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Greenwash
Including the carbon offsetting myth

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23rd February 2007 | Issue 577 - FOREST GRUMP - uprooting the carbon offsetting myth - Where there’s a crisis there’s a cash-cow, and while SchNEWS has looked before at the stupidities of industrial carbon trading (See SchNEWS 514), it’s time to turn up the heat on those firms at the cashing in consumers fears about Climate Change. This week activists from London Rising Tide occupied the offices of the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC), at the forefront of the dubious practice of carbon offsetting.

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25th August 2006 | Issue 557 - READY? CHARGE! - Surviving the day after tomorrow - The double-whammy of peak oil and climate change have recently become much more mainstream, but the (if you’ll pardon the expression) ‘roadmap’ to a sustainable future is still very sketchy. Of course our governments are still too focussed on unsustainable growth of an oil-based economy to do anything much about either issue. But there’s little point in waiting for them to sort it out, when there’s so many positive ideas and capacity for real change to be found at the community and grassroots level.

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7th April 2006 | Issue 539 - ETHICAL CLEANSING - Co-Op shopped over 'ethical banking' - There are banks showing a healthy return on 'ethical' investments... aren't there? Like Co-Op? Er - no actually - they have been putting money into such corporations as Glaxo-Smithkline and Vodafone, who, we can assure you, are not ethical businesses.

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14th May 2004 | Issue 453 - NORM RULES OK? - “It is easier and less costly to change the way people think about reality than it is to change reality” - Morris Wolfe, PR consultant.

27th June 2002 | Issue 361/2 GREENWASH AND GO - In the lead up to UN Climate Summit in Johannesburg, August 2002, the Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) are pushing partnerships like the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative, the Global Mining Initiative, and the Responsible Care programme. But as Corporate Europe Observatory point out “These projects are largely an attempt to improve the corporate members’ tarnished images. They are also a reaction to pressure by campaign and community groups or as a move to pre-empt binding regulation.” For example, the Responsible Care program, long criticised as greenwash by campaign groups and academics, was established by the chemical industry after the Bhopal disaster where a Union Carbide plant leaked poisonous gas killing 4,000 people instantly and injuring tens of thousands more (see SchNEWS 238). The move effectively killed off efforts to toughen regulations.