We have now fully entered the contest phase of our spoof “We Agree” ad campaign — meaning now is your chance to stick it to Chevron and be entered to win some fabulous prizes all at the same time!
We’ll be rewarding the creator of the best punked Chevron print ad with a framed copy of their creation signed by the Yes Men, and the top three will all be mass-produced and distributed to activists across the globe. The winner in the video category will have their punked Chevron TV ad featured on the homepage of FunnyOrDie.com. Resources and submission form can be found on our “How you can punk Chevron” page.
Our voting system is in place and ready to start tabulating the most-beloved of the nearly 150 spoof ads that have been submitted so far. A few of my favorites adorn this very post, as you might have noticed, but these are a mere taste of the brilliance that awaits you in our gallery of spoof Chevron ads.
The best part is that our voting system uses Facebook’s “Like” tool, so you’ll not only be helping the creators of your favorite ads reach unimaginable heights of fame and glory, but you’ll also be spreading the word about our campaign to push back on Chevron’s outrageous attempts to gloss over its horrible environmental record.
Here are a few more of my favs to thoroughly whet your appetite:
A hand covered in crude contaminates from an open toxic pool in the the Ecuadorean Amazon rainforest near Lago Agrio. It was abandoned by Texaco (now Chevron) after oil drilling operations ended in 1990 and was never remediated. View more pics of Chevron’s toxic legacy in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
Chevron is leading the charge to recklessly exploit the world’s dwindling oil supplies in the post-Gulf oil spill world, but the company prefers to keep that fact quiet. Why? It’s one of those pesky facts that would spoil Chevron’s efforts to recast itself as a responsible, environmentally conscious oil company (despite the obvious fact that “environmentally conscious oil company” is an oxymoron that would require mass-cognitive dissonance to take hold in the public consciousness).
As part of its easy-to-spoof PR efforts, Chevron likes to highlight its projects that don’t actually involve enormous risks to sensitive ecosystems or contribute to global warming. One of those is the Chevron Lucerne Valley Solar Project, which will produce up to 45 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 13,500 – 33,750 homes. There’s definitely a certain poetic justice in Chevron’s dirty oil money being used to help bring more clean, green solar energy into the mix. But don’t go changing your opinion of the company just yet.
Chevron has no intention of changing its core business from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. That’s just window dressing, meant to mask the supremely dirty business going on inside the shop. In fact, between January 2009 and June 2010, Chevron spent over $28 million on lobbying and PAC contributions to federal candidates in order to protect its oil business, according to the Center for American Progress. The positive benefits of the Chevron Lucerne Valley Solar Project will easily be negated by Chevron continuing its dirty business as usual.
This isn’t the first time Chevron used a solar project as a means of greenwashing its otherwise dirty oil business. We posted about Chevron’s Project Brightfield earlier this year, a solar project the company will use to power its Kern River Heavy Oil Extraction Facility, once again defeating the purpose of green energy by charging full steam ahead with its dirty oil business. See a pattern here?
While all new solar capacity added to the national mix is undoubtedly a good thing, Chevron is plowing millions of dollars into efforts to protect its fossil fuels business, and the company’s own CEO has admitted that he hopes it will take generations to phase fossil fuels out altogether. Meanwhile, the company is aggressively pursuing unprecedented deepwater drilling operations that imperil precious ecosystems and wildlife.
Until Chevron stops working to keep us hooked on the dirty stuff for as long as possible in its blind quest for profits, it cannot credibly claim to be responsible or environmentally conscious. In other words, the company will continue to be ripe for the punking. Download our spoof Chevron ads and get to punking today by putting them up in your town!
Then, just as importantly, post your handiwork for the world to see. Post it on Change Chevron’s Facebook wall, twitpic it with the hashtag #weagree, upload to Flickr with the tag “weagree,” or email/YouSendIt to us at changechevron@ran.org and we’ll get it out there.
If your punking juices are really flowing, though, perhaps you want to design your own spoof poster. If so, you’re in luck! We’re having a bit of a contest, along with the Yes Men and Amazon Watch, to see who can come up with the best punked Chevron ad. Pick a photo, write your own slogan, and send it along. The Yes Men have all the details about how to enter the contest on their blog: “Help us keep Chevron’s campaign on the skids!”
Change Chevron activist Josh Kahn Russell holds a banner reading “Energy shouldn’t cost lives” while Chevron CEO John Watson flees up a staircase (Watson is on the top left).
Chevron CEO John Watson was invited to speak about “The Energy Economy” at the University of Chicago, his alma mater, this morning. The event provided audience members a chance to ask Watson questions, and as it just so happens, we have a few we’ve been meaning to ask him. So we sent some activists to the event.
