How do you go from green to red? From the youngest president of the Sierra Club, to a corporate-crony at one of the most polluted money-grubbing machines in the history of mankind?
Just ask Adam Werbach, of Act Now Productions, the progressive DVD club Ironweed and the Apollo Clean Energy Alliance Board. He'd whip out a gun and tell you it's to protect the peace (hmm...maybe in addition to Wal-Mart he can sign up the NRA as a client to "improve things from the inside?").
Werbach has joined the Wal-Mart borg, and is actually trying to convince those with the ability to reason that he will change things from within the company. He is working on their "sustainability" project, which means he is somehow under the impression that there is something Wal-Mart wishes to sustain besides high profits and low wages.
Oh, that's right, they will also be sustaining his bank account with a rumored $400K per year fee that should ensure those late night sweats over environmental degradation don't reach a level that would threaten to tarnish the silver plating on his bed.
Werbach whines that many of his liberal friends no longer talk to him. I wonder why that may be (although sadly I am suspicious he is exaggerating). Could it be, and I am just spitballing here, that the company he once called "a new breed of toxin," is now his employer? Perhaps his old friends know the following about his new friends and financial sponsor:
Five of the 10 richest people in the country are from the founding Walton family. But to help the company offer its proclaimed "Every Day Low Prices," workers are paid an average of $17,530 a year, nearly $2,000 below the poverty level of a family of four. Almost half of the children of those associates are uninsured or on Medicaid. In California alone, that annually costs taxpayers $86 million, according to the New York Times.
Score one for progressive corporate governance!
What Werbach needs to realize is that Wal-Mart is beyond improvement and yes, beyond redemption. You want lead in your kids' toys or poison in your food, well then Wal-Mart's A-O-K. As Erin Burnett of CNBC recently said in moment when she let her guard down:
"I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. If China were to revalue its currency, or China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up, and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too."
Yes, such is the symbiotic relationship between Wal-Mart and China, that this is apparently the choice we all have to make. Hey, the Waltons may be loaded, but if it'll save a few pennies, they'll let you eat cake--replete with rat poison and a scrumptious lead-based frosting.
Well Werbach's remaining progressive friends have a decision to make too. As the saying goes: if you sleep with the dogs, you wake up with the fleas.
Werbach has made his bed. It's time for the rest of us who believe in progressive values find our shut-eye in a very different place. Those who really are forward-thinking need to stop working with this man, certainly stop paying him and I would daresay, if you really believe in what you say you do, stop returning his phone calls.
He has chosen to sell out. It doesn't mean we all have to join him in Wonderland.
No doubt everyone here knows that China decided to impose legislation to increase wages, in an attempt to relieve near slavery conditions in many Chinese factories.
And Wal-Mart led the fight AGAINST such humanitarian legislation.
I've seen "price-saver" notices where the printing and distribution of the notice surely cost more than the "one cent" it advertises as having saved.
Think how many pennies Wal-Mart can save by keeping ALL Chinese workers in little cages!
Thanks, Wal-Mart!
Sign up for a Wal-Mart account today! LOL
But how about that guy from Sierra Club, huh?
I guess there are TWO ways one can "Go Green"--
go for the environment or go for the MEAN GREEN, or as Wodehouse put it, the "Oil de Palm."
We can give that Adam kid the benefit of the doubt and say that he joined Wal-Mart in the same spirit that Michael Moore invested in
Halliburton, so he could attend the stockholder's meetings. But I doubt it.
And Erin Burnett, she's a sweetie, but in danger of overexposure. She's been on the tube more than Donald Trump. SO-- in order to have poison-free dog food and lead paint-free toys, the price of imports from China will increase? Is she serious? Who is going to say, "Well, I know the dog food's tainted, and I'll just watch the kids to make sure they don't put the Batman action figure in their mouths. I mean, the price is right!"
Umm... you only need one share, not thousands, to be a shareholder and to attend shareholder meetings.
Maybe one share was to get him (Mr. Moore) in the door, but the rest were likely for profit?
As a side note, it's funny that people who hate the Sierra Club have joined forces with people who despise WalMart. Strange bedfellows, eh? It underscores how our intelligence is sometimes the biggest impediment to meaningful change.
Really really nice ones.
The Sierra Club has had their nose in our nation's business for a long time and we've benefitted from it.
They do care about clean water, clean air and more greenspace.
Are they perfect? No, noone is.
But they do keep track of local and federal legislation and attempt to have an environmental agenda included where possible.
Obviously, their's hasn't been an easy path, lately.
Demonizing the Sierra Club now is just what republicans like to hear.
http://www.womensgroup.org/APPENDIX.html
Prince Charles and the CEO of Wal Mart:
http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/newsandgallery/news/the_prince_of_wales_introduces_the_business_and_environment__2096344589.html
I'm no fan of Walmart. I'Ve boycotted them since the early nineties, way before it was popular to do so.
I still hate them. But. They are huge. If they do more than pay lip service to environmental issues, they can have a huge positive impact. I grudgingly say it's an improvement.
As for the links you provided, once again, these people are talking about sustainable business practices. If they are true to their word, then what they propose has it all over the unbridled capitolism we have now.
Maybe there is hope.
If Walmart was smart, they'd install the solar and start selling electricity.
Maybe Werbachs got a contract for solar up his sleeve?
It seems that if soemthing holds still long enough over there, it's covered with somthing that they can use to make energy with. Why can't we do that here?
Walmart's rofs are a great place to start.
What the power companies (literal and figurative) don't want is to give up control, and what they do want is to charge us what they want for energy.
If everyone had a windmill and solar panels and banks of batteries, we'd need a lot less from the big power companies.
Wanna guess why these bastards push nuclear, oil and coal fired power plants? It's not because we don't have the technology or logistical abilities, it's because they haven't figured out another way to make an obscene amount of money off the public teat with smaller, localized sources of CLEAN RENEWABLE POWER.
Just tell them point blank- Either raise their salaries 86 million, or we raise your taxes to adjust the cost.
Naaah- taxes aren't always the answer... Let's just make healthcare free for everybody.
It could be, for instance, that Mr. Werbach woke up one day, looked into his mirror, and said to himself, "Aha! I'm going to infiltrate WalMart so I can sprinkle magic sparkly dust on the Walmart brood's tails that will instantly turn them into the early adopters of global environmentalism among the rapacious capitalist class!"
Or, it could be that after gazing into that mirror one morning, Mr. Webach thought, "You know, the arguments supporting environmentalism really are intellectually suspect. I'm more and more convinced that the arguments supporting ever-increasing exploitation of the environment make a lot more academic sense."
Or, it could even be that after a long, hard look into that self-same mirror one morning, Mr. Werbach said aloud: "Screw it. I'm cashing in."
I guess we'll just never know.
These folks are part of WALMART's new Green image... "Soilent Green"
What did you mean by "Soilent Green?
Something about "soil"?
I don't get it?
Thank you.