Introducing: Greenwashing Unearthed
A series about how greenwashing has become a core tactic of empire
Greenwashing can appear trivial, a simple marketing trick used by cereal brands to sell more corn flakes. You might think: sure, corporations adopting environmentally-friendly aesthetics to distract from and downplay their harmful practices isn’t the most honest, but is it really such a big deal?
Zooming out from greenwashing at your local supermarket and instead focusing on how it manifests in the mechanisms of imperialism reveals a troubling, insidious pattern. This upcoming series, “Greenwashing Unearthed” travels around Turtle Island, to Palestine, Congo and elsewhere, uncovering a scheme of greenwashing that underpins systems of global extraction. Through case studies, it will investigate the deployment of greenwashing, coalescing in a clear picture: greenwashing has become a core tactic of empire.
Why has greenwashing become an important tool for empire-building? Because many of the centuries-old imperial strategies of blatant land theft and resource plunder have gone out of style. Over a hundred years ago, the “leaders of the free world” sat at a table with a map of Africa, carving the continent into European colonies without hiding their genocidal intentions. Similarly, in the early 1900s, the founding fathers of Zionism openly referred to themselves as colonists ‘civilizing a savage native Palestinian population1.’ Whereas in the past, it was needless for the “great nations” of the world to mask their racist ideologies, today the tides have shifted: what societies deem rhetorically permissible has changed.
This is perhaps most potently depicted by the desperate attempt for Zionists to reframe Israel as the culmination of an “indigenous land back movement.” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister raised in Pennsylvania, gave a speech in which he compared Israelis to “the Indians… the Africans before the Belgians came… the Indonesians before the Dutch came.”
Imperial nation-states have the same goals as they always have: steal land, plunder resources, conquer Indigenous populations—yet referring to oneself as a colonist is no longer chic. This necessitates the facade of care–about the environment, about land, about Indigenous Peoples. These nations and their corporate partners have adopted a thin green veil to distract from and justify their ongoing destruction. Greenwashing represents the most recent adaptation by imperialism and global capitalism.
This tactic has become especially pertinent in response to climate change and the global movement demanding action. Governments and corporations, some of which are the very same criminals that caused the climate crisis in the first place, now wield greenwashing as a tool to continue business-as-usual. In an attempt to divert attention away from the roots of the climate crisis–endless capitalist growth–they have crafted a “green” energy transition narrative, in which the inputs of our energy system are simply swapped from fossil fuels to minerals such as lithium, nickel and copper. Depicting this transition as “green,” or beneficial for the environment, while downplaying the severe ecological and human rights implications, is the epitome of greenwashing.
To me, the climate crisis presents us with the question of our lifetime. This question is not “fossil fuels or green energy,” rather it is whether we will reject this premise and demand something radically different.
Upcoming Case Studies
In this series, we will look at several case studies of greenwashing. New parts of this series come out every other week. Some upcoming posts include:
The “Green” Energy Movement Has Lost the Plot
A deep dive into the narratives of the “green” energy transition in the U.S., from corporations, governments, think tanks and environmental non-profits.
A three-parter about Talon Metals, the shell company for Rio Tinto who are planning a “green” nickel mine in Anishinaabe territory, Minnesota. This will include:
An overview of the Talon Mine and its resistance.
Investigative research on several of their executives, some of whom have an interesting relationship with apartheid (hint: they love doing it).
Uncovering Rio Tinto’s abhorrent history of destruction and their plans on Turtle Island.
A three-parter about the Jewish National Fund, a “charitable” organization infamous for planting trees of the ruins of Palestinian villages.
Analysis of “The New Cold War” over energy transition minerals between the U.S. and China and the resulting genocide in the Congo.
An analysis of the entanglement of militarism and greenwashing, specifically how the “green” mining industry benefits from and fuels both.
The prevailing world order has presented us with a potential future that is shrouded in deception, and wholly insufficient. If imperialism and global capitalism are allowed to continue under this new green facade, the result will be a future based in the mass sacrifice of the many for the benefit of the few. In the face of these stakes, despair is not an option. People across the world are rising up against systems attempting to steal their right to a livable future.
If any/all of this sounds interesting to you, please stay tuned in a couple weeks for the first case study of Greenwashing Unearthed. Your support makes this writing project possible and I am truly grateful for you all!
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Paraphrased from Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall