Friday, July 28, 2006

Wanna be somebody else? Change your mind.

Martin Veitch has this nice article that summarizes an ongoing battle that sustainalists have with executives. The argument has three parts, (a) saving the enviroment costs money (b) it's bad policy, and (c) the money by 'going green' amounts to nothing. I'm convinced these arguments come from the 1970's when Earth First was using thermite to melt bulldozer engines and naked hippies were chaining themselves to redwoods. These are strong mental images. Saving anything green meant paying for items that could be externalized, and even if you did do the analysis the savings was either over too long a period (more than three years? forget it.) or was dinky and could be racked up to CDB.

Martin dissects this in a honorable fashion by pointing out that the world changed over the last 30 years. It's a quick read.

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