Here’s how it went down, as told by Josh Kahn Russell, who led our team on the ground in Chicago and chased John Watson right out of his own event:
Today Chevron CEO John Watson spoke about the new era of energy at the University of Chicago’s business school, Chicago Booth. Some friends and I were concerned about Chevron’s attempts to evade both the law and the company’s moral responsibility to clean up the 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste it deliberately dumped in the Amazon, killing 1,400 people and poisoning thousands of others. So we paid him a visit.
Dressed business casual, we came in early and each took seats in different parts of the room. We listened to John Watson distance Chevron from the BP oil disaster. He reassured us all that Chevron is a thoughtful oil company. He went on to say that, above all other objectives, “No goal is more important than operating in a safe and responsible manner.”
On that note, Debra Michaud, an alumna of the University of Chicago, jumped up to express her dismay that a fellow graduate would be involved in poisoning the communities of 30,000 people. She asked Watson to speak to Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador.
Watson was quick to evade the question, claiming that the damage was not Chevron’s responsibility. He seemed relieved at the end, as if he was thinking, “Phew, glad that’s over.” But it wasn’t.
A couple minutes later I took the mic and pointed out the irony in Watson’s allegations of “deception and conspiracy” on the part of the Indigenous plaintiffs in the court case, as his comments themselves were the real deception. After pointing out his false claims of remediation, he asked that we all just wait and “see how it all plays out.” After waiting through 17 years of Chevron’s delay-deceive-and-distort tactics, I kept pushing and went on to challenge his arguments.
The students in the room were engaged. Our respectful tone and figures presented from scientific case studies played well with the Business School crowd. One person near me glanced to the podium and murmured to her neighbor, “Why isn’t he answering the question?” Watson’s eyes darted around nervously as he realized that his presentation was being hijacked.
Watson’s entourage from the Business school looked panicked. The moderator escorted me off the microphone. A few minutes later, Abigail Singer went up to the mic to speak, and the alarmed moderator declared the Q&A over, after seeing Abigail’s paper, fearing she too would ask about Ecuador. She was escorted to her seat, and the event was declared over.
Watson, who can be seen from behind just over the right side of the banner, is ushered away by security guards after the event is declared over by organizers.
It was clear that the one thing people would remember from the event was the controversy about Chevron’s role in poisoning Ecuadorean Amazon communities.
I went up to shake Watson’s hand, and was immediately blocked by security guards who ushered him away. We persistently followed him out, holding up a banner reading “Energy shouldn’t cost lives” all the way out of the building. Two people from the crowd cheered us on, saying “Way to stand up!” and “Keep going!” We did, until the moderator, furious, saw to it that we were escorted from the building.
John Watson needs to know that this issue won’t simply go away. It is going to stay in his face until he addresses it head on — even on his home turf and alma mater.
A pipe to drain crude contamination from open toxic pools into waterways near Lago Agrio, Ecuador. The toxic pools in the Ecuadorean Amazon rainforest were abandoned by Texaco (now Chevron) after oil drilling operations ended in 1990 and were never remediated. Photo by Caroline Bennett / Rainforest Action Network
It seems, at times, as if corporate executives operate with near-impunity, rarely being held accountable for polluting the planet in their quest for profits. But today, at least one exec is behind bars for contributing to the deaths of several people who were inundated by millions of gallons of toxic sludge that his company had failed to dispose of properly.
No, I’m not talking about Chevron CEO John Watson, though I certainly could (and probably should) be. Watson is still at large, enjoying his impunity while 30,000 Ecuadoreans continue to suffer the effects of the 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste his company refuses to clean up in the rainforests of Ecuador.
I’m actually talking about Zoltan Bakonyi, the managing director of MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, which was responsible for a flood of toxic sludge that killed eight people in Hungary last week.
The similarities between what happened in Hungary and the ongoing catastrophe in Ecuador are striking. Both are entirely man-made disasters that should never have happened, both are the result of corporate negligence, and both point out how environmentally unsustainable industries externalize the costs of their dirty businesses onto those communities unfortunate
enough to be adjacent to their polluting operations.
There are plenty of differences between the two cases, as well. For one thing, the toxic sludge from MAL Rt.’s aluminum plant only claimed eight lives and seems to be mostly contained at this point, whereas Chevron’s toxic oil waste has so far led to some 1,400 deaths, and could lead to 10,000 more by 2080 even if Chevron cleans up its mess immediately — which of course the company still refuses to do altogether.
The biggest difference is the fact that MAL Rt. managing director Zoltan Bakonyi has been detained by Hungarian authorities and is being held responsible, while John Watson is still free, still polluting, and still not taking responsibility for the damage his company’s pollution has caused.
