November 21, 2000

Shell wins greenwashing award

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Recent Must Reads

11/18 – Happy birthday, Seattle

11/17 – Assault weapons sanctuary

11/16 – Eco-refugees

11/15 – Activism on the menu

Royal Dutch Shell’s ongoing public relations campaign to rehabilitate its environmental image won the oil company the not-exactly-flattering Greenwash Award from CORPORATE WATCH. The award comes as a climate change conference in Shell’s home country of the Netherlands continues to churn out bad news about the industry’s impact on global warming.

The business watchdog group deconstructs one of Shell’s recent ads — similar to the ones the company is running on the MoJo Wire — dealing with environmental issues, and provides a reality check on the kinder, greener image Shell is trying to project. Turns out, as most environmentalists have suspected, that the PR campaign is mostly a shiny veneer covering some ugly ongoing realities about Shell. Consider this humbling factoid: The CO2 emissions from the oil Shell produces are greater than those coming from all of Central America.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate