Avon's Campaign Against the Oil Sands: All Form, No Substance.

Avon Products recent announcement that the firm wants to avoid using ‘high-carbon, high-impact fuels’ derived from the oil sands is yet another hit and run on America’s safest and most secure oil supplier. It is a disingenuous publicity stunt that misleads the public with false promises under false premises.

Avon’s latest so-called “environmental” campaign boils down to asking its transportation contractors to eliminate higher-carbon fuels with a special focus on Canada’s oil sands. Given Avon’s sudden distaste for petroleum products one might set the same standard in return for Avon. To speak tangentially, when the dictionary definition of hypocrisy immediately springs to mind there may be a credibility problem; ‘feigning to be what one is not; especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion’. Yes, we have a credibility problem.

This is a company that nets huge corporate profits from the sales of millions of reps who idle, drive and willingly gas-guzzle their way from neighborhood to neighborhood hocking petroleum based products. Perhaps when Avon rethinks one of their core business models, we can stop laughing in Alberta.

This rash of anti-oilsands actions (we aren’t officially allowed to use the term boycott at present) rely on a set of specious arguments. To begin there are the technicalities that Avon and these nouveaux-environmentally sensitive companies like Gap Inc., Timberland, Levi-Strauss, Lush (operating with the aide of misinformants such as ForestEthics) hope the unwitting public will miss or at least misunderstand.

There is no real or practical way for transporters to avoid using fuel from a refinery from any one particular source of crude oil.

This is because transport fuels (retail gasoline or diesel for large trucks) are not purchased directly from a refinery. Transporters for the most part, purchase fuel like you and me – from gas stations. Crude oil and its products once refined are fungible, tradeable commodities. Once crude is in the pipe, it is very difficult to know which portion of the supply was produced conventionally or unconventionally.

The only sure bet for Avon shippers to avoid oil sands derived products would be to not use petroleum products in transport at all, not to gas up from any company involved in oil sands (almost any oil major) or to not gas up in regions where oil sands products are refined. The latter would translate into Avon bowing out of markets in the Pacific, the Rockies, the Midwest, the East Coast and the Gulf Coast.

The argument that the oil sands are higher-carbon content is another red herring that the environmental lobby loves to overplay. It would be prudent, or at a minimum rational for Avon et al. to think about crude oil suppliers in the global context in which they operate. Behind Canada, the leading oil exporters to the USA are Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. None of these producers have greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards comparable to Alberta’s. Oilsands producers have reduced GHG intensity by almost 40% since 1990. Hugo Chavez cannot make the same claim, nor would I surmise, does he care to.

Anti-oil sands movements fail to acknowledge that the crude oil slate into refineries is continually changing. As the supply mix changes the carbon intensity of the fuel mix also changes. As lighter crude oil from the Middle East becomes scarcer, the imported oil to the United States will become heavier. In addition, as conventional oil fields mature each additional barrel produced becomes more energy intensive. When analyzed on a wells to wheels basis (i.e. full life cycle) the argument that oil sands derived fuels are higher-impact falls apart.

Finally, the notion that oil sands products are somehow less ethically appealing than crude oil from other regions is perhaps the most puzzling inference. Given as true, then the question would become in what way are the social values of other oil producers more in line with Avon’s corporate values? Does Avon support the robust state of democracy in Venezuela? How about Jonathan Goodluck’s idea of wealth redistribution in Nigeria? Perhaps the feminist movement in Saudi Arabia has gained a lot of traction of late. I must have been too busy snowshoeing and missed the progression of the movement. Let’s get real. There is no other oil importing region to the United States with a more advanced system of civil liberties than Canada. We are the equivalent of whipping the dodge ball at the portly kid from closerange. We continually take it with the strained smile of an unwanted friend.

Avon and their counterparts concoct self-satisfying public relations spin in order to lull their customers into a false sense of social-consciousness. Saying a lot and doing little is good for profits. This form over substance shtick is a common trick that easily fools the liberal. But while some companies prefer to launch meaningless campaigns others prefer to operate in a dimension called reality. To actually reduce environmental strain and simultaneously create these very often dismissed necessities called – jobs.

Unlike Avon the arguments on our side don’t require any ‘makeup’ to sound right.

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