Is the whole "Go Green" thing just corporations being greedy?

Question

How much of the Green Revolution in the media is greed and how much of it is genuine concern for the environment?

Answer 1

Not all of it is greed.  Certainly, there are people who will get on the bandwagon and make shaky claims about "green" or "natural" products.  I mean, hey, plastic is made from oil, and oil is natural, right?  Right?  The same thing happens with diet fads and packages of bacon that proudly say "No Carbs!"

If you consider, however, that most environmental organizations are non-profit and that a lot of energy saving methods are ultimately money-saving for consumers, it takes away from the theory that "it's a big conspiracy to make money."  Besides that, it takes extra effort not to be wasteful, and people would not do that for free if they didn't care.

Environmental concern is an old practice, going back as far as human history (remember, ancient civilizations went to war over clean water supplies).  It is the throw-away culture that is relatively new (the last 100 years or so), and it is going out of style for obvious reasons.

Answer 2

The green is from your pocket to mine.

Answer 3

Not sure I get the question, but it's a topic I'm interested in so I'll answer. Being green to me is just reducing our footprint on the earth for future generations. It's immoral to waste resources. The media is just notifying us that there are issues with our planet. How corporations fit into this interaction I'm not entirely sure.

Answer 4

On the part of corporations it's not greed but it is financial, it's hard to claim a corporation is greedy since that's a human motivation and a corporation isn't a human being. The directors and management may seem greedy but that's nothing more than self-interest, they want to maximize profits the same way your paperboy or surgeon does, neither would perform their duties if they didn't get paid to do so.

Obviously, GE owns Universal and NBC and they're at the very forefront of this and you could easily argue that's a conflict of interest. Promoting products made by their parent company without revealing that relationship would have ended with mass firings just a few decades ago, but now it's a matter of course.

Their financial interest is two-fold. One is selling green products themselves, a direct profit motive. The other is to curry favor with those concerned about the environment, to engender goodwill and future sales. Less direct but maybe an even bigger motivator in the long run. Nobody wants to be boycotted or labeled a polluter or heartless profiteer.

The problem is that any rush to action is filled with risks. The sudden transition to compact fluorescent bulbs is a case in point. Yes, they use a lot less energy which is good and they last much longer, also good. But they contain trace amounts of mercury so when they end up in landfills that mercury will leach out, possibly contaminating water supplies. Even a small amount of mercury is very damaging to infants and babies and it doesn't take much to threaten an adult. So are we causing enormous problems for people 20 years down the line? Probably, but it makes us feel better to do something now so it's popular. This is the same thinking that led us to the state we're now in, we're just perpetuating the same problem and foisting it off onto a future generation.

Answer 5

A little from column A, a little from column B.

I think what you have to remember is that corporations are always going to cash in on whatever they can. If they see good hearted people genuinely trying to make the world a better place, then they are going to try and cash in on that.

I think that there is alot of corporate green washing when it comes to products and marketing. However, I do believe that when it comes to the people, that they are actually generally concerned for the environment. They have just been so conditioned by their culture to look for a way to buy their way out of the problem, and corporate interests are all to happy to oblige them.