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Background information
More about the campaign and the site.
What's
George W. Bush up to?
It was March 20th 2001 when the Bush administration shocked the world
with its announcement that the US was to abandon plans to implement the
Kyoto agreement, signed by President Clinton in 1997. In an astounding
step backwards, the US announced an energy plan to focus on the further
exploitation of US natural gas reserves and to reverse the Clinton administration's
banning of oil exploration in the Arctic Nature reserve.
Responding to international criticism surrounding the increased carbon
emissions resulting from such a plan, Vice President Dick Cheney, who
has been leading the debate on energy issues, has set up a committee to
investigate the further utilisation of nuclear power. In an interview
for US television, Cheney argued that the US needed to build 65 new power
stations per year for the next twenty years, some of which should be nuclear,
which he believes to be the 'environmentally sound way to go.' This is
a reversal of twenty years of energy policy thinking for the US, which
has not licensed any new nuclear power stations since the Three Mile Island
accident in 1979.
Under more pressure to respond to climate change, Bush has also espoused
biofuels, a questionable solution to the problem. Use of agricultural
land for growing food crops signals higher prices for basic foodstuffs
in the Majority world, and threatens to create a situation where communities
in this world countries are displaced from their land in order to grow
massive export crops to fuel the lifestyles of the affluent nations. The
growth of oil palm plantations for biofuels is also destroying some of
the world's remaining rainforests – the most important places for
carbon to be stored, and home to endangered species.
Like nuclear fuel, this move shows the Bush administration's insistence
on adopting market solutions and techno-fixes rather than on challenging
corporations and the American public to stop their profligate use of energy.
NGO
campaigns begin
The response from environmental non-governmental organisations and consumer
groups in Europe was swift. Friends of the Earth organised the sending
of over 50,000 emails to the White House within five days of the announcement.
The Green Group of Members of the European Parliament and the Free Alliance
called for sanctions against the US, including a consumer boycott of the
US oil companies Texaco, Exxon (Esso) and Chevron.
In the US, polls showed that three quarters of the population were unhappy
with President Bush's stance on climate change. US Greenpeace wrote to
the top 100 US corporations, demanding that they state their support for
resuming Kyoto negotiations or 'face the consequences.'
Consumer
boycotts
Very early on, unsuccessful visits to the USA by European environment
ministers showed how little the Bush administration was interested in
dialogue or debate. To the Republican Party it was an issue of power and,
as Greenpeace explained, this left campaigners with little alternative
but to use their power as purchasers.
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"The
American public can register their opinions at the ballot box, but
for the rest of the world, all we can do is register our opinions
via the marketplace."
Gerd
Leipold, Greenpeace International Executive Director
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George Bush raised a $193,088,650 war chest for the 2000
election, only just beating Al Gore's $132,900,252. Campaigners against
political donations in the USA have developed highly sophisticated websites
detailing how and where each dollar of donation had come from. It soon
became clear that the link between corporate political donors and the
Bush administration would give consumer campaigners the lever they needed.
On 7th April 2001 more than 30 UK MPs, supported by the National Union
of Students, called for a boycott of Coca-Cola - a key Republican donor.
And on 12th April Ethical Consumer launched the Boycott Bush website which
initially listed the 'Top twenty Republican donors with global consumer
brands.' Ethical Consumer's website also began to document and chart campaigns
elsewhere.
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"Esso...could
be brought to its knees by an alliance of environmentalists in the
most profound British demonstration of consumer activism since Barclay's
Bank was forced to pull out of South Africa. The biggest consumer
boycott campaign for a generation... [begins]...when Greenpeace
and Friends of the Earth try to force Esso... to abandon its opposition
to the Kyoto climate change agreements."
Observer,
May 6th 2001
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Boycott
Esso
With a public stance critical of the science of climate change, and donations
of more than $1million to the Bush campaign, Esso's US parent Exxon Corp.,
was always going to be a campaign target. Only days before the launch
of the Friends of the Earth/Greenpeace Esso boycott on 8th May, Esso had
been singled out for boycott calls by more than sixty cross-party MPs,
including the former Conservative Government Environment Minister John
Gummer.
Consumer campaigning is showing an astonishing new confidence in taking
on some of the most powerful industrial and political groupings in the
world. Ethical Consumer urges anyone visiting this site who is concerned
about global warming to support the Esso boycott and also to look for
regular purchases in Ethical Consumer's longer boycott list.
Methodology
The information used to compile these tables has been derived from
the 'open secrets' website (www.opensecrets.org).
This US-compiled site includes numerous details relating to political
donations in the USA since the 1980s. The lists here are solely of Republican
donations calculated by Ethical Consumer magazine.
The figures are complex totals which include cash as well as donations
in kind, and individual contributions from Directors.
Figures for donations in the top twenty all refer to the combined totals
of Republican donations from the companies during the 2002, 2004 and 2006
election cycles. It is not strictly speaking a list of the 20 biggest
donors as only companies with consumer brands are included.
Brand ownership can vary considerably between countries. For example,
as of spring 2007, Altria subsidiary Philip Morris was producing Shredded
Wheat breakfast cereal in the USA, while Nestlé was manufacturing
it for the United Kingdom market.
Due to the complex nature of verifying brand ownership, we have only listed
brands that are available in the USA and/or the UK, where most visitors
to this site will come from.
Outside the USA or the UK, the brand names may not necessarily be used
by the companies they are attached to here. However, the information should
act as an alert to consumers seeing such brands in the shops. You may
be able to confirm brand ownership in your country via the company's website.
Alternatively you can contact the companies listed below directly to find
out which, if any, of their consumer brands are sold in your country.
If you choose not to buy any company's products in order to make a political
statement, we recommend that you let them know. That way they will in
theory be in a position to change their policy or behaviour in response
to your views.
The brand list features a selection of each company's most popular products,
but is not comprehensive.
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