At the Goldman Prize last night, environmentalists from all over the world were recognized for local grassroots activism. It's called the Oscars for the environment - and and greenies like our very own Jessica Switzer got to rub shoulders with eco-advocates from all over. They rustled some feathers, too.

Much of the attention last night rallied around Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza. The two have brought legal pressures on Chevron to take responsibility for Texaco's environmental pollution in Ecuador and resulting environmentally-induced cancers. Fajardo was an Ecuadorian farmer who turned lawyer to take action against oil companies like Texaco, who of course was purchased by Chevron in '01, and Chevron's located just across the Bay in Richmond, CA.

Fast forward to today, and the Goldman award piece has hit all the papers - including Chevron's hometown rag, the SF Chronicle. Quick to launch a full-on PR defense, Chevron also took out a full page ad smearing Fajardo and finagled an opinion piece in the paper.

Heres the ad copy:

The Goldman Environmental Prize honored Pablo Fajardo, a trial lawyer from Ecuador, for one of this year's awards yesterday. Unfortunately, the panel of judges has been sadly misled and given credit to someone who does not deserve to be included in the same distinguished company as past winners. Mr. Fajardo is a front man for a group of Ecuadorian and American trial lawyers pursuing a claim against Chevron. They are the driving force behind a proceeding that has been marred by judicial irregularities, attorney misconduct and interference by the Government of Ecuador. The lawsuit is an attempt to blame the current environmental damage caused by government-owned Petroecuador's ongoing oil production entirely upon Chevron. Chevron became their target when it acquired Texaco in 2001. Texaco had a subsidiary that had ended its one-third participation in an oil consortium with Petroecuador in 1992. Mr. Fajardo has purposely ignored the real polluters, Petroecuador, and has even waged an active campaign to prevent the state-owned company from cleaning up its polluted sites. Chevron employees are angered and offended by their fabricated story. Proof of the deception can be found in a U.S. Federal Court decision handed down just last year. An Ecuadorian lawyer who initiated the case, with whom Mr. Fajardo has worked closely, was fined and sanctioned in San Francisco for bringing knowingly false cancer claims against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorian clients. The Judge concluded: "This is not the first evidence of possible misconduct by plaintiffs' counsel in this case. It is clear to the Court that this case was manufactured by plaintiffs' counsel for reasons other than to seek a recovery on these plaintiffs' behalf. This litigation is likely a smaller piece of some larger scheme against defendants." An honest conversation about the environmental problems in the Ecuadorian Amazon region is long overdue. People truly are suffering. It is unconscionable that these individuals present themselves as environmental champions while complicit in protecting polluters. These are not the actions of someone deserving of The Goldman Environmental Prize.

Chevron also distributed the news via BusinessWire, so pickup can be easily found online.

As a PR shop, what's very interesting for us to see is how the oil giant tries to discredit him - not by denying the environmental effects of the petroleum industry in that country, but by associating the trouble with a third party - pointing the finger at a domestic operation (and a "government-owned" one at that!) by sidestepping the responsibility of Chevron and instead placing the responsibility elsewhere, while faulting Fajardo with protecting a national supplier and trying to push the blame on an American company. Chevron's cry to help the people of Ecuador ("People are truly suffering") seems the final stroke of emotion on a cleverly muscled hit job.

Disavow, distract, disparage. Welcome to smear 101. They look like desperate measures for Chevron, and the PR mess they've walked into couldn't be going worse.

I wonder whether they wish they'd have handled things differently after the merger with Texaco - it would have been a perfect opportunity to have approached the situation differently from the beginning, publicly stated the Texaco pollution as an unfortunate inheritance, and taken steps to correct the problem in a forthright way. They've staked their ground so solidly into denial that it's extremely difficult for them to backpedal now, they're committed to seeing this apparently sinking ship through, as public sentiment turns against them, and the debate brings more people to look long and hard at their record.