Yesterday, as part of 350.org’s 10/10/10 Global Work Party, we got to work cleaning up Chevron stations in an attempt to urge the company to do the same in Ecuador. At the end of the day, we dropped off our cleaning supplies at Watson’s home in Lafayette, CA (as you can see in the photo above) in the hopes that he might put them to use some time soon. If you want to help, you can go to Chevron’s Facebook page and tell Watson and Chevron to get to work cleaning up Ecuador right now.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled “Shakedown in the Rain Forest.” The piece’s bias is blatant. You need a subscription to read the whole thing, but click here and check out the teaser. Clearly the WSJ is okay with simply regurgitating Chevron’s talking points.
This is the third time the WSJ has published a hit piece against the ongoing trial in Ecuador, as Jonathan Abady wrote in his letter to the editor. Abady is one of the lawyers who is attempting to hold Chevron accountable for the billions of gallons of toxic oil waste the company left behind in Ecuador on behalf of the 30,000 Ecuadorians who are still exposed to that toxic mess.
Abady’s letter sets the record straight. The WSJ doesn’t have a unique URL for it, though, so I wanted to reproduce it here in its entirety:
Chevron Should Pay for Its Pollution in Ecuador
Your editorial “Shakedown in the Rain Forest” (Sept. 23) on Chevron’s multibillion-dollar liability in Ecuador is the third time in recent years that you have attacked this important litigation. Contrary to what you claim, scientific evidence from experts demonstrates that Chevron has been contaminating an area in Ecuador the size of Rhode Island and taking advantage of indigenous groups for decades. Now Chevron is trying to sabotage a seven-year trial to evade accountability.
Rather than deal with the overwhelming evidence of its contamination, Chevron has launched a strategy of intimidation, distraction and delay. It has filed legal actions in 10 different U.S. federal courts against 23 people (including two lawyers) involved in the case, claiming ex parte contacts with a court expert constitute “fraud.” Chevron knows that such contacts were allowed by the court and were common practice by both parties. Chevron devised this narrative as part of a strategy to defeat enforcement of a potentially adverse judgment.
From 1964 to 1990, Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic “formation water” into streams and rivers which thousands of people in the rain forest relied on for their drinking water. This hot liquid had a saline content 10 times higher than ocean water and contained heavy metals and carcinogens. Laboratory samples submitted during the trial found that all of the company’s former well sites are extensively contaminated— often at levels hundreds of times higher than Ecuadorian and U.S. norms. The disaster is larger than the BP Gulf spill and will cause harm for decades if not cleaned up.
Several peer-reviewed health evaluations have found significantly elevated rates of cancer where Chevron operated. Daniel Rourke, formerly associated with the Rand Corp., has found that up to 10,000 Ecuadorians are at significant risk of contracting cancer in the coming decades. Ann Maest, a leading geochemist, found that many Chevron pit sites “still contain high levels of . . . petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants” and are in close proximity to wells used for drinking water.
The editorial also mischaracterizes Chevron’s so-called “remediation” in the mid-1990s. Chevron employed a laboratory method that produced artificially low measurements of toxins that were used to induce the government to grant a release. As a result, two Chevron employees and several former Ecuadorian officials face fraud charges in Ecuador. Chevron’s internal audits conducted in the early 1990s found that remediation was necessary “at all production facilities,” that toxic wastes were not treated and that oil spills “were not cleaned up.” Yet Chevron never conducted a single environmental or health-impact study during the 26 years it operated in Ecuador.
Chevron for years insisted on moving the litigation to Ecuador after it was filed in U.S. federal court in 1993. With the evidence against it mounting, Chevron needs to stop forum shopping and allow Ecuador’s courts to determine the extent of its responsibility for this disaster.
For a big company like Chevron, image is everything. And when a company as big as Chevron dumps over 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into a pristine rainforest, leading to the deaths of over 1,400 people and imperiling the health and wellbeing of tens of thousands more, that company’s reputation justifiably suffers.
The obvious way to repair your damaged image is to clean up your mess. We’re all expected to clean up after ourselves, and behemoth corporations are no exception. Chevron, however, seems never to have learned that life lesson. Instead of cleaning up after itself, the company just invests in PR to clean up its image.
For instance, the company is sponsoring numerous professional sports teams to try and associate the Chevron name with good ol’ American pursuits such as baseball and basketball instead of the toxic mess the company is more widely known for. Now that’s what I call a swing and a miss…
Our own hometown heroes the San Francisco Giants are one of the teams Chevron sponsors to protect the way its brand is perceived by everyday Americans even as it refuses to protect the lives of Ecuadorians. Chevron doesn’t just stop with the Giants, other teams whose good reputation the company is seeking to piggyback off of are the LA Dodgers and the New Orleans Hornets.
