April 4, 2006

Enron's heirs

Another blogger advertises the conjunction of green (ecomoney! we put the "eco" in the "economy"! or is it the "con"? o my!). In his new blog, Paul Conley writes about green tags by which consumers may imagine that they "offset" their own filth. Like medieval indulgences, they allow the marketers to get rich but change nothing, only adding their own cynical scheme to the general morass. (Let us pause here to remember that Enron invented the scam of "green tags" to sell the production from wind turbines twice.)

Conley imagines a whole merchandising nightmare inspired by the "TerraPass" decal. An honest sticker might say, "Ask me about my imaginary friend who doesn't pollute." The medium between you and that imaginary friend, however, does pollute -- and takes your money, too.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism