Greenwashing!
Now that I have your attention...
To paraphrase an old advertising adage, half of what I do is greenwashing; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
At this point, you’re probably tempted to cringe, stop reading, or both. After all, why would you read a blog about climate communications from someone who just admitted to greenwashing?
But admit it: everyone greenwashes. Anytime anyone opens their mouth or puts pen to paper, if climate change is the subject, a patina of green is the inevitable result. This is because we live in a world of trade-offs, of complexity, of imperfection. We all carry a climate footprint, large, small, or somewhere in-between. No one is absolved of sin in the eyes of a warming planet.
This is not to say we shouldn’t do everything we can to reach our climate goals, or that we should downplay their urgency. As a climate practitioner, a world of 100% renewable energy, electrified transportation, and sustainable agriculture is a veritable Xanadu. No one who understands what’s truly going on with our climate would dispute that the fossil fuel age will, sooner or later, have to end.
But drawing bright lines in the sand may do little more than cause blindness. I was saddened, though not surprised, by the shellacking that Green party candidates suffered in recent EU elections. Climate advocates are clearly failing to persuade the general public, even in a place as progressive as Europe. The stereotypical image of the climate movement appears to be bifurcated along two lines:
Wealthy, white establishment figures sneering down on “average folks” from an ivory tower.
Protesters doing inane things like spray-painting Stonehenge.
I could hardly think of a better recipe for backlash (fair or not) than the above two ingredients. Defacing art and heritage draws may draw attention—the stated goal of Just Stop Oil, the organization that arranged the Stonehenge stunt—but it’s absolutely the wrong kind of attention. This lesson came to light on a recent episode of the Energy Transition Show, which looked at how climate messaging resonates with everyday audiences. One major takeaway? Restrictions, bans, lecturing, and hectoring only lead to backlash.
Since when is orange-washing a remedy for greenwashing?
The Stonehenge defacers would likely argue that framing everything as an opportunity, a glide-path into abundance, is simply deluded and denies the magnitude of the challenge, especially when it allows polluters to greenwash their way into this sunshine-and-roses narrative. The classic case is a fossil fuel company investing in carbon capture. In this debate, the arguments usually fall along the following lines:
It’s pure greenwashing: Carbon capture is not a climate solution and never will be. The fossil fuel company is using the investment as a fig leaf to continue propping up the hydrocarbon economy, when it should be going full-Ørsted and shifting its business model toward renewable energy.
It’s good-intentioned engagement: The carbon-based energy system will not disappear overnight, and carbon capture ensures that the old economy can operate in a cleaner way while the new economy is coming online.
It’s something in-between: Fossil fuel companies need to up their ambition, and carbon capture still has a lot of problems, but the alternative is worse—every puff of CO2 that stays out of the atmosphere is a tiny victory.
Perhaps an anecdote will be illustrative here. One of my biggest clients is Methane Guiding Principles (MGP). MGP is funded in large part by membership fees from large oil and gas companies. I’m well aware of the strain of argument within the climate movement that eschews accepting money from oil and gas companies, or from organizations even peripherally connected to the sector. But MGP is not some green-tinged smokescreen. It is filled with people who are genuinely committed to reducing methane from the oil and gas supply chain, one of the most cost-effective ways to quickly curb global temperature rises.
Beyond the “accepting money from fossil fuel companies” argument, a yet more cynical take holds that cutting methane from oil and gas gives this sector continued social license to operate. Any climate-positive advance in how they operate simply greenwashes over the fact of their very existence; they just need to be shut down entirely. To this, I say:
Taking this argument to its logical extreme, when everything is greenwashing, no one talks about sustainability at all, lest they face the proverbial Spanish Inquisition. This could very well lead to the opposite problem: greenhushing. This happens when companies downplay or cover up sustainability activities. Consequences include:
Inability for stakeholders to make informed decisions
Loss of trust due to lack of transparency
Demoralization of sustainability teams—the sense that recognition for actions taken will be limited or nonexistent, so why bother?
(Thanks to a recent Quantis report for inspiration for the first two bullets.) With this, I turn to another striking example, one that illustrates just how complicated this problem is and all the unintended consequences that can result from turning the anti-greenwashing screws too tightly. Canada recently passed a law restricting greenwashing. Companies that were once touting their green credentials rushed to hush instead. In a recent New York Times story, an environmentalist in support of the law put it bluntly: “It is very simple: If you’re going to be making environmental claims, you need to be able to demonstrate that they’re true.”
Fair enough. But what does it really mean to “demonstrate that they’re true”? Who ultimately decides what makes an environmental claim true? Once upon a time, the climate movement looked to authoritative arbiters like the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to set the rules of the road. But even SBTi has been taken down a notch by activists after a recent about-face on offsets. A disgruntled skeptic could easily look at the net-zero proclamation of a company like Netflix—which leans heavily on offsets to make its claim—and decide that half of what it’s saying is pure greenwashing.
But what half, exactly?
More on this to come in a future post…