary two weeks ago, General Motors launched a new interactive website, gmnext, where the public was encouraged to submit photos, videos and comments in order to help the company answer questions like “how should GM best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?”

Yeah, it’s typical corporate greenwashing, but with a new “web 2.0″ spin where the company pretends to care what the public thinks.

So last week we posted photos on the site of student activists in Michigan protesting at the Detroit auto show. Then we asked our supporters to go comment on the site and tell GM what the public really thinks about how the automakers should address global warming and energy issues.

GM’s response? They turned off public comments.

So much for the fancy interactive that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said “encourages open and honest interaction.”

I guess it wasn’t really public discussion the company wanted. Big surprise.

One of GM’s PR flacks claimed that they were shutting off the interactive features because “we have no intention of letting a vocal set of activists highjack the conversation with invective and dogmatic misinformation.”

What were these comments filled with “invective and dogmatic misinformation” actually like?

“GM needs to stop thinking of “green” as an advertising term and nothing more. Really committing to better gas mileage and alternative fuels–NOT including ethanol, which is not environmentally sound–will be better publicity for you than mere sloganeering.”

“Since the most famous quote from Ioccoca, “How much clean air do we really need?”, the auto industry has let the public down. Most citizens believe that the auto industry has it’s hands in the oil pockets as well. Whether that is true or not, we will never know. What we do know is that the “green” options are simply not good enough. We don’t wish to see the auto industry pat themselves on the back for what we perceive as a poor job. It is just not good enough yet. This group pushes so that the industry doesn’t stop working on it. No pats are deserved yet. Cutting emissions is great, but we want better. So less patting on the back and more work is what they want.. I have to fully agree. What the production of these batteries do to the enviroment is disgusting. We have a long way to go. No kudo’s until this job is done and done responsibly. Ethanol is not a solution either. It takes just as much energy to produce as oil.. so where is the benefit, and now people are starving due to the lack of corn. Iceland uses meat that is unconsumable. Why are we not? A better job has been done by other countries.. step up to the world plate please and stop patting..”

Sounds less like dogma than clear well-reasoned comments by people who care.

Of course, GM is shutting down the interactive features of their new marketing campaign because the comments they got aren’t in line with their branding, not because they are inaccurate, mean-spirited, or dogmatic.

My take: I think that as more and more companies move towards trying to use fake “web 2.0″ “interactive” features to promote their greenwashing, we’re going to keep on them and show through our actions that the public isn’t going to let them get away with anything short of real action. Greenwashing on the web isn’t going to be easy for them.

So I say thank you to everyone who helped shut down one of the biggest greenwashing campaigns by one of the most powerful corporations on earth.

Wow… if you think that the Malaysian Palm Oil Council’s advertisement (see Stan’s Post) is atrocious, check out the intro video at Malaysian Palm Oil Board’s website.

Amazing, huh? The Malaysian Palm Oil Board’s mission is to “enhance the well-being of the Malaysian oil palm industry through research, development and excellent services”… which is exactly what they do… even if it means ignoring all facts.

According to the video, a monocrop palm oil plantation is “essentially a planted forest”. Well, to me, a forest implies more than one kind of tree, the ability to support a variety of wildlife, and net carbon storage– all of which a palm oil plantation fails to do.

The best part of the video, I’d say, is where they list the environmental attributes of the palm oil industry. Did they mention the clearing of the rainforest, the burning of that forest to clear the land, the resulting erosion and water pollution? Nope. Actually, they claim that palm oil plantations do the opposite.

The question then stands: Have these people ever visited a palm oil plantation, or heck, even spoken to a person who has ever visited a palm oil plantation?

Cause I’ve visited plenty, and I can tell them, they are all sorts of wrong.

Its scary that these that the Malaysian Oil Palm Council and Oil Palm Board can put together these advertisements and share them with the world. Its scary to think that people might actually believe them. More incentive to spread the word about palm oil, and for right now, take advantage of the only thing that these advertisements are good for, and have a good laugh.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council is promoting their product as the green alternative to oil (of the non-Malaysian Palm variety). They’re running a series of ads each ending in “Sustainably produced since 1917″. I’m all for turning people away from the sticky black goo, but mowing down pristine rainforests to do so is not what I call sustainable. More »

Every now and then the Wall Street Journal provides some proverbial food for thought that exceeds its mandate of invisible hand ideology.

