What is the True Cost of Chevron?

Now what does Chevron have to say?


On buses, on television and billboards across the nation people have been bombarded with advertisement saying things like "I will reuse more" or "I will drive my car less". The advertisements are from Chevron, one of the largest producers of oil around the world. A group of local and global environmental groups including Amazon Watch, Global Exchange, Justice in Nigeria Now, Rainforest Action Network, Richmond Progressive Alliance and West County Toxics Coalition having gathered together to launch a response campaign called The True Cost of Chevron to combat the polluting company and address what they see is hypocrisy in Chevron advertisements.

 The group recently released a report The True Cost of Chevron:  An alternative annual report. The report was published soon  after Chevron reported its 2008 earnings of $24 billion, making  it the second most profitable corporation in America. The true  cost of Chevron argues that Chevron didn't get there by just  selling a lot of Gas. They got their profits on the backs of poor  people in the US and around the world, contaminating vital water  and placing life endangering toxins into the air. The $24 billion profits Chevron made last year is more than the Gross Domestic Products of over 150 countries.

Chevron has dedicated a whole section of their website to what they call "Human Energy Stories." Here they discuss how it's going to take all of us to fight climate change and what the corporation is doing to not only use less dirty energy but also how they are working to put a portion of their work into community service. In the Community and Society section they write: "The places where we operate and the people that we work with are the communities we call home so we make an effort to make them better places."

So how does Chevron see making communities better places to live? Is it by cleaning up from nasty oil spills? Doing bio-remediation projects to decontaminate the land around the oil refineries or helping to pay for the medical expenses of the people who are getting cancer, miscarriages and respiratory illnesses? NO! Of the 24 BILLION dollars Chevron made last year they donated 160 million to community programs around the world. None of the programs address the climate and environmental justice concerns brought up by the True Cost of Chevron campaign. However, They are giving back by donating to schools and HIV/AIDS research, one of the only mainstream diseases that has not been explicitly linked to environmental toxins. Not that that is a bad thing, but we wonder, what would happen if Chevron spent some of the estimated 50-100 million dollar advertising campaign to just really Clean Up The Mess They Have Already Made Across the World.

I mean really Chevron "will you join us?"