In 1985, one company decided to profit off of the environmental fervor that had pervaded the 70s.

They ran a series of ads like this one.

Do people really do these things just to help an endangered species make it through the night? People do.

The ads were part of the “People Do” campaign, which highlighted how workers were changing landscapes to aid local wildlife.

The campaign was such a success that it ran well into the 1990s, and the advertisements even won an Effie advertising award for green eco-marketing in 1991.

But these commercials had a sinister purpose.

One that masked the environmental pollution and destruction of the company that made them.

Today, we’re going to unpack so-called corporate responsibility and greenwashing: what it means, how commercials and tactics like the “People Do” campaign work, and why corporations like the one that made those commercials don’t care about us or the planet.

The late 1980s weren’t a good time for Chevron’s environmental track record.

In 1985, one of the company’s refineries had just been exposed for contaminating the local groundwater by leaking millions of barrels of oil into the ground.

Then three years later, the company paid $550,000 to settle a lawsuit brought in connection with toxic emissions at its plant in Richmond, California.

Then again in 1991, it pleaded guilty to violating both the clean water and clean air acts, paying millions of dollars in damages.

So, the fossil fuel giant decided to do something about their tattered public image.

Starting in 1985, Chevron shelled out somewhere between 5 to 10 million dollars a year to create the “People Do” campaign.

That’s right, the company behind those nature filled commercials was the oil corporation Chevron.

Throughout the campaign, Chevron payed an estimated $200,000 to make each 30-second ad that marketed initiatives like their butterfly preserve.

The El Segundo blue lives on wild buckwheat on land that's part of an oil refinery.

A preserve that cost just $5,000 a year to maintain.

A mere glance at the price tag reveals where the oil corporation’s motives lie.

But this type of ad campaign is common for corporations, especially large multinationals.

Fast forward to today, and greenwashing, or using environmental rhetoric to boost sales or brand image while simultaneously polluting or destroying the environment, pervades marketing campaigns.

From oil giants like ExxonMobil, carbon capture is important technology, to Nestle, at Nestle we've steward water resources, right down to Instagram ads on your feed.

Each of these companies have a vested stake in misleading you into believing that the product they're selling and ultimately their company is aiding in social and environmental change, but when it comes to greenwashing there is a lot more at stake than getting misled.

From behind his desk in the economics department of the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, the father of neoliberal economics, penned an op-ed for the New York Times.

The year was 1970, and government regulation was trendy in the halls of congress, passing numerous laws seeking to protect environmental and human well-being.

But Friedman saw it differently.

In his view, these regulations were not only bogging down corporations, but they were also forcing businesses to do something that they were not meant to do.

In his view, the only social responsibility of corporations is to turn a profit for their shareholders.

Regulations, according to Friedman, just slowed down the machine of progress.

This is the core of neoliberalism, a theory of deregulation and free-market business that is foundational to American and global enterprise today: Profit above all else.

Which is why greenwashing and claims of corporate responsibility must be seen less as a harmless misdirection, and more as tools essential to the capitalist quest of expanding corporate profits.

Under capitalism, a corporation’s primary goal is to generate profit for shareholders and the capitalist class.

To do otherwise, to carve out space for the environment or god forbid the working class, would mean fewer investors, less profit, and ultimately bankruptcy.

If, however, a company like Nestle, H&M, or Chevron can be seen as working towards the common good through PR campaigns and savvy marketing without having to fundamentally change their business operations, then they’ve protected or even expanded their profits.

But there are also a couple of other reasons why so-called Corporate Social Responsibility and its offshoot, greenwashing, are so insidious.

For one, it rewrites the narrative of what change and climate action means.

BP’s carbon footprint campaign is a perfect example of this.

By redirecting public attention from their oil spills and emissions back towards our own personal carbon footprint, the oil giant made climate action much more about individual endeavors than corporate malfeasance.

We see this again and again, such as with H&M’s campaigns that co-op phrases like “eco-warrior” and “climate crusader” to get you to buy more clothes.

Essentially, these marketing schemes make us think that we can buy our way out of social problems, when, in reality, the very companies we are buying from are causing those social problems.