Antonia Juhasz

On one side of a split screen an earnest African-American eighth-grader looks into the camera proudly and demonstrates how a robotic arm he made can raise a cup. “Isn’t that cool?” he says with a wide smile. On the other side a Chevron geologist says, “A high school science teacher made me what I am today. Now I get to help science teachers. Isn’t that cool?”

The TV ad is part of a Chevron campaign called We Agree. The geologist says that during the last three years his company has “put over $100 million into American education. That’s thousands of kids learning to love science.” The ad is crafted with the same kind of dedication Don Draper uses in his Mad Men marketing to push booze and cigarettes.

The Chevron TV ad is greenwashing. And it’s just one spot in a series that features a sympathy-inducing member of the public followed by a Chevron employee pushing a greenwashing finish. Oil shale gas needs to be good for everyone states one spot. I agree, says a company representative. The campaign even includes an ad that touts Chevron’s work in Nigeria sending people into local communities to teach residents about HIV/AIDS.

Chevron isn’t the only oil and gas company using a modern melding of advertisement and public service spots to demonstrate inherent goodness. ExxonMobil runs messages with sweet graphics and a soothing voice-over encouraging people to join the company and “inspire teachers.” Oil and gas companies are spending millions to convince people there’s some goodness in what many environmentalists and sustainability proponents see as the heart of darkness.

Why spend all that money on marketing campaigns of persuasion? According to oil industry expert and activist Antonia Juhasz, author of Black Tide, The Tyranny of Oiland The Bush Agenda, “The advertising serves two functions.” Juhasz has appeared on many TV and radio shows and holds various positions at a number of nongovernmental organizations; she also worked as a legislative assistant to representatives John Conyers, D-Mich., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md. She says the We Agree campaign taps into a kind of perverse wish fulfillment worthy of the most masterful advertising executives selling an inherently unpleasant product.

“Nobody likes the oil industry,” Juhasz says. “Nobody thinks they’re a nice industry. But [people] are willing to believe that it’s doing the best that it can and is helping” to deal with problems people around the world face. “I don’t think the ads convince people that the oil industry is a clean, safe, humane industry.” But the ads “convince people that they can sort of turn away and worry about other issues. The industry convinces people that it’s as good as it’s going to get. The oil industry hopes we will ignore it and let it go about its business.”

The more the industry can portray itself as caring, says Juhasz, the more it can convince people that although the oil and gas industry might not be humanitarian, it isn’t “a pillager.” The sophistication in the copywriting, casting, lighting, photography and all the other pieces of the advertising toolbox on display in the We Agree campaign is an overwhelmingly persuasive force. Don Draper knows the power of persuasion. So do Chevron and British Petroleum and the other multinational oil companies.

Juhasz sees another tactic that makes a regular appearance on TV screens these days. Ad campaigns to convince people about the inherent goodness of hydraulic fracturing and so-called clean coal require an alternate marketing route to convince and persuade. “When [the industry] talks about issues the American public doesn’t have a lot of information about, like fracking and clean coal,” it uses tactics similar to how it framed the debate over climate change.

“The industry sought not to convince us that there wasn’t a problem, but rather that there was a debate among experts.” The goal in the climate change marketing scheme, says Juhasz, was to convince the public that ordinary people couldn’t possibly understand the complexities of climate change if scientists were still debating the issue. “If they show us some commercials that fracking and coal are clean and safe, and they provide jobs, then a public that has a lot of other things to worry about will just agree that the experts will have to figure things out, and when they do, then we will form our opinion.” The strategy is the same as the We Agree campaign: “to get us to ignore them and let them go about their business.”

The power of persuasion demonstrated in the We Agree campaign is echoed in the British Petroleum ads telling people how wonderfully the Gulf has recovered after the worst maritime environmental disaster—caused by deep-well drilling—in the country’s history. The BP spots also use warm and cuddly people to convince. Company spokespeople make a point of saying how BP is investing in local communities. The ads don’t mention that the investment is part of a legal requirement BP must fulfill.

The BP strategy aims to blunt and deflect what should be a serious move to hold the oil company accountable, says Juhasz. “It’s misrepresenting the conditions of the Gulf, and it’s misrepresenting them so the American public won’t [demand] the Department of Justice hold [BP] to the full account of the law.” The ads try to ensure that “we won’t take the very specific actions that we can take.” Juhasz says people have the power to call on the Justice Department and elected officials and ask that they do what should be done under law: make BP deliver full restitution and full restoration and address full economic harm. The industry “would very much like us not to do that.”

