The problem with being known as the neighborhood bully is that even when you do something great, nobody will cut you any slack.
On January 4th, Wal-mart announced that it was seeking solar panel suppliers to equip it's stores with renewable energy.
And you probably didn't hear a peep about it.
Now I know that Wal-mart is known for all sorts of disreputable practices. I'm clear on that. Got it, right, check.
But come on, this is big. This is getting the year off to a very good start. Supplying 3,900 stores with renewable energy helps validate a critical industry. It opens eyes. If your neighborhood organic grocery store decided to put up solar panels, that would be great too, but it wouldn't make a market.
These are the guys who, when they decide to stock a yo-yo, make a multi-millionaire out of the yo-yo manufacturer. Wal-mart investing in solar will put some major mojo-sized momentum behind an industry that deserves it, an industry that will play a critical role in helping us cut our carbon emissions.
Now, it would be great if Bush would symbolically show his willingness to work with the Democratic Congress by initiating a program to put solar on federal buildings.
It would be great if all the university's sitting on multi-million dollar endowments would spend a chunk of that on solar for their campuses.
It would be great if Home Depot, Lowe's, and Target followed suit. Sounds improbable, sure, but if you'd told me on Christmas Day that Wal-mart was going to do this, I sure wouldn't have believed you.
There's so much potential for this industry, have you ever flown into a city and looked down on all the flat warehouse rooftops and wondered, "Why doesn't somebody put solar panels on there?" Yeah, they can do that, they should do that. We should make that happen.
It would only take an incredibly small tax on greenhouse gas producers to buy a whole lot of solar panels. Some people may call them expensive, but if the low-cost leader is pouring money into them, they can't be all that bad.
In the end, Wal-mart has a long way to go. We need to keep working with them on health care and labor costs, etc. All perfectly valid and perfectly true. But 2006 was the hottest year on record and now one of the largest companies in the world has taken a taken a big step to do something about it.
So maybe we should stop our rabble rousing for a few minutes and just give them a round of applause.