Why We’ll Never Work with the Chevrons of the World
The company that you keep matters. It says a lot about who you are and what you value.
Marketing agencies tend to be mercenaries. I get why. It’s a tough industry full of volatility, so it’s hard to turn down good money. My first job was at an agency that was just starting to emerge out of the Great Recession. Fortunately for me, that agency was pretty selective about its clients. I was mostly shielded from difficult clashes of values. But even so, I still had the nagging thought of “should we be doing this?” from time to time.
That internal voice is important to me. Call it what you want: internal conflict, cognitive dissonance, moral compass, or run-of-the-mill angst. I think there’s a reason for that nagging feeling.
From day one at Root & Leaf, we thought it was important to define both who we want to work with and who we don’t. My recent discovery of Chevron’s efforts to completely skirt responsibility for deliberately polluting the Amazon has given me an even clearer understanding of why.
A Scary Story
Oil pollution in an Ecuadoran river.
You’re probably unfamiliar with this story. It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the mainstream press, but there are credible accounts of it here, here, and here. Without getting too far into the weeds, here’s a brief summary:
Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) begins oil exploration in Ecuador during the 1960s.
Over the course of operations, Texaco dumped billions of gallons of waste into open pits, polluting drinking water used by thousands of indigenous Ecuadorans. Texaco then left those waste pits open when it withdrew in 1992, ignoring an environmental disaster even worse than the Exxon Valdez spill.
A case was brought in 1993 by a group of environmental attorneys, including Steven Donziger.
Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001.
After years of complex litigation, Chevron was eventually ordered to pay billions in damages by an Ecuadoran court.
Chevron pursues every legal avenue to avoid paying the fine, without disputing the merits of whether it polluted or not.
Chevron also took punitive measures against one of the lead attorneys for the Ecuadoran plaintiffs, Steven Donziger. Donziger was placed under house arrest based on the decision of a private law firm that likely has ties to Chevron.
The reasoning for Donziger’s house arrest seems spurious to me. My view is that Chevron is doing everything in its power to inflict pain, frustration, and despair upon anyone in the plaintiff’s orbit. They don’t want any precedent for having to pay up for all the damage they’ve done over the years.
But even if you accept Chevron’s claim of foul play by Donziger, they don’t appear to dispute the central issue of the case: the pollution that resulted from their operation of the oil fields in Ecuador.
Environmental attorney Steven Donziger’s ankle monitor from his ongoing house arrest.
Profit vs. People
Fossil fuel companies are not going to give up their vast profits and power nicely. They want to milk their cash cow until the last drop, and will marshal all available resources to do so.
And it’s not just Chevron. The CEO of Shell has stated that abandoning fossil fuels too early would be his “single biggest regret”.
This is an industry that believes its profits should dictate the survival of people, ecosystems, and organized human life in general. It’s willing to push all of those to a teetering edge and has the audacity to deny and even cover up its own responsibility. Its policy is scorched earth (quite literally, in some cases).
A few years ago, I was talking to a relative who’s “skeptical” about climate change. (Incidentally, he used to do a lot of consulting for the oil and gas industry. Go figure.) He said that fossil fuel companies were really thinking of themselves as “energy” companies now. Turns out that they barely put any resources towards renewables. The whole “energy” concept was just a rebrand to get people thinking about something different. Something other than the pollution and ecological devastation that fossil fuel interests are causing.
I don’t want to be just another marketer selling their soul with misleading pleasantries.
Defining Our Boundaries
It’s possible that I’m wrong and the fossil fuel industry will rapidly shift investments to help avert catastrophe. I am open to that possibility, and would prefer a world in which we didn’t have to swim against such a powerful current to win a better future. But I just don’t see fossil fuel interests changing just because we asked nicely.
And even if the fossil fuel companies made an about-face like that, I’d still be uncomfortable working with them. The totality of past evils cannot be absolved with a few managerial tweaks. Sometimes you need to draw clear lines about your values and who you are.
I’m hopeful that we can build a countervailing force through effective community and movement organizing, ambitious policy shifts, as well as the development and adoption of alternative energy sources. Those are the efforts that I enjoy pushing forward. That’s where I’d like to leave my mark. Not everyone has the luxury of spending their career on such efforts, so I feel a responsibility to do so. Hopefully others feel the same.
Speaking of which, if you’d like to support justice for indigenous Ecuadorans and Steven Donziger, you can get involved here. To be clear, Root & Leaf is not affiliated with the cause in any way — we just think it’s a good thing to support.
