Signed. Sealed. Will they deliver?

Photo © Greenpeace/ Eamon Mac Mahon

At ForestEthics, persuading the world's largest corporations to treat the Earth ethically is our bread and butter. And it often starts with a letter.

Today we mailed letters to over 100 Fortune 500 companies, warning that their continued consumption of fuels from Canada’s Tar Sands—the world’s dirtiest oil—puts their brands at risk.

As ForestEthics Executive Director Todd Paglia documented in a vivid slideshow for Grist last year, the Tar Sands manage to combine multiple local and global environmental hazards into a single industrial project—in fact, the largest industrial project in the world. In the parlance of addiction, the Tar Sands are proof that we’re getting pretty close to rock bottom. It’s a giant step backward for a world that is ready to break its addiction to oil.

In today’s letter, we offered a hand in helping companies rely more on cleaner fuels and less on dirty Tar Sands fuels, while also notifying them that a public campaign could be launched against any company that does not act ethically in response to the Tar Sands’ devastating environmental and health impacts. The choice is theirs to make.

Both the sincere offer of help and the legitimate threat of public action are critical, and this "carrot/stick" approach marks a return to the strategies that made ForestEthics’ reputation. As ForestEthics has found over the years, the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ can be a powerful tool for change.

And this week we continued to bring the fight directly to decision makers in Canada. Our report "TARnishing Our Climate Effort: Dirty Oil & the Future of B.C." earned coverage in major Canadian publications, and made a compelling case that further expansion of the Tar Sands industry will wreak long-term economic and environmental damage, not only in British Columbia, but in all of Canada.

Take action to help us slow down the Tar Sands: Tell Hillary Clinton to stop the world's dirtiest oil in it's tracks >>