Greenboozeled

Dr. Anthony Bradley has an interesting article over at the Acton Institute called, "Greenboozled". He writes:

Being "green" is the new cool. Your family's "green Christmas" and toy purchases from Greentoys.com this season will advertise to your friends and relatives that you care about the environment. But environmentalists are balking. They say that too many companies are claiming to be green and thus are "greenwashing" everything.

Greenpeace describes greenwashing as the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. The deeper irony is that greenwashing was the original tactic many environmentalists used to manipulate us into adopting practices that actually do not sustain the environment. A another term for greenwashing would be greenboozled.

One of the unintended consequences of a greenwashing environmental rhetoric is that being green has turned into a fad. Marketing departments have discovered how easy it is to sell products to people who want to feel good about their consumption problem. Greenwashing works because most Americans do not think about negative spill-over effects, environmental processes, long-term effects on the poor, or the economic implications of allegedly environment-friendly proposals. Simply saying something is green is enough for most of us. Who cares if it's true or if it works? We are satisfied with the arbitrary labeling.

Read the rest.