In a recent piece – Oils Hits $100, Jolting Markets, the authors provide some insight into the current power dynamics of big oil and international markets.

Beyond highlighting downstream impacts to big oil’s commercial customer base and the economies of various nation states, the article mentions how peaking oil prices have been driving a massive investment in unconventional and dirty oil sources such as the Alberta tar sands. For those unaware of this juggernaut, the tar sands are the number one source of US oil imports today, the largest untapped oil reserves in the world, as well as the most greenhouse gas intensive source of crude oil currently in use.

Stephen Harper’s boys had good reason to stand firmly behind their liege lords at the Bali climate change negotiations. With every major western oil and gas company now engaged in the Alberta oil rush, over 100 billion USD is expected to be invested in tar sands oil extraction over the next couple of decades.

What the article fails to mention however, is the very direct and negative impact this trend is having on the Canadian economy and peoples as well as many downstream communities in the US .

Whether it’s indigenous communities in Alberta dealing with the destruction of their traditional lands and health - at the source of extraction, Canadian workers dealing with the economic fallout of “Dutch disease” syndrome, or US communities impacted by new pipelines and increased refinery emissions, peaking oil prices appear to leave no room for the development of clean energy markets.

Contrary to the WSJ authors’ notion of big oil’s dwindling political influence and market share, the oiligopoly’s determination and ability to stand in the way of renewable energy innovation and climate change mitigation is underscored by their relentless pursuit of the last drops of dirty crude.

The big question for us wide-eyed activists at the start of 2008 remains: can we stop them in time?

Here’s an old GE Video I recently stumbled upon.

It’s a 2005 recipe to sell “clean coal” from General Electric’s “Eco-magination.”

1. Dress some super-models up like coal miners

2. Oil their bodies up and set them loose in an underground mine

3. Co-opt a traditional anti-corporate anti-mining folksong, Sixteen Tons.

4. Throw in some lines like: “Now, thanks to emissions-reducing technologies from GE Energy, harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful, every day.”

And viola, you get this General Electric “clean coal” video:

Eco-magination, my ass!

I like Google. No, wait… I love Google.

The folks in Mountain View have changed my life for the better, several times. Google Search did it the first time, then Google Image Search, then Google News, Google Maps… Really, almost every project they come up with has improved the quality of my life, not just give me something fancy to play with.

I have a number of friends that work at Google. All great people, really smart and with their heart in the right place. They know the power that Google wields and endeavor to wield it in a way that’s good for the planet and her people. Yeah, China’s tricky but they’re working to figure it out. Not only do I love Google, I trust Google.

But even after all that, yesterday’s announcement that Google will make renewable energy cheaper than coal makes me really sad.

More »

Today, the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Al Gore (and the IPCC). No one deserves it more than he does. We’re very happy for him. And we think he should go to jail.

Specifically, he should go to jail on RAN’s November 16-17 Day of Action Against Coal Finance. As reported in Nicholas Kristof’s NYT column on August 16, Al is on record as saying:

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers … and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”

Well, Al, it’s because by the time they’ve rolled out the bulldozers, it’s already too late. That’s why Rainforest Action Network, Coal River Mountain Watch, Appalachian Voices and thousands of supporters are mobilizing to stop Bank of America and Citi from financing coal extraction and the construction of those coal-fired power plants. We at RAN would really like you to come along.

If you, too, think Al should be arrested, go ahead and sign our petition asking him to be arrested with us. I will personally guarantee you that if Al is going in the slammer, I’m coming with him. How about you?

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of representing RAN at the Animal Rights 2007 conference in Los Angeles. RAN was the only non-AR environmental organization represented at the conference, which is a real shame, because there’s so much overlap between our movements in terms of our goals, strategies, and the issues we deal with. More »