Corporations Aren't Automatically Bad

Do you assume big corporations are bad? If you do, you'll miss corporations doing some good things - especially when it comes to expanding markets in ways that only huge buyers can do.

The largest non-utility owner of solar panels in the United States? Wal-Mart. And a former McDonald's executive is launching a new green restaurant chain that could dramatically ramp up demand for locally-sourced, sustainably-produced food nationwide.

Yes, Wal-Mart still does plenty of bad things especially when it comes to trampling on the rights of workers. But it has a unique power to show every corner of America that clean energy and energy efficient technologies make good business sense.

Raw Fisher's Half-Baked Attack

You know the world's gone topsy-turvy when The Green Miles is coming to the defense of Wal-Mart. Maybe I'm still in the Christmas spirit because I'm wearing the nice green shirt The Green Mom got me for Christmas?

Marc Fisher is one of my favorite columnists (next to fellow Fall River, MA native and fellow bleeding heart EJ Dionne), but his blog post today couldn't be more off-base:

Wal-Mart, the company that lefties, urbanites and greens love to hate, is repositioning itself as a friend of the environment: The retail behemoth has announced its intention to sell 100 million of those compact fluorescent light bulbs that cost an arm and a leg to buy, but save lots of energy (and therefore cut your electric bill.)

This will not work, for one simple reason: The bulbs provide only the illusion of light. We shelled out the big bucks--the things cost upwards of ten times the price of cheap but energy-hogging incandescent bulbs--for a bunch of different so-called swirl bulbs and actually lived with the things for a couple of months before, finally, we all realized that we were straining to read, straining to do anything that required what a good old 60-watt Sylvania provides with total reliability.

The propagandists behind the compact fluorescents claim that the new swirl bulbs are every bit as bright, warm and user-friendly as the cheap bulbs that have served Americans for the better part of a century. These folks are--how to put this--wrong.

I don't "love to hate" Wal-Mart. (For the record, I love to hate Paris Hilton.) I support their compact fluorescent effort, and I wish Wal-Mart would take more simple, low-cost steps to minimize its environmental impact. In an age when even the Pentagon is going green, Wal-Mart remains years behind.

I also love to hate critics who make six figures complaining about paying $3 for light bulbs.

And how can a light bulb not be user-friendly? How many Post columnists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Fisher is already getting ripped in his comments section. Please join in!

UPDATE: Of the 37 comments filed right now, I only count three that support Fisher's position on this. Go, greens, go!

The Tipping Point for Compact Fluorescents

Fast Company magazine has an article on how Wal-Mart wants to sell at least one compact fluorescent light bulb to each of its 100 million customers ...

Last year, conversations started in Wal-Mart around the potential of swirls to save customers money on utility bills. "Somebody asked, 'What difference would it make if we changed the bulbs in the ceiling-fan display to CFLs?'" says Kerby. A typical Wal-Mart has 10 models of ceiling fans on display, each with four bulbs. Forty bulbs per store, 3,230 stores.

"Someone went off and did the math," says Kerby. "They told me we could save $6 million in electric bills by changing the incandescents to CFLs in more than 3,000 Wal-Marts. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know I was paying $6 million to light those fixtures. I said, that can't be right, go back and do the math again." The numbers came out the same the second time: savings of $6 million a year. "That, for me, was an 'I got it' moment."

The Shifting Winds of the Global Warming Debate

At this point, even the harshest critics of global warming (like Gregg Easterbrook) are giving up on their argument that the planet is just going through some sort of a natural cycle. The evidence is overwhelming that the planet is warming due to human actions.

The few remaining people clinging to their belief that nothing is wrong have simply stopped debating. Much like Kevin Bacon's character in Animal House, no matter the evidence, they insist all is well.

But many of those global warming critics are now trying to re-frame the terms of the debate, shifting tactics and digging new trenches in the political battle, and environmentalists need to change with the times or risk being caught off-guard.

Republicans who once argued the planet wasn't warming are now admitting that the planet is warming, but that either there's nothing to be done about it, or that the costs of doing something are so high, they're not worth doing. Instead, we should "adapt to inevitable changes."

Corporations are now trying to duck responsibility by painting themselves green. General Motors, famous for being a prime suspect in the murder of the electric car, continues to flog its hydrogen car prototype as proof that it's trying to go green, despite mountains of evidence that hydrogen cars are nothing more than a red herring. And they're still fighting higher fuel economy standards (they haven't been raised in 20 years).

But just because Wal-Mart is now stocking organic products doesn't mean it's suddenly a net benefit to the environment. It's a band-aid on the open wound Wal-Mart has inflicted.

No matter the distractions, environmentalists need to stay focused on what's important. We've played a role in the planet's warming, and we have a role to play in helping return it to balance. It will take major shifts in energy usage and major advances in techology to help that happen. But we have to try. We're already seeing signs of the consequences of inaction.

UPDATE: Another tactic -- don't deny the facts of global warming, just accuse your opponents of being hypocrites.