Green Guerillas Give PG&E A Run For Their Money

03:52 | Ryanne Hodson | Aug 1st, 2007 5:08pm |

A few months ago we did a story about California’s primary utility company, PG&E’s, Let’s Green This City campaign. The green posters were all over the city of San Francisco. Our initial reaction was, “Cool! A corporate utility company is actually talking green!” These posters suggested many things that individuals could do to green their lives like ride a bike instead of drive, switch your lightbulbs to fluorescents etc. But what about PG&E going green? Why weren’t any of the posters advertising how much renewable energy they were buying?

After a while we started to notice counter messages advertising PG&E’s environmental record. Posters and stickers saying “Let’s Greenwash This City” with statistics citing PG&E’s purchase of renewables at less than 4% started showing up on the green posters. This counter message was initiated not by a competing billion dollar utility corporation, but by a group of citizens called “Green Guerillas Against Greenwash“. Their purpose was to counter PG&E’s million dollar ad campaign with the simple truth that no matter how many bikes Californian’s ride, companies like PG&E could make a massive systemic difference by just making cleaner energy purchases.

So far the Green Guerillas have helped ...