Those greenwashing ads are really starting to bug me. “It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We’ll use the next trillion in 30.” And you’re proud of this fact — proud of your role in bringing about the wholesale destruction of this planet’s climate?

Will you join us? No, I won’t. I’m trying to figure out a way to get people to use a lot less of your polluting product.

And now, “Chevron Announces New Global ‘Human Energy’ Advertising Campaign.” I suppose it’s better than the ad campaign for “inhuman energy” that they have been running for decades — though it strikes me as a lame ripoff of Dow’s “Human Element” campaign.

Chevron has taken the equivalent of three full-page ads in today’s Washington Post. One of the ads says, “We’ve increased the energy efficiency of our own operations by 27% since 1992.” To quote Clarence Thomas, “Whoop-Dee-Damn-Doo.”

I have worked on energy efficiency with a lot of companies over the years, and a below-2% per year gain in efficiency is nothing to brag about. Johnson & Johnson achieved a 3% annual efficiency gain over a 20 year period. And IBM achieved 4% per year.

The achievement is doubly meaningless because the vast majority of Chevron’s emissions come from the products they make — like gasoline — NOT the energy used to make the products. Indeed, the total greenhouse gas emissions from burning gasoline are typically 4 to 5 times that of making it. So who cares if Chevron’s “Human Energy” figured out how to produce its fuel more efficiently — it’s burning the next trillion barrels that is the killer, not producing it.

IT ISN’T EASY BEING GREEN
If you go to Chevron’s website as the ads suggest, you’ll see this press release on the front page: Chevron Announces $15 Billion Share Repurchase Program. Delightful. The company’s idea of being green is to launch a $15 million ad campaign touting its greenness while spending a stunning $15 billion buying back its own stock, rather than, say, investing the money in developing new sources of clean energy.

If you google “greenwashing Chevron” you’ll find a lot of great information about just how “green” and “socially responsible” this company is. My new favorite is oilwatchdog.org. That site has a great story on Chevron’s scorched-earth denial tactic against foreign environmental and human rights lawsuits, which begins: Read more

The nation’s top climate scientist is very prolific: He has co-authored another important article: “Global Warming: East-West Connections.” And I’m not just saying that because he cites one of my articles. In fact, we’ve been having an e-mail exchange, and he strongly disagrees with me that it is too late in a practical sense to save the Arctic (and hence the polar bear). He believes strong and smart action now could work — whereas I believe we need such action now to save the Greenland ice sheet, but doubt we can or will act in time to stop the total loss of Arctic summer ice.

I have previously written about the crucial climate variable — the equilibrium climate sensitivity (typically estimated at about 3°C for double CO2) — and how it only includes fast feedbacks, such as water vapor. Now Hansen has a draft article that looks at both current climate forcings and the paleoclimate record to conclude that ‘long-term’ sensitivity is a stunning 6°C for doubled CO2. Here is what Hansen says on the subject (though when you read it you may wonder why Hansen is more optimistic than I am, rather than less):

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The Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, gave a talk at CGI that would have made President Bush — or Frank Luntz — proud. Gristmill may have liked the rhetoric, but I (and a number of others I spoke to in NY) thought the comments were divorced from reality, pure spin.

You can judge for yourself from the entire transcript, which I will excerpt and comment on here because I think the speech is much more important and ominous than Bush’s recent climate speech. After all, Bush will be gone soon, but if this speech reflects China’s view of the climate problem, we are all in deep, deep trouble. Yang says

A review of history shows that climate change occurs in the course of development. It is both an environment issue and a development issue. But ultimately, it is a development issue.

Uhh, not really. He presumably meant to say “rising greenhouse gases (GHGs)” instead of “climate change.” And he presumably means to imply that you can’t have development without climate change/GHGs.

If climate change is “ultimately” a development issue — rather than an issue of how countries choose to develop as Bill Clinton said at CGI repeatedly — then China would appear to be absolving itself of any responsibility for the approaching environmental apocalypse. The doubletalk then flies fast and furious:

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