is pushing to formally and the korean war, which has technically been going on since the 1950s. an act he hopes will help bring pyongyang back to the negotiating table. katrina, you out a 0 dating and a great monday. you can always catch up with all the news on our website address that is our 0 dot com ah, top stories are known to 0. brazil's president has been accused of crimes against humanity by senators investigating his handling of the pandemic, which has left half a 1000000 people in his country. dead. julia bernard downplayed a severity of korean of ours and ignored international guidelines on how to stop at spreading. a draft report still needs to be voted on by the senate committee and could be vetoed and altered. it dropped an earlier recommendation to charge him

with genocide and murder of the process. now is that this report will be voted on tuesday, then it will be submitted to the attorney general. the attorney general was pick my ball so narrow and is usually citing with the government. but what are the senator or might, as these, who presides is the 8 panel on senate committee that investigated the pandemic, that governments handling of the pandemic? what he said, he told us was that the they were going, they're going to try all means of bringing justice in. that means they will try to go to the supreme court and also to the international court of the hague. the taliban says it needs international recognition to ease afghanistan's humanitarian crisis. representatives from the group were speaking in moscow after an international conference with regional powers, including china, india, and pakistan. it comes off to russia, said the group would have to uphold a basic standard of human rights to get recognition as strikes of hit the

capital of ethiopia as to gray region for the 2nd time this week, the government said it was targeting facilities to make and repair weapons, which a spokesman for the rival to grand force is denied. at least 3 people were killed in stripes. on the kelly on monday, the conflict in the north of the country has been going on for nearly a year now. in damascus, 2 bombs have exploded on an army bus, killing at least 14 people and injuring several more. is the worst attack, the syrian capital is seen in years. a 3rd bomb was dismantled nearby, but nobody has claimed responsibility. not long after the explosion syrian government troops shall the town in the northern province of it live heavily killing or injuring civilians. there's the top stories to stay with us on out there at the stream is up next more news for you after that. ah

ah, i am at, let's have a dean filling in for february. okay. and you're in the stream today, a look at big oil and greenwashing environmental groups, se savvy ads and social media from energy companies are distracting the public from the real impact of fossil fuels. should those ads be regulated or even band? if you have an opinion on that or anything else, jump into our live chat on youtube and you too can be part of the st. joining us today, we have jeffrey superman, a research fellow at harvard university and co director of the climate social science network. in brussels, belgium, sylvia pastorelli,

a climate and energy campaigner with greenpeace, and in washington, d. c. rebecca lieber, senior climate reporter, with vox, ah geoffrey, let's start from you know, the definition itself. what is green washing? why is it so problematic? and what does it really look like? sure, green washing is an umbrella term for a variety of misleading communications or practices, usually exhibited by the fossil fuel industry to intentionally or not induce a false positive perception about their environmental performance. so to put it more simply is when an oil company talks green, but ex 30 and as to the scale, it's massive. it's now to one of the dominant forms of public communications or propaganda by the fossil fuel industry. over the last 30 years. just a lot, the 5 largest fossil fuel companies in america. i've spent something like $3600000000.00 on what's called corporate reputational advertising. so, you know,

i think most of your viewers will actually have been exposed to these ads one time or another. right, and you know it's ads, but it's also on social media. of course, sylvia, if you look at the tweet from exxon mobil, we're supporting the goals of the parents agreement with a little gift. they're explaining how they think they're doing that. and, you know, sylvia, i have to ask you, i mean, it seems as if greenwashing, at its most basic, is really just when a company tries to appear more green than it is as we just heard. but what does this morphing into? i mean, how is this becoming maybe more sophisticated? what is the real problematic element? it's a very good question on the think that the tweets that you brought up as an example is great because we're talking about advertisements. and we're used to think about advertisement as, as talking about products specific products. but the advertisement that was seen nowadays from philosophy companies very rarely display a project that they're trying to sell. and it's a lot more than just selling it,

selling the product itself. i didn't, i don't think any of us seen recently a pulse of gas pipeline on a company ad or a barrel of oil. what they do isn't exactly promoting their brands as, as green brands, promoting the company as relevant part of the solution to the climate crisis. which we know they are prim, i'm responsible for and they do this by highlighting climate pledges that have very little basis in i know very there are no very no matched in that day to day business or that these companies. and rebecca, you know, just just hearing that, you know, we have a tweet from mary hagler on foot or saying in response to a tweet from b p. it's not fair that they get to be both the problem and the solution. now on the face of it, that does seem a bit maddening, right? for people who care about the climate or at least odd,

i'm curious in your research in your work, what can you tell us about how green washing and actually impacts the public's perception of what these oil companies do rather than just what they represent. but what they're actually accomplishing. yeah, the examples highlights the theme that oil companies benefit from appearing to be part of the pollution that they're serious about climate change. because that means they can actually be in the room with policy makers and seem like they're being serious on climate science. 9 and by being in that room, they can start to influence really important matters like timelines of how and when we address climate change and definitions like accounts of clean energy and how natural gas fits into that equation. shaping the public perception is definitely important. part of shaping political perception because by appearing serious and like they're talking about solutions they do come of was that they are indeed

a part of the problem. right. and i know i see you nodding their job, you want to add something. yeah, i was just going to build them. rebecca was saying, you know, the strategic purpose of the oil industry is green washing is to make it like look like they're doing more than they really are. and the end goal of that is to lend this industry and or of scientific and environmental authority and credibility. research is showing that green washing is one powerful discourse amongst others. that together creates what we call the fossil fuels savior, framing of the climate crisis. and that's exactly what mary hagler saying and how to eat that they position themselves in a very insidious way as the trustworthy solution and innovator to get this out of this problem. that primarily is associated with the burning of their products and quite odd, even, even just to me. you know, well on that note, we asked several major oil companies to join this discussion, but they declined our offer. so let's listen to, to energy ceos in their own words,

talk about the future of the business. this is ben van burden of royal dutch shell, and bp ceo bernard looney. take listen. oh, the way the world produces and uses energy is visibly changing. oh, but to meet the most ambitious goals of the parents agreement, change needs to happen faster. oh, jealous, becoming an energy business for the future, and it's playing it spot to help drive that change. want to change because it's the right thing for the world. and it's a tremendous business opportunity for b. pete, we're heading to net 0 and there is no turning back. sylvia, you're smirking. i, when you see that ad sylvia, she, that the giggle there, but it's serious stuff. i mean what, what, what comes to mind and i mean from what i'm saying that this is almost the

text that greenwashing, especially from 2 companies that we know are still massively investing in fossil fuels. and i'm sure you have noticed that what they're showing to, to displaying designs is nothing like their business. what we're looking at, what we're seeing this odds is the wind farms and solar panels and the blue sky green fields. and the 1000 reflect at all the reality of what the businesses we have recently, we bring peace and andy's mom. we have recently published a report that looks exactly into the advertisement of 6 major fossil fuel companies . and over 3000 advertisement from different social media platforms. and what these rep with has found is that essentially, almost 2 thirds of all these advertisements are greenwashing. that tease either over emphasizing exactly this very marginal investment that they have in renewables

or false solutions. so what we will call the full solution. so in your mind, this is very deliberate, including the terminology that's being used jeffrey. i see you nodding and i know that your research early on back when this was in its nascent days, uncovered something kind of revealing about where the term carbon footprint comes from. and this idea that we all need to be very aware of, you know, our role, but maybe it's a deflection from, you know, the actual problem. i want to ask you in that, in that video from the c o phrases like net 0 and carbon neutral. what are these words mean to what's not there? right? right. so, so these are thank you for showing those because these are brilliant illustrations of 2 of the key techniques used by green washes, which are language in imagery. so to take language 1st, they use these terms like net 0, carbon neutral. they just throw out tons like the power agreements that make us really start to see these, these communicators in some way consistent with the things they're talking about. but the reality is, you know, as, so if you just mention,

the study after study has shown that no major fossil fuel companies, business models aligned with the parent time agreement. and, you know, just to make it really stuck forever. thing that they're saying about clean energy and change and all that on average, major oil and gas companies today are spending one percent of their budgets on low carbon technologies, one percent over the last decade. and as service thing that's compared to, you know, 50708090 percent focus of the ads. right on those things. they're not investing one . and i was going to ask you to upgrade if you have any other examples as to what this actually looks like. i mean, are they investing and renewable energy is a meaningful yeah, and i reported on jeffrey's report, i'm looking at that invention of carbon footprint. so if you hear about that here, what companies have been doing in the last few years as they faced lots of legal

