“THAT’S THE WAY TO GREENWASH IT”
07.04.2025
⬆️ Mr Punch, now a CEO of a fossil fuel company, pays Scrubby to help him greenwash his latest profit making scheme, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and help cover up the brutal sausaging of a protestor with the help of SEA-LNG.ORG. Look behind you Mr Punch! Here comes the IMO Police.
This morning, on the first day of the UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) MEPC83 (83rd Marine Environmental Protection Committee), IMO delegates and Member States entering the IMO were surprised to be met by a traditional puppet show.
The show contained familiar faces selling even more familiar Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) greenwashing. Greenwashing which will give LNG a free pass to avoid any MEPC plans to regulate shipping pollution – making LNG the go to fossil fuel for shipping (while still accelerating dangerous emissions and obscene profits for the fossil fuel and shipping industries).
⬆️ Mr Punch and Scrubby explain how they’re planning to greenwash LNG at the the IMO.
🔥🔥🔥 Inside the real IMO puppet show Arsenio Dominguez, UN IMO General Secretary, answers questions about Ocean Rebellion’s ‘Punch and Scrubby’ puppet show. When told Ocean Rebellion is claiming the IMO is a puppet show he replies, “We demonstrate our word with our actions.” Well Arsenio you must declare LNG is a fossil fuel to do that. ⬇️
The fate of the Ocean depends on us all.
Our interventions depend on your support.
⬆️ A delegate at the IMO reads a ‘Scrubby Paddle Puppet’ leaflet explaining how LNG is causing health issues all along its supply chain, and how Canadian taxpayers are about to pay for the infrastructure multinational companies require to supply more.
The show, using traditional ‘Punch and Judy’ staging, tells a new tale of how Punch, now a fossil fuel CEO, is struggling to hide methane spillages in his LNG supply chain. Punch has “got rid of nagging ol’ Judy” and replaced her with ‘Scrubby the Greenwashing Sponge’, who is at hand to help him hide the methane and make LNG the fossil fuel for ‘The Future of Shipping’. Punch, violent as ever, makes sure there’s lots of collateral damage as he pursues his greenwashing agenda. He plots with Scrubby, turns innocent bystanders into sausage meat and even the IMO appears as the environmental Police of the sea – a role it shirks – much to Punch’s delight!
Throughout the performance IMO Delegates, Member States and passersby were treated to popcorn served by an usherette. A suited representative of SEALNG.ORG also handed out ‘Scrubby’ mini puppets to wave inside the MEPC meeting.
Mr Punch’s stage also featured a beautiful ‘The Future of Shipping’ portico with greenwashing sponsors displayed on all sides.
⬆️ Another delegate films the puppet show before he joins the puppet show inside.
The performance celebrates the rampant puppetry at large in MEPC meetings. Meetings dominated by the interests of the shipping industry, an industry which is intent on continuing its ties with the fossil fuel industry by adopting dirty LNG as its fuel of choice. This is despite recent research which has exposed the lies of industrial lobbying platforms like SEA/LNG. The peer reviewed research reveals that LNG extracted and exported from the US is 33% more polluting than coal. Methane leaks occur throughout the LNG extraction and supply process causing health problems and the destruction of areas and coastal communities wherever an LNG plant appears. These same leaks continue onboard LNG powered vessels, helping accelerate climate collapse. To cover up this uncomfortable truth the industry trumpets ‘biomethane’ and ‘e-methane’ products that are only 6% of the EU market and even less worldwide (and both still leak methane throughout their supply chains). The industrial scale of LNG greenwashing has converted the UN IMO MEPC into a puppet for the fossil fuel industry.
Read the facts about Liquefied Natural Gas.
⬆️ The devil appears – “Who’s this” shouts Mr Punch. “Trump? Musk? Putin?” Reply the audience. “No I’m not that bad” replies the Devil.
Current Status of LNG and Shipping
Between 2012 and 2018, methane emissions from LNG-fueled ships grew by 150 percent (Fourth IMO GHG Study 2020). Real-world methane emissions from shipping also indicate that the sector’s contribution to climate change is larger than previously estimated. Despite the negative climate and environmental impacts, the shipping industry is projected to witness further growth in LNG demand, with the anticipated addition of about 160 to 500 new LNG-fueled vessels annually until 2030.
We Need Strong Methane Regulations at the IMO
According to the IPCC (AR6), addressing the climate emergency and its devastating impacts on people requires urgently tackling methane emissions in the near term. LNG proponents are gaslighting policymakers about the real size of the climate and health impacts of LNG while jeopardising a survivable future on this planet.
The IMO is the United Nations body regulating international shipping. Currently, no specific international regulations exist for methane emissions from ships. However, several opportunities exist to comprehensively integrate methane into the IMO’s regulatory framework during the Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC83). If this doesn’t happen we propose a more drastic future for the IMO.
Call for action at the IMO:
LNG is a fossil fuel that negatively impacts people, the environment, and the climate at every stage of its life cycle.
We demand:
1/ Methane emissions are considered as a greenhouse gas and included in any MEPC plans to levy a carbon tax on shipping, weighted by fugitive methane’s excess climate forcing capacity.
2/ The Member States of the IMO recognise LNG as a fossil fuel and stop listening to the SEA LNG lobbyists, locking them out of the IMO instead.
3/ The IMO to promote efficiency and the use of slow steaming, capacity reduction and, sail and electrically powered vessels by incentivising uptake in the shipping sector, empowering and upskilling workers and introducing fairer shipping routes.
⬆️ The IMO Police arrive to arrest Mr Punch for climate crimes. He’s accused of sausaging protestors and helping Royal Caribbean, Mol, Citibank, Shell, BP, Maersk (the list goes on) greenwash LNG. LNG causes premature deaths and pollution all along its extraction and supply line and whenever it’s used as shipping fuel. Photo Zoe Broughton.
⬆️ The real Police arrive to investigate rumours of abuse by Mr Punch. “We’re here to save Judy,” the Policeman tells IMO security.
QUOTES
Mr Punch from the Fossil Fuel industry yells:
“That’s the way to do it. All of you whining environmentalists can F-off and eat hummus, I’m gonna sit here conducting my business using my puppets and enjoy my wealth while the planet burns. See ya in hell, snowflakes.”
Clive Russell from Ocean Rebellion says:
“This is an emergency. Our greenhouse gas emissions are setting off a chain of events tipping our environment and societies towards climate chaos. Every moment we fail to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and commodities we threaten the resilience of nature. With every day we fail to act, we approach dangerous tipping points with cascading knock-on impacts. There’s no time to waste, we must act now.”
Andrew Darnton adds:
“It’s called Liquified Natural Gas or LNG. It’s a fossil fuel. The UN IPCC has warned us we need to reduce fossil fuel use – how does building infrastructure to use more fossil fuels help us? LNG is not a solution, it’s just madness. Governments must stop listening to industry and start listening to the scientists, they’re all saying the same thing – CUT FOSSIL FUELS.”
Suzanne Stallard adds:
“The UN talks a great talk. The International Maritime Organisation, a UN body, is unfit for purpose. It’s corrupted by industry and uses its UN remit on behalf of the shipping industry. We’re living in an age of ecological breakdown, the UN must recognise this by reforming IMO governance. We ask the UN to call out its rogue subsidiaries, still more harmful to life on earth than the rogue states we hear so much about.”
⬆️ Arsenio Dominguez, UN IMO General Secretary, arrives at the IMO to conduct the puppet show.
⬆️ We hope the delegates will be waving their ‘Scrubby Greenwash Puppet paddles’ every time they hear some greenwash. There will be a lot of tired arms today!
Photos by Guy Reece, films by Zoe Broughton.