05/11/05

Why are there so few people writing about greenwashing?

While articles about other topics relating to the environment appear periodically, the topic of greenwashing seems to get very little coverage.

For example, General Electric has produced a slick web site that professes keen interest in the environment.

http://ge.ecomagination.com

This is the same GE that killed the Hudson River and fought tooth and nail in the courts to avoid paying for any clean up. The same GE that manufactures nuclear power equipment but associates itself with clean windmills. The same GE that owns NBC, which runs hundreds more hours of automobile and oil advertisments -- not to mention stock-car races -- annually than it does stories about the environment.

It seems that the enterprises producing energy and generating pollution need to put on their green costumes as ecological problems become more acute. The emerging consciousness of humanity about the environment is being subtly subverted by the biggest enterprises, which now try to simulate a clean ethic. This cynical attitude is represented in europe by companies like Iberdrola.

http://www.iberdrola.com

The latest television ads about Iberdrola are focused on clean energy, showing us fields of windmills and eagles flying inside our homes. Yet it is worth observing that Iberdrola produces only 10% of its energy with wind.

The important information we should obtain in such web pages like Ecomagination is the real relation between the damage and the repairs generated on earth by such groups. They should be obliged to present a real account of their activities and not to show us a green web page made of flower power and meditation music.

So why aren't more people writing about this? Web-based, non-commercial media can be instrumental in comparing and associating the greenwashing by various mega-corporations, generating useful information about the relationship between corporate activity and the environment.