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"We are hoping Maritime Executive's readership are reminded that investing in a fuel that will expedite the rapid decline of life on the planet is not a good look (or a good investment)," one spokesperson said.
When readers of The Maritime Executive peruse the magazine's latest issue on Friday, they will be in for a surprise.
Page 15 of the magazine displays an ad for GreenCurrent Group, which bills itself as a "full service communications and marketing agency specializing in supporting commercial maritime operators and energy providers investing in LNG [liquefied natural gas]—the most exciting and misunderstood marine fuel."
But when curious maritime or energy executives follow the QR code at the bottom-right corner of the ad, they will discover that no such company exists. Instead, they will be directed to a satirical video commercial for "Scrubby Greenwash," a giant anthropomorphic green sponge that promises to "scrub, scrub, scrub sad facts away."
The false ad and video are the latest hijinks from underground activist collective The Yes Men, who have used humor and pranks to target corporate wrong-doing since 1996.
"We are hoping Maritime Executive's readership are reminded that investing in a fuel that will expedite the rapid decline of life on the planet is not a good look (or a good investment)," The Yes Men's Natalie Whiteman told Common Dreams.
The Yes Men first made waves more than three decades ago with a mock World Trade Organization website that got taken seriously enough to win them an invitation to a real-world conference. Since then, they have used creative deceptions to call attention to various social, economic, and political issues from high drug prices to lack of accountability for the Bhopal disaster.
"We need industry leaders, energy producers, and all players across the supply chain to reject LNG as a climate solution."
Many of their past actions have targeted fossil fuel companies and raised awareness about environmental issues such as the climate emergency and corporate greenwashing. Over the past year, they have begun campaigning around LNG specifically.
"We've always been in favor of generally keeping living things still alive, and methane is going to make all of that not happen much faster," Whiteman said. "We thought hey, that's not cool at all."
"LNG is a massive issue," Whiteman continued. "and the industry is pouring enormous resources into convincing the public that LNG is a green fuel when in fact LNG is methane, with a warming capacity 80 times more powerful than CO2, that leaks across practically every step of the supply chain."
To tackle this issue, the group has taken Scrubby Greenwash on tour to major cities around the world.
How did they come up with the character?
"Greenwashing is the process of scrubbing inconvenient facts and science away to protect the reputation of a company," Whiteman explained. "It's a process of sanitizing their image with marketing, and so a delirious looking slimy sponge seems like the sensible choice."
Whiteman said that Scrubby was "building up a rabid fanbase all over the world" while "targeted companies don't seem nearly grateful enough for the services he provides in protecting their image."
The group also crashed the World LNG Summit in Berlin in December under the guise of a Royal Caribbean executive. They managed to hold a few one-on-one meetings and earn a panel invitation before being found out, in an adventure that will be fully shared in a documentary to be released next year.
Their focus on LNG parallels the work of more traditional climate activists, who have been sounding the alarm about its planet-warming potential and urging governments to curb the buildout of new LNG infrastructure.
However, following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, there has been backsliding on the regulatory end, with Trump declaring an energy emergency to stimulate more fossil fuel extraction and lifting a Biden-era pause on new LNG export approvals. On Wednesday, the European Union also announced a plan to fund new LNG exports, which was interpreted by some as a concession to Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda.
The Yes Men's latest fake ad targets not governments, but shipping and LNG companies directly.
The false ad placed by The Yes Men in The Maritime Executive.
In the video ad, a table of men in suits sit around a table in "liquefied natural gas headquarters" as a news item announces, "A new investigation has revealed that cruise liners powered by liquefied natural gas produce more global warming than those powered by regular marine fuel. That's because methane leaks at every point in the supply chain, and gas traps 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide."
The newscaster continues, "That's bad news for everyone, but especially for the luxury cruise lines, like Royal Caribbean, which have been marketing themselves as green," at which point the camera pans over to a Royal Caribbean representative in a captain's uniform. "If the industry doesn't act fast, this information could hurt their bottom line."
It's at this point that the executives pick up the phone to call in the assistance of Scrubby, who comes bursting through a brick wall Kool-Aid style.
Whiteman said The Yes Men chose to target Maritime Executive and Royal Caribbean in particular because "the trade media is complicit in propagating the greenwashing that protects LNG's false reputation as a clean fuel. And the fact that Royal Caribbean is marketing their LNG-powered mega ships as sustainable is a criminal untruth, when they could be investing in zero-emissions alternatives or other efficiency measures.'
Ultimately, Whiteman told Common Dreams, "We need industry leaders, energy producers, and all players across the supply chain to reject LNG as a climate solution. It has proven to be anything but."
Trump threatens other nations with tariffs, and offers to make them go away if they buy some fracked gas. It’s akin to a protection racket. Pay up, or your windows get broken.
In the last few days, Taiwan, India and Japan made clear they will be buying exported American LNG in the months and years ahead. Why? Entirely in an effort to hold off tariffs from the Trump administration. As the Japanese prime minister put it,
“We will cooperate to strengthen energy security between the two countries including increasing exports of United States liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner.”
Here’s how Bloomberg described the Indian decision-making:
Indian importers are under pressure from the government to reach deals that could smooth relations with Trump, the people said, but they will be looking for the best possible terms before signing any agreements.
Meanwhile, as Sing Yee Ong reports from Taipei
Taiwan is preparing to buy more liquefied natural gas from the US to reduce its trade surplus and potentially avoid higher tariffs.
Oh, and more to come
South Korea, Vietnam and the European Union are among energy buyers trying to appease President Donald Trump — and reduce the threat of tariffs — by looking to increase purchases from the biggest exporter of the super-chilled fuel and largest producer of crude.
I want to highlight these shakedowns, which have mostly been lost amidst the thousand other terrible things the Trump administration has loosed upon the world, because I know that before long Big Oil will be holding them up as evidence that the world needs and wants more fossil fuel. In fact, the world wants to move in entirely the opposite direction: 85% of new electric generation in 2023 came from renewables, and the numbers for 2024 will almost certainly be higher. That, of course, terrifies the fossil fuel industry—which is why they spent record amounts on November’s election. As fracking baron Harold Hamm explained, “We’ve got to do this because it’s the most important election in our lifetime.”
And now they’re getting the payoff: Trump threatens tariffs, and offers to make them go away if they buy some LNG. It’s akin to a protection racket. Pay up, or your windows get broken. It’s not criminal—it’s all entirely legal. It’s just wrong.
This particular protection racket makes no sense for America at large. Forget, for a moment, that LNG is a huge driver of the climate change driving fire and flood (by the time you’ve shipped it overseas it’s far worse even than coal); exporting it in huge quantities also obviously drives up the price for Americans still reliant on fracked gas for heating and cooking. The Energy Information Administration just predicted that natural gas prices will rise 21 percent in the year ahead. Politico did the math
Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America trade association, said U.S. LNG exports are pushing natural gas and electricity prices higher.
Every “dollar increase in natural gas costs consumers $34 billion plus about $20 billion in higher electricity cost,” Cicio said in a statement Tuesday. It's “only going to get worse from here as LNG exports increase.”t of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America trade association, said U.S. LNG exports are pushing natural gas and electricity prices higher.
As the Sierra Club points out, Trump’s strategy “makes no sense.” And they’re right—as long as we’re talking about the future of the planet or the cost to American consumers. But that’s not who Trump is thinking about. He’s got one constituency and one only: the Big Oil execs who bankrolled his campaign. For them, this is sweet payback, a 100-1 return on their investment.
And it’s a stark reminder that we have to fight back on the only turf we have: the fact that the sun and wind can deliver the same product as LNG, only more cheaply and much more cleanly. We can’t threaten tariffs to get our way; we can only make the case in such persuasive terms that we start to change the zeitgeist. That’s the point of SunDay project I described last week and that you are going to hear a lot more about. Many thanks to those who went to sunday.earth to help us draw some suns as we prepare for the official launch of this big effort. So many of you took part already. Here’s a beautiful example from the effervescent Ayana Johnson (whose bookWhat If We Get It Right is a document for this tough moment):
And here’s one from Billy Parish, whose Solar Mosaic has financed something like ten percent of the rooftop solar in America
It may seem like a mug’s game to take on Trump’s thuggish power with economics, physics, music, art, and justice. But perhaps they still hold some force in this world—we shall see.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions."
As Republican President-elect Donald Trump prepares to further accelerate already near-record liquefied natural gas exports after taking office next week, a report published Friday details how soaring U.S. foreign LNG sales are "causing price volatility and environmental and safety risks for American families in addition to granting geopolitical advantages to the Chinese government."
The report, Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports, was published by the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and offers a "comprehensive analysis of the impact of the natural gas export boom from the advent of fracking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and provides insight into how the tidal wave of U.S. exports in the global market is altering regional and domestic security environments."
According to a summary of the publication:
The United States is the world's leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China's stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions," the report states.
American Security Project CEO Matthew Wallin said in a statement that "action needs to be taken to ensure Americans are insulated from global price shocks, the impacts of climate change, and new health and safety risks."
"Our country must also do more to protect its interests from geopolitical rivals like China that subsidize their growth and influence by reselling cheap U.S. LNG at higher spot prices," Wallin asserted. "U.S. LNG has often been depicted as a transition fuel, and our country must ensure that it continues working towards that transition to clean sources instead of becoming dependent on yet another vulnerable fuel source."
Critics have
warned that LNG actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite President Joe Biden's 2024 pause on LNG export permit applications, his administration has presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis.
In addition to promising to roll back Biden's recent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, Trump—who has nominated a bevy of fossil fuel proponents for his Cabinet—is expected to further increase LNG production and exports.
A separate report published Friday by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration is expected to fast-track, creating 510 million metric tons of climate pollution–"equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants."
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill." This, as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers, according to The New York Times.
"This research reveals the disturbing reality of an LNG export boom under a second Trump term," Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia said in a statement referring to her group's new report. "This reality will cement higher energy prices for Americans and push the world into even more devastating climate disasters. The incoming administration is poised to haphazardly greenlight LNG exports that are clearly intended to put profit over people."