The latest issue of the trade journal Maritime Executive has an unusual advertisement tucked between the articles and editorials on the global shipping industry.
The ad promotes the communications and marketing agency GreenCurrent Group, which it says supports maritime and energy businesses that invest in liquefied natural gas (LNG), “the most exciting and misunderstood marine fuel”.
If this seems unremarkable, the text becomes more absurd further down the page: “Mitigating the practical and reputational risks of LNG investment is possible through robust energy efficiency measures … but there is an easier, more cost effective solution,” it says, offering a “free branding consultation”.
Want to learn more? Scan a QR code on the page to view a video. If the ad copy didn’t make you raise your eyebrows, where the QR code leads surely will.
It depicts executives from the LNG-powered cruise line Royal Caribbean, which has promoted LNG as the “cleanest burning fossil fuel”, working to protect their reputation and profits amid increasing awareness of the climate crisis. To do so, they do not phase out LNG. Instead, they hire a bright green sponge mascot named Scrubby Greenwash.
“Scrub, scrub, scrub sad facts away,” a jingle in the video goes.
In case you’ve not yet caught on, GreenCurrent Group does not exist. The spoof ad was placed in the leading maritime and offshore industry publication by the Yes Men, an American-based collective of activist pranksters.
The group, which has been engaging in similar stunts for 25 years, is perhaps best known for infiltrating various industry convenings while posing as bigwigs from the World Trade Organization, McDonald’s, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and other powerful organizations. Since 2003, they have produced three films about their work.
The Yes Men’s latest project is a critique of the trade media “for uncritically publishing pro-LNG propaganda”, said Natalie Whiteman, a Yes Men activist who worked on the prank.
“A lot of the LNG producers, transporters and industry leaders who read Maritime Executive are trying their hardest to convince the public that LNG is clean, and not a powerful heat-trapping fossil fuel with leakage problems at every step of the supply chain,” she said. “But science keeps telling people the truth, which is bad for business, and also annoying.”
It is also a send-up of fossil fuel greenwashing by the cruise industry, which activists have long called out for its toxic pollution and contributions to global warming.
“Scrubby helps LNG purveyors, shipping companies, cruise lines – anybody who’s getting a bad rap for investing in LNG – to transform bad news into good news and good news into more money,” said Whiteman sarcastically. “He is greenwash incarnate. Scrubby protects companies from public scrutiny the same way they protect themselves, through a dirty smokescreen of misleading marketing tactics.”
The Guardian has approached both Maritime Executive and Royal Caribbean for comment.
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Whiteman said she hoped the ads remind LNG producers that “profiting off of expediting planetary collapse is generally frowned upon”. The fuel source is almost entirely composed of methane, a planet-heating gas with more than 80 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term.
She noted that the advertisement was not difficult to place – a sign of the “maritime industry’s willingness to push aside ethical responsibilities in order to turn a profit”.
“That, or the editors can’t read,” she said.
The Yes Men prank comes amid increasing scrutiny of the role of fossil fuel marketing in climate delay. A group called Clean Creatives, for instance, has for years pushed creative agencies to cut ties with the oil and gas industry.
It also comes as part of a wave of parody advertisements meant to call attention to the fossil fuel industry’s contributions to the climate crisis. Other notable examples have been produced by the Oscar-winning director Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios, the anti-gas non-profit Gas Leaks Project, and the non-profit media organization Fossil Free Media.
Jamie Henn, a founder of Clean Creatives and Fossil Free Media, said the latest Yes Men prank is “great”.
“The industry relies on lying to us to push their product,” he said. “Calling out that greenwashing is one of the best strategies we have to combat fossil fuel expansion.”
The US is the largest exporter of LNG. Joe Biden last year paused new permits for exports pending a review, a move that his successor, Donald Trump, swept aside on the first day of his second term last month.
