The Wonk Room

Colbert Parodies Big Oil’s Greenwashing Propaganda

In last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert eviscerated the Drill, Baby, Drill hoax (”last week, the Democrat Congress voted to lift the 26-year ban on offshore drilling, thereby ending our dependence on foreign oil by one percent ten to twenty years from now”) before training his sights on Big Oil’s greenwashing propaganda. After airing clips from advertisements of Exxon Mobil, Valero, and Chevron, Colbert asks:

A lot of people talk about loving the earth. But how many of them actually penetrate it?

Watch it:

The parody promotional video Colbert airs in this segment is from Prescott Oil, part of the fictional Prescott Group corporate conglomerate that Colbert has used to skewer pharmaceutical industries.

The fossil-fuel industry is on track to spend one billion dollars this year propagandizing oil, coal and natural gas. As the Public Campaign Action Fund found, “In the first half of 2008, the major industry players, American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Hess Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell, spent $92.2 million on broadcast and cable advertising; $14.9 million on radio advertising; $57.5 million on print advertising in magazines and newspapers; $5.3 million on Internet advertising; and $4.0 million on other media.”