With the Giants making a bid for the playoffs (yeah we’re fans), and AT&T Park being right down the street, we decided to take ourselves out to the ballgame and send Chevron a message. It was a warm, sunny day out today, which was good news for everyone who came out to the daytime ball game. It also wasn’t terribly windy, which was good news for our banner.
Chevron has a huge advertisement with happy, smiling cars on the left field wall of AT&T Park. So we made ourselves a banner — hewing a bit closer to reality than Chevron’s ad, it read “Clean Up Ecuador Oil Spill” — and hung it on the left field wall, right next to Chevron’s ad.
The crowd loved it. Some folks even took up a chant of “Let them hang it” when security came and took our banner down.
Chevron can’t use PR as a pinch-hitter to get out of its mess. It’s time for Chevron to step up to the plate and clean up Ecuador.
As public outrage at the oil industry intensifies and questions on how to reign in the industry abound, an unprecedented global coalition of communities harmed by – and fighting back against – the industry present both a groundbreaking report, “The True Cost of Chevron: an Alternative 2009 Annual Report,” (entire report in PDF is HERE) and a landmark organizing model for taking on Big Oil.
Written by dozens of community leaders from sixteen countries and ten states across the United States where Chevron operates, the 60-page report encompasses the full range of Chevron’s activities, from coal to chemicals, offshore to onshore production, pipelines to refineries, natural gas to toxic waste, and lobbying and campaign contributions to greenwashing.
On May 25, forty report authors will appear in Houston at a press conference to address the true cost of Chevron’s operations in their communities. On May 26, they will deliver the report directly to Chevron inside the company’s Annual Shareholders Meeting.
The 2009 report has gained even greater import in the wake of the BP/Transocean explosion as it exposes Chevron’s role as the largest leaseholder in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and its role at the forefront of lobbying to expand offshore drilling across the U.S. and around the world. Chevron also contracts with Transocean for its massive offshore operations.
The true Cost of Chevron’s global operations and the resulting environmental and human rights abuses have never before been so collectively and thoroughly documented. As this unprecedented coalition continues to build pressure on Chevron it looks more likely than ever that we will Change Chevron, because energy shouldn’t cost lives.
Pictured Chevron Lawyers: 1) R. Hewitt Pate, 2) Scott A. Edelman, 3) Andrea E. Neuman, 4) Randy M. Mastro
Chevron has spent millions on lawyers in order to delay and deny justice to the 30,000 Ecuadorean people impacted by the oil giant’s massive oil contamination in the Amazon. Now Chevron is sending their legal hounds after a new target.
Chevron’s most recent legal attack? The First Amendment and acclaimed director of award-winning documentary film Crude, Joe Berlinger.
“This is a violation of the first amendment and journalistic privilege,” “Just because they want to look at my footage doesn’t mean they have the right to look at my footage.”
Berlinger also commented that he has been receiving support from 100’s of documentary filmmakers and journalists who fear the “chilling” impact on documentaries if sources’ protection could not be guaranteed.
Crude unflinchingly depicts the human suffering and environmental devastation caused by Chevron’s actions in Ecuador.
Over 325 of you hosted Crude screenings last month. Again and again, you told us that the movie inspired your community to take action to hold the oil giant accountable.
Joe Berlinger made a movie that Chevron didn’t want the world to see. And now Chevron is determined to punish him for it. Don’t let Chevron shred the First Amendment in order to evade justice in Ecuador.
Tell Chevron’s lawyers to stop harassing people who speak truthfully about its oil disaster in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest.
This past week, Emergildo Criollo, an Indigenous Ecuador leader of the Cofan people traveled 3,000 miles from his home in the Amazon rainforest to California. He came to California to share his story and ask for support in getting one of the world’s largest oil companies (Chevron) to clean up one of the largest environmental disasters in history.
For a whirlwind few days this week, Emergildo shared his story with Chevron employees, California Senators and Assemblymembers, journalists, activists, and Chevron’s new CEO John Watson’s Lafayette neighbors. (more…)
A judge in Ecuador just found Chevron guilty of polluting the Amazon rainforest, ordering the company to pay $8 billion to clean it up. Chevron is vowing to appeal.
Tell Chevron that enough is enough, Chevron should clean up Ecuador now.
How can you protect your investment in Chevron – while protecting the environment and human rights? Chevron’s actions expose the company (and its investors) to great financial and environmental risks.
We don’t pretend to know everything about working at Chevron. We do know many communities are suffering because of the way Chevron does business around the world. As an employee of Chevron you can literally save peoples’ lives by working inside the company to change it.
We want to hear from you. The call’s confidential and on us: 1-877-844-4114
The award winning documentary CRUDE, from filmmaker Joe Berlinger, tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet: the infamous $27 billion lawsuit pitting 30,000 rainforest dwellers in Ecuador against the U.S. oil giant Chevron.