The warm and fuzzy ads have a hard-edge intent that skirts rules regulating greenwashing. Although the federal government as well as state governments can have laws that prohibit out-and-out lies in company commercials touting green attributes, there’s a paucity of action taken against violators. And the oil companies know how far they can go in their feel-good campaigns.

“Chevron actually does make token investments in Angola,” for instance, says Juhasz, “and they make an advertisement saying they do. But if I made an advertisement showing the oil spills, the support from a brutal regime, worker injustices, that also would be a true commercial.” The BP situation in the Gulf is similar. “BP is making investments in the Gulf.” But, says Juhasz, the company is walking a fine line when it says in its commercials that everything is clean and safe. “That is absolutely not true. But you can find a beach on any given day that is clean; you also can find a beach on any given day that has oil on it.”

The power of the oil industry greenwashing campaigns is being replicated on a grand scale in ad campaigns designed to convince the public that hydraulic fracturing is a clean and safe extraction method. But scientific evidence has mounted that it’s not clean and safe. The industry certainly has misgivings about letting the public know what materials it uses to fracture rock and how it disposes of the materials after using them. Much of the debate over fracking has focused on gas recovery in New York and other states. North Carolina recently approved fracking regulations and opened the door to extraction.

Most Californians are unaware that companies have been fracking in the state for a long time. According to a report compiled by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), at least six counties in the state—Kern, Los Angeles, Monterey, Sacramento, Santa Barbara and Ventura—have been the site of fracking operations for decades. In California, the extraction method brings up oil rather than gas, but the same concerns exist. EWG, a nongovernmental nonprofit organization, reported that the number of fracked wells is uncertain, but the number likely is in the thousands. The exact number and the true nature of the materials used in the process are unclear because the oil industry wants it that way. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that chemicals used in fracking in Wyoming had infiltrated the groundwater. And according to numerous studies, chemicals used in fracking operations are carcinogenic and otherwise toxic.

The industry prevented a bill in California aimed at tightening fracking regulations in the state from proceeding. But just last month legislators in Sacramento took action that might eventually lead to tougher fracking standards here. The Assembly Subcommittee on Resources and Transportation approved the governor’s request to add 18 positions in the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. The governor’s goal is to expedite drilling permits, many of which are now stuck in a backlog. Legislators said OK, but they called for adding new guidelines for fracking. The language of the deal gives regulators until 2014 to fashion new regulations.

Fracking opponents have raised concern that in the end the oil industry will succeed in protecting information regarding the exact nature of materials and chemicals it uses to frack wells. The industry has claimed that information is proprietary, frustrating efforts to collect data.

“The oil industry says there’s still debate” about possible harmful effects of fracking, says Juhasz. “That’s not my reading. They have stressed that even if it has been unsafe in the past, they now know how to do it better. But all the evidence that I have read shows the contrary. They are well aware of the dangers associated with fracking. They think the benefits outweigh the costs.”

The oil and gas industry views the money spent on ads pushing greenwashing as a wise investment that will help them maintain business as usual. That business receives massive public subsidies every year in the United States and around the world. And that in a time of record profits. An organization called the Oil Change International estimates that subsidies in this country range between $10 billion and $52 billion annually. The high estimate takes into account the cost of protecting foreign investment and engaging in a Mideast war. The inability to excise the oil subsidies from the federal budget is a testament to the political power the industry has bought, especially in the Republican Party through campaign contributions. It’s also a testament to the effectiveness of greenwash marketing that lulls the public into accepting an unsustainable oil-based status quo.

But Juhasz sees the possibility of change. Here and around the world people and organizations are uniting to break oil subsidy bonds. “I see the [effort] building. You can see 350.org and the Sierra Club for the first time launching campaigns targeted at the oil industry and subsidies. They are joining other environmental groups that have been working for some time but who have needed a lot more support.

“I think the American public has started to see that just because the oil industry is as wealthy and powerful as it is, it doesn’t always get what it wants.” As proof, Juhasz points to the work in progress to block the Keystone Pipeline and the 2008 presidential election. The oil industry poured record amounts of money into the unsuccessful attempt to elect the “Drill, Baby, Drill” team of McCain and Palin.

But the struggle to convince never ends, for the oil industry and for those who call on it to act in the better interests of society and the environment—minus the greenwashing.