Episode 3: Greenwashing and other Corporate Shenanigans

In Part III of this irregular series, I'm putting corporations under the spotlight. Business, unlike the two abstractions of racism and fascism, is a fairly widely accepted phenomenon. It's a beast with many limbs, if you ask me, which makes it tough to narrow the attack here. My main focus is on corporations and their reaction to the environmental movement, but the reaction to labor ethics and other controverses aren't so different. Just a different pile, if you'll spot the implied metaphor. Whether or not ecolological concerns are more prevalent or trendy these days, corporations have started to clean up their acts. Or have they? In many cases, millions of bucks are spent on a greenwashing campaign, which is basically just advertising that convinces the public that they're eco-friendly now (or always were). This all comes down to the fact that it's cheaper to convince the public that a certain company is envoronmentally-friendly than it is to actually implement ecologically-sound practices. Also, many companies have determined that it's cheaper for them to break environmental laws and face the occasional fine, than simply fix the problem. Take car companies for example. Many have jumped on the bandwagon for hybrid cars and are now 'proud' to be waving the green banner, but the fact remains that their SUVs are still increasing in size every year (and decreasing in mpg). Myt favorite example is BP. British Petroleum, or 'Beyond Petroleum' (conjuring images of new energy sources) seems to think that by changing their logo to a flower that we're all gonna suddenly forgive their horrendous environmental record (not that any other oil company is any better). Yet as they change their logo and call it even, they're pushing for new oil-drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, one ot the last remaining pristine wilderness areas in North America. All it takes is a litle digging to realize that we're constantly being bombarded with extremely superficial claims here, when the truth is very much to the contrary.

Now if we step back and look at these 3 parts of the series, we see how fascism and racism are still very much alive well, but have become so much a part of this system, that they're almost transparent, and with corporate crimes, it's a very similar veil. You really don't need to possess very much initiative or imagination to realize that we're still living with the exact same problems as our parents were, but these problems have evolved on their own, much like a virus becomes resistant to a drug. In part 4, we'll look at an issue where both the drug and the virus have evolved together so that one cannot easily be separated from the other.