challenges across the world, saying they're not taking climate change seriously. they're pointing to a very small subset of their pollution and saying that they're addressing essentially their production emissions. this is just a small subset of what the oil industry is actually responsible for when it comes to climate change. really, the biggest impact comes from the products that we consume, like gas, like the gas powering our electricity, coal and oil. but when they're saying they're reducing their carbon footprint, they're talking specifically about production facility. so they aren't looking at the full problem here and that's, that's just a piece of what you're talking about when you saying they're not really taking responsibility for their actual impact on climate change. well, you know, i know that there have been a lot of different attempts to address the way to solve this. what is the way to address this? and some people, sylvia, like yourself and other groups like greenpeace,

are suggesting much like with the tobacco industry, a ban on advertisements, not just for the green washing, but from what i understand, a general band that they shouldn't be able to promote these products anymore. is that a bit radical in your mind? i think that the parallel here is really fitting. i'm with the parlor with the tobacco and we have a product. oh, you know, we have companies that we know are promoting products and activities that we know are harmful. there's that never growing body of evidence that says that, and we know that this is the major cause of the climate crisis that we're leaving at through right now. we know what we should do to address is climate crisis and steel. we see this product, these companies activities being promoted to and you know, advertise at every corner we have done the same for tobacco. years ago i, we knew that there was a product that was harmful. and we simply bond at the advertisement of this product

. and considering the urgency of decline, cries as decline with an environmental crisis that we're leaving. we're leaving through, i think that the spat an idea of bonding would advertisement and sponsorship young philosophy companies. a simply it's fitting it's appropriate 8th each mattress, the level of ed, rebecca, you want to jump in. we have a lot of people are you tube job by the way. also jumping in with questions that are along these lines. for example, hermes saying, do the guess, believe that green washing should be criminalized as a form of false advertising. rebecca, does this make sense to wow, i think, yeah, these are, these are complicate proposals. i think of course, whenever you're talking about something like criminalizing you got into a free speech issues, you can get into kind of how you define what is that, that crossing the line, and one kind of counterpoint to talking about banding. fossil fuel advertising is

just realizing the reality we're in where the fossil fuel companies realize they are not popular. that people don't trust their method gang. so instead, they are also funneling tons of money, millions of dollars a year into advertising, through other messenger. so these might be dark money groups or 3rd parties that where their connections might be less obvious that they are directly funded by the oil industry. or they might be hiring and some of my reporting influencers, who are maybe trusted names on instagram and social media. and trying to get their message out basically through these other messengers that people might actually trust. and i think, yeah, we're talking about banning fossil fuel advertising. it's important to realize it doesn't always fit in these neat boxes. right. and i was, i was having conversations with the, you know, the team i, you know, about, you know, if you been advertising, you still need the gas and you still rely on the companies. and, you know, we have

a lot of different viewpoints on this issue. jeffrey, both in our chat and also a common that was sent to us. for those of you who don't know, there is a new initiative in europe, the european citizens initiative trying to come up with a new, a new law to ban fossil fuel, advertising and sponsorships are, you know, they think this could be a historic barren, much like we saw with the tobacco industry as we've referenced earlier, jeffrey, we also have this video comment that was sent to us from james watson. he's the secretary general of euro gas. i want to get your thoughts at the end of this comment. see what you think. when brands that people are familiar with just doing a lot of work to advertise the importance of renewable energy to them, it helps society understand the needs to be an energy transition. and these technologies do work. and he's saying on he's are reliable and we'll help our, our futures it's, i would say that it is actually necessary for those companies to be involved in forming public about the energy transition that we need to address the climate

emergency. definitely 2 things that stood out to me with that comment. just this idea of it's actually necessary for them to in inform the public. is that what's happening though? are they informing the public or they may be misleading the public? let's be very clear. green washing is through and through a form of propaganda. that's not a radical statement that that's based on my are in my colleagues peer reviewed research that the fossil fuel industry masters of this art with a century of experience innovating and inventing. in fact, these contemporary tactics and propaganda, and they've been winning this communications war for a long time. and so, you know, in my personal opinion initiative such as the, the greenpeace one that you mentioned, oh, really valid attempts to confront this dangerous and misleading messaging. and one of the most important approaches that should be taken today is to confront the climate crisis. just to throw one extra point, you know, looking back at the,

the b p where he was saying there's no going back. and the gentleman just now saying it's really important for us as a fossil fuel industry to highlight 2 of these technologies. i just like to politely remind them that b, b, p launched a $100000000.00 per year beyond petroleum campaign in the early 2000 putting it. so it's just like we're seeing again as a clean green company. and they did exactly the opposite of what the ceo saying they would never do, which is they went back, they stopped investing, they double down on fossil fuels. so there's a lot of books and action. and so i, i think, you know, a natural skepticism about this green washing is perfectly valid. if you take a look, oh, go ahead, go ahead. i see. and thank you. my also done today to do was we just heard again with, you know, we hearing the focus being put on citizens, people having access to the right information so that people, individual citizens can be informed and make the right choices. and again,

here the honors has been shifted from the company to 2 people. while at the same time, we know that advertisement doesn't equal necessarily access to information on the retirement is advertisement. they're pushing, you know, how many we, well what, what this, what this, what these are, what this means. it's pushing a product and the retirement, you know, the big, the real good. the 1st description of what another, huddling is, you know, trying to push a product. no matter how much you actually need it's, it's not about information per se. and again, if putting the blame on consumers, making sure that you and i make the right choices about the dunphy companies and then it just a great segue there. jeffrey, you know, on b p 's twitter account tweeting out right here you can see the 1st step to reducing your emissions is to know where you stand. find out your carbon footprint with our new calculator and share your pledge today. it certainly feels like it's making me

question what i'm doing and what my footprint is. and it's kind of putting the focus on myself as we just heard. still be a say and your research as we reference earlier, you know, they created this term, carbon footprint, and what was the aim back then? how has the, the propaganda, as you call it, of green washing evolve since those early days back in the 2000? sure. and i certainly wouldn't take credit for all of these findings. a number of investigative journalists and scholars have been behind on other thing, the fact that the very notion of a personal carbon footprint was 1st promot isn't popularized by none other than b p. as i said, this part of a major $100000000.00 per year marketing campaign between $24006.00. they did it across all media. they had billboards, tv radio. they made the 1st carbon footprint calculator. they put it on their website and they say, what's the most is a carbon footprint cap case to go find out yours and how you person, you can take action. and so here we are a decade and a half later, a new carbon footprint,

calculator and the same messaging of individualized responsibility of, of course, you and i, we will play a role in this crisis. but you and i are passively guilty into a fossil fuels. i see these entities are actively guilty, actively working to look into this fossil fuel society. and so yeah, my research and others has shown that numerous companies particular we've looked at on mobile. have you systematically biased language in their public communications to fixate on consumer responsibility. jeffrey, you bring up exxon mobil. i know that i know that you informed us and, and many people are remarking on the, the very bizarre reality that is that exxon mobil spending more on advertising. it's research on biofuels then doing the actual research itself. and so, you know, allocating money to say, look what we're doing, but what, what are they actually doing? and, and i, i frame it in this way to you, rebecca, because we have a video common that came in from a lauren mcdonald who confronted the c. e,

o of shell famously, infamously, perhaps at a ted events where things unraveled on stage. take a listen to what she said. greenwashing is so dangerous, because it starts people from realizing that these big pillaging companies do not have our best interests at heart. and we need to fully understand this problem to be able to tackle it. we need to fully understand that these companies have no intention of helping to create a just society. if they did, they wouldn't be continuing to coil over the ground and pollute our world. we need to take the power away from oil companies, especially to be able to advertise their lies to us. rebecca, what is, what is your reaction to that? yeah, i just think of the overlap of how closely related misinformation is to greenwashing and how important it is to have journalism and to have scientists and academics

like jeffrey and putting the word out there and. and taking that close look at language and, and just to give an example of how important language is and how fully agreeing the oil industry propaganda is here is just think about natural gas, the phrase, natural gas, natural implies good and loyal industry has really capitalized on that inherent kind of association with natural gas as this being cleaner, a cleaner technology, them coal, a cleaner source for fuel. so i think it's important to inspect our language, especially for journalists who are a big part of that equation of how to communicate with the public. jeffrey when we talk about language it's, we've spoken about in the past. i'm curious, you know, with the methane of it all, if you will. i mean, advertising ethics boards are saying it's absolutely not clean the science is there, it's, you know, so it is it, is there any way that these oil companies can actually defend themselves and say,

