To many environmentalists, the Blue Marble symbolized Earth’s fragile, vulnerable, and unique position as the only known planet teeming with life in a void of dark and lifeless space. The image barely predates the 1975 discovery of the ESB—a being that is similarly portrayed as fragile and vulnerable within a threatening concrete jungle. Using 1970s-style cinematography and imagery, the Chevron commercial reenacts a hippy hiker discovering the butterfly near the refinery. The stylistic choices evoke an ironic nostalgia for a time when the modern environmental movement was garnering increased public attention. This era coincided with the tarnishing of the oil industry’s public reputation due to the fallout from the 1973 oil embargo. The narrator continues, “When these doers [Chevron employees] heard about the colony in their backyard, they protected the habitat and planted the only thing [the butterflies] eat: buckwheat.” The commercial concludes by hailing Chevron employees as “doers finding better ways to do what they do to keep doers doing, even for our littlest neighbors.” A charming clip of a butterfly landing on a refinery worker’s nose is the commercial’s last scene.

Beyond the subtle references to the 1970s environmental movement, the commercial’s description of the butterfly as Chevron’s “littlest neighbor” is resonant of a Christian ethic of Jesus advocating care for “the least of these.” In the Biblical passage, Jesus aligns service to the needy with service to God. This framing creates a parallel between the company’s efforts to protect butterflies and the call to care for the vulnerable and marginalized in society more generally; Chevron’s stewardship can be seen as a form of spiritual duty that serves a higher ethical purpose. This strategy is not only an attempt to enhance Chevron’s corporate image, but also invites viewers to participate in a shared mission, spearheaded by Big Oil, of protection that merges environmentalism with a call to religious-like commitment.

Discourse that elevates Chevron to a benevolent local and global power is also evident in how the corporation describes itself relative to the butterfly’s habitat. On the refinery website, Chevron singles out invasive species, such as California’s iconic ice plant, as a primary cause of the butterfly’s endangerment. The rhetoric frames ice plant as an “aggressive invader” that is “choking out” the butterflies’ natural home and food source. While nonnative wildlife can negatively impact native biodiversity, there is something distorted about this picture. Eroded habitat and land development, not simply invasive plant growth, led to the butterfly’s current plight. Moreover, the refinery exists on unceded Indigenous Tovangaar and Chumash land, which was dispossessed by Spanish ranchers and sold to Chevron (then Standard Oil of California) in 1911. Chevron El Segundo has financially benefited from this dispossession of Indigenous land for almost a century. This history casts an ambiguous light on questions of who or what belongs on these lands and what invasion looks like.  

In addition to conservation of the blue butterfly, a stated environmental goal of the refinery is the prevention of environmental incidents. The website text implies that there have been no substantial “incidents” to date. Yet, in 2020, the El Segundo refinery alone emitted 3,149,711.3 tons of carbon dioxide. In 2021, a nationwide study of oil refineries found that Chevron El Segundo has caused the most severe water pollution from nitrogen and selenium out of the 81 refineries that were evaluated. Emissions and other environmental impact statistics like these do not appear on the refinery’s website. According to the aforementioned commercial, Chevron believes in not losing “sight of the bigger picture,” symbolized by the familiar Blue Marble. In reality, because Chevron is a transnational corporation, its footprint extends well beyond company towns like El Segundo. The corporation’s history of polluting both its local community and the global environment calls their good neighbor status into question.

Despite an abundant supply of petroleum in California, the state consumes more oil from the Amazon rainforest than any other region in the world. In fact, California consumes fifty percent of all oil drilled and exported from the Amazon with half of that amount supplying three refineries in Los Angeles County alone. Chevron El Segundo is one of these recipients; until 2020, the refinery imported the highest percentage of this supply. According to a 2021 Stand Earth Research Group report, Chevron “is connected to some of the oil industry’s worst impacts in the Amazon and has spent nearly $2 billion fighting its court-ordered mandate to pay $9 billion in clean-up and community reparations costs that it is responsible for in Ecuador.” Local refinery operations create devastating impacts for Indigenous communities, forests, and rivers that exist out of sight of El Segundo residents.

Chevron’s decision to displace the environmental impacts of oil extraction to the Global South reflects a broader pattern of neocolonialism in the operations of multinational oil companies—one that complicates the good neighbor image it propounds in its publicity materials. Despite efforts to present itself as a responsible presence in El Segundo, the refinery remains entangled in global extractive practices that carry significant ethical and environmental consequences beyond its immediate community.

Chevron is a neighbor to many—whether one is a Chevron employee, an El Segundo resident, an inhabitant of the Western Amazon, a consumer at a local gas pump, or a tiny blue butterfly. Despite the corporation’s marketing and branding efforts, its actions speak louder than its words. Chevron’s legacy as a neighbor to those it fences in and to those it fences out must be judged not by nostalgic imagery and promotional narratives that harken back to seventies-style PR campaigns. Instead, we should judge Chevron’s legacy by the unequal burdens it imposes on communities and ecosystems near and far.