What’s In the Air?
It is September 1st, 2018, and a bunch of raving Georgia Bulldog fans are out ready for a defeat against Austin Peay. The sun is beaming down on a loud student section, and the temperature is about 96 degrees Fahrenheit. What is surprising is just how hot it actually feels. It is September, and yet every day feels like July. This year alone has seen record high temperatures in every season thus far, but not enough attention has been brought to it. One company noticed this problem and decided to change its advertising strategy as a solution to it. Shell Corporation created an ad about its climate concerns, and how the issue of global warming has risen to a heated debate. This ad, entitled “Cloud The Issue or Clear The Air?,” is a part of a campaign used to enlighten its audience on various issues taking place around the world. The issue of global warming has been going on for years, and yet Shell is just now seeing it appropriate to create a stance against it. While this ad does initiate the debate on global warming, which is usually ignored amidst other world problems, it fails to reveal the oil-production company’s solutions to actually taking action in ending global warming.
Global warming is described as the relationship between burning fossil fuels and climate changes, which is why many people associate cloudy skies with it. The Shell ad depicts an image of a sky over a high mountain range. In the image, there are two sides shown, a pattern used throughout the corporation’s ad campaign. One side shows a completely clouded sky, while the other half is perfectly clear in comparison, using a “don’t do this, and do this” format. The first words that draw the reader’s attention are “cloud the issue, or clear the air?” This question is interesting because it poses two sides to the argument on global warming. One says that global warming is the burning of fossil fuels and increased concentration of carbon dioxide, while the other believes that it is all a myth, and climate changes are due to “hot air.”
Another important characteristic noticed throughout the entire campaign is how the Shell logo is placed in the center of the page. On the left side depicting the cloudy sky, the logo is opaque, indicating a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the air with an emphasis on the severity of it because the logo is completely covered. Perhaps it is a coincidence that the placement of the clear Shell logo is on the right side, but this shows how Shell is trying to convince its audience exactly what side of the argument they are on. How ironic is it that an oil company is at the forefront of efforts against global warming and the main cause of it? As if global warming has not been an issue since the 1980s, Shell decided that now was the perfect time to change their advertising strategy rather than their practices as one of the biggest oil-production companies in the world.
Several differences between the left and right halves reveal Shell’s strategy behind their ad campaign. Rather than using one full page for the image, Shell utilizes a split page to implement their theme. The left side depicts a darker theme, implying the topic of global warming, while the right is lighter, suggesting a world without it. Shell allows their audience to imagine two situations: clouded air or clear air. It is a pick and choose tactic that seems to work for viewers who fear global warming getting that extreme. Still, it is hard to believe that a company that makes money off of burning fossil fuels could really be behind reducing this practice for the favor of the people.
Addressing Shell’s efforts to combat the issue, climate change writer Mat Hope remarked, “To this day, Shell’s ‘solution’ to climate change continues to be to invest in fossil fuels, albeit sources with marginally lower carbon footprints such as natural gas, which is claimed to produce about half the CO2 emissions of coal when used in power generation” (Hope).
Their marketing campaign simply turns climate change into a debate when it should be an active discussion on efforts to relieve it.
Looking past the image and header on the ad, there are two short paragraphs at the bottom of the page. They seem to serve as the finale to what the consumer has seen throughout the ad, and one quick detail noticed was the amount of information given on each half of the image. It is as if they want their audience to believe that their solutions to global warming are far more greater than what global warming is doing to the world right now. The right side tells its audience just how this big oil-production company renewed their commitment to “[work] to increase the provision of cleaner burning natural gas and encouraging the use of lower carbon fuels for homes and transport” (Shell Group). On the other hand, the left side merely brings up two sides to the debate on the cause of global warming. While there still may be some people who do not pay attention to this topic in the news and need to be informed on it, Shell could have given a more clear stance on what exactly is causing the problem. As an oil-production company, one would expect them to be more knowledgeable on this issue, and therefore share this knowledge with their uninformed audience.
Shell, like many other oil-production companies, is known for burning fossil fuels as a means to provide their product to consumers. Although their ad campaign suggests otherwise, “[Shell] plans to keep 95 percent of its investments in fossil fuels, putting just five percent into renewables; and latest data shows that Shell’s emissions have risen to their highest level since 2014” (Gilblom). Not only are they not completely adding to the solution to climate changes and global warming, but Shell Corporation is posing more of a threat than ever before with an increase in their greenhouse-gas emissions this year. There seems to be an external influence on the company for Shell to continue to burn fossil fuels knowing the consequences: it is good for business.
This campaign serves more as a publicity stunt than an actual solution to global warming because “oil-company expansion is difficult without boosting the volume of greenhouse gases released” (Gilblom).
How can Shell truly be expected to eliminate the use of fossil fuels while still remaining a heavy hitter in the oil-production game? While the two don’t seem synonymous, if Shell truly wanted this outcome, they would have began these efforts a long time ago. Rather than supporting the stance against global warming as a good business move, “the global warming issue needs to be addressed strongly… in order to safeguard life on [the] planet” (Kinney).
Shell’s ad campaign serves a great purpose in the debate on global warming and climate changes. It provides a left versus right view on the impact of global warming, and brings awareness to the otherwise quiet issue. Despite this, however, one cannot bring up the topic of global warming without bringing up the issue of burning fossil fuels. The two simply go together. Shell cannot speak about solutions to global warming without looking at itself as a company and working to reduce its own fossil fuel use. Until they and other oil-production companies arrive at this conclusion, the issue will remain clouded.
Works Cited
Hope, Mat. “How Shell Greenwashed Its Image as Internal Documents Warned of Fossil Fuels’ Contribution to Climate Change.” DeSmog UK, 11 Apr. 2018, www.desmog.co.uk/2018/04/11/how-shell-greenwashed-its-image-internal-documents-warned-fossil-fuels-contribution-climate-change.
Gilblom, Kelly. “Shell’s Climate Push Fails to Cut Emissions.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 09 Apr. 2018, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/shell-s-climate-push-fails-to-cut-emissions-as-u-s-plants-added.
Macalister, Terry. “The Real Story behind Shell’s Climate Change Rhetoric.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 May 2015, www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/17/shell-climate-change-rhetoric-the-real-story.
Kinney, Joe. “Addressing Global Warming.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 111, no. 3, 2003, pp. A144–A144. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3455574.