this is not a deliberate attempt to misrepresent these technologies that we heard from the guest from a euro gas saying that they have a right to explain to their audience, to the public that these technologies work, that they're part of the solution. and what can be done outside of banning ads. i mean, is this is where government steps in, i know there's initiatives with an organization called normative in europe as scandinavia, i believe that's being funded by google. where's the solution was the number 11 initiative thing proposed is that fossil fuel had should come with tobacco. the. busy warning labels to alert the public to the fact that this may be misinformed of messaging. actually the, the case in point is, you know, i think one way to do that would be, it would be fair if the industry were allowed to spend a portion of time it's advert. focusing on low carbon technology's commensurate

consistent with the fraction of their spending on those technologies. so they should be allowed to spend about one percent of the talking about solar and wind. but you know, in that shallow g shows i was making quick notes. we saw the song, the source guy, we saw solar cells and we saw a wind farms and we saw one image of a gas pump. so that's about a 4 to one ratio in the wrong direction, right? so very, very interesting, even just symbolically and visually, sorry, i don't mean to cut you off, but, but it made me think rebecca, rebecca, i want to ask you, i mean, we have a kind of potential, unprecedented moment where it seems, i know sylvia is called a historic oil executives are going to be testifying to u. s. congress this month regarding their role in climate misinformation disinformation. what, what would you like to happen at the hearing? do you think that this is a watershed moment? it could be, i think we're, we're at a point where the, the public, it you in the us, i think journalists, i think politicians are realizing that this is the combination of

a decades long campaign from the industry. so we're finally, we're at the starting point of getting those answers. so i wouldn't compare this to kind of aftermath of tobacco, but just at the beginning of discovery of what is under the cover. so i think one thing that i would like to, to learn from these upcoming hearings is the role that the p r industry has also played here. who else is working with royal industry to get the message out there? and that's an important question that's being a good in our you tube job by many of our, i guess i want to ask you very quickly, sylvia, is this historic moment? do you think what's happening at congress this month? i it state. definitely it's. i mean, not the, it did it is showing that that you know, that we are to appointment in time where this conversation are becoming, not just sit radical, same as for it when i had to wait said the bon, that our proposal for a bon right. well, it wasn't sylvia, forgive me,

you say inevitable? it is inevitable. it's also inevitable that we're running out of time. so i want to thank you for joining us. it's all the time we have. we'll see you next time here on the street. thank ah . with the latest news, as it breaks, the president is allowed to impose a state of emergency for 15 days, with the option of extending it for another 15 days without congress's approval, with detailed coverage, with his rights groups in southeast asia say they confirmed about the arrived in reported cases of po, working conditions from around the world government, unsecured agencies up described arisen incident. as with the aim of this table,

i think the country planet is approaching a tipping point in the lead up to the call 26 climate summit al jazeera showcase is programs dedicated to one veiling the realities of the climate emergency witnesses green films documenting the human experience on the frontline planet, at the west report from greenland on how the rapid rate of melting ice is having a profound effect on the population. people empower us why politicians have been filling affected in fighting climate change. folk lines investigate horizon temperatures, appealing a water or in the well, i'll just do a world shows how a community in senegal is dependent on the preservation of the natural resources. the screen takes the fight for climate justice to our digital community and up front. it's hard, demanding environmental accountability, the climate emergency,

a season of special coverage on al jazeera. we know what's happening in our region . we know how to get to plate that others and not, as i said, i'm going or the way that you tell the story is what can make a difference. ah, hello, i'm north taylor in london, the top stories on how to 0, brazil's president has been accused of crimes against humanity by senators investigating his handling of the pandemic, which has left half a 1000000 people in his country dead. i able to narrow down played the severity of corona virus and ignored international guidelines on how to stop at spreading. the draft report still needs to be voted on by the senate committee and could be vetoed and altered. it dropped an earlier recommendation to charge him with genocide and murder, little c to reversible genesis.