This Is Not Progress (Bank of America Goes Opportunistic on Globaloney)
NOTE: This post, and the one that now follows it, were moved to the top for the rest of the evening because of the importance of the topic.
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Narrowly understandable perhaps, but NOT progress (WSJ Energy Blog appears to be free for now; HT e-mailer Kevin; bolds are in original):
Bank of America Going Green
Bank of America, the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets after Citigroup, announced a 10-year, $20 billion initiative to fight global warming with an array of environmentally friendly projects and products.It promised to spend $18 billion encouraging business customers to develop green technologies. It also promised to “launch the capability to trade carbon-emissions credits in order to enable clients to achieve carbon-emission neutrality.†BAC said it plans to spend more than $1.5 billion to reduce its own carbon footprint.
The bank will also develop several consumer products in the next year, including a credit card that, when used, will trigger spending by the bank on projects that cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
Bank of America joins a growing list of companies — including the private equity firms that bid recently for Texas utility TXU — who recognize that it’s actually much easier being green than fighting a groundswell of public worry about global warming. “The word ‘green,’ while it’s still relevant, is no longer the main driver of many decisions to become more environmentally friendly,” Andrew Hoffman, a business professor at the University of Michigan Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, told Reuters. “It’s just smart business.”
Translation: The public has been duped and companies like B of A can’t fight it alone — so they’ll join it. I don’t deny that it makes “business sense” in the current hysterical political environment, or that the Bank probably needs to do what they are doing to be “competitive” (after all, the risks of being targeted as a “bad guy” are substantial), or that there aren’t environment-friendly projects that justify themselves on the numbers (utility costs saved, etc.) — but B of A’s announcement taken as a whole is a sad commentary on just how effective the globaloney (and it IS globaloney) and globalarmism (and it IS globlarmism) have been.
This is not progress.
It should also be noted that B of A is quite selective when deciding which “public groundswell” it will pay attention to. There’s been a huge outcry against issuing credit cards to illegal immigrants on grounds relating to fairness to citizens and ethnic opportunism, but B of A has decided that they can ignore that one — and they will. Zheesh.
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UPDATE: Obviously, we need more people like this to break through the globaloney.
UPDATE 2: Maybe B of A should be more concerned, along with a lot of the other financial-services firms, with its mail footprint. The industry’s “mail footprint” for credit-card solicitations went up 30% just last year. One WSJ commenter says, “I’ll believe this when I stop receiving 10 mail requests for credit cards for them each month. I figure they waste one tree per year just for me.” Maybe they’ll invent “credit-card offer offsets” so they’ll feel as guilt-free as Al Gore obviously does about his outsized energy consumption.
Wait, am I hearing a pro-business conservative question B of A’s right to send out mail solicitations? But B of A decreasing its mail footprint would be giving in to tree-hugging liberals!
Yes, it should decrease its mail footprint. Yes, it should support green causes. Yes, global warming is in large part due to human carbon emissions. The one graphic in An Inconvenient Truth puts this one to bed: it shows how temperature always correlates to CO2 through the last five warming/cooling periods over many thousands of years. CO2 rises and falls…but today it is literally off the charts. Temperature will follow, as always delayed by only a relatively few years.
Yes, we’re in a natural warming trend. It is false to say that this natural trend proves that humans aren’t causing warming with CO2 emissions. That would be all too Convenient for businesses trying to turn a profit at any cost.
Comment by michael — March 6, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
No, you’re not hearing very well. You must have a wax buildup, or need a hearing aid.
I’m saying that B of A is being hypocritical declaring that they are green if they are part of the 30% increase in mailings (tripled in the past 7 years or so). Once they decide to start playing the political arena (a mistake), they’re fair game for criticism as political hypocrites.
I would think it might make sense for B of A to decrease its mail footprint because of low response rates and, I believe, its relative unprofitability, but it’s their business, and it should be their business decision to make in the interest of maximizing shareholder profit within the bounds of the law and Judeo-Christian ethical constraints. Consumers who wish to can opt out of pre-approved offers anyway.
CO2 is not off the charts if the chart is presented for an Inconveniently long period of time.
If it is indeed true that CO2 is going up, that doesn’t prove humans are causing it, or that it will lead to warming beyond that experienced during the Medieval period. No coherent argument can be made that we are in any kind of danger until temps get within striking distance of the Medieval Warming period peak, and even the gloