Make Your Way 6, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

Global heroes and villains • What multinationals can you think of? • What are the advantages of multinationals for the world? • What are the criticisms usually levelled against multinationals? • What campaigns do you know of that fight against the power of multinationals? Read the text and discuss the questions. 10 Read the magazine article about Shell and find two things Shell is often criticised for doing. How does Shell hope to improve its image? 11 Many multinational companies are richer than some countries, and of the 100 largest economies in the world, over 50% are corporations. The sales of Ford and General Motors combined are greater than the combined GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. The six largest Japanese trading companies are almost as big as all the nations of Latin America combined. Making sense of multinationals – Shell As far as multinationals go, they don’t get much bigger than Shell. It has operations in 110 countries and an enormous chain of petrol filling stations, which makes it one of the world’s largest retailers. Shell’s profits in the first three months of 2010 were $4.9 billion – almost 50% more than what they were for the same time period in 2009. But just being made of money is not enough for multinationals in the new millennium. Many of them realise that they need to be seen as being both socially and environmentally responsible. For our money, Shell has one of the worst reputations in both areas. If you’re looking for ecological and human rights horror stories, you’ll more than get your money’s worth investigating the activities of Shell. Wherever Shell goes, it is surrounded by controversy. There are well documented cases of exploits in the UK, Nigeria, Peru, East Timor, Colombia, Chad, South Africa, Burma and Brazil. Shell says it is trying to do something about this. Shell also claims to have successfully reduced the emissions of greenhouse gases from its own operations by 35% since 1990. Of course, since its level of production has risen dramatically over this time, the level of green- house gases produced by its customers has risen considerably. Shell will no longer put money in renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power because they are not profitable. Instead, it plans to invest in biofuels, which Shell says produce lower CO 2 emissions. Shell is willing to put its money where its mouth is: $12 billion into a joint venture for the production of ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil. The company predicts that by 2025, 80% of energy will come from fossil fuels and 20% from alternative energy sources. However, just over 1% of its budget is spent on alternative technologies. We wouldn’t put our money on Shell giving up on fossil fuels for a long time yet. When your main business is plundering the world’s natural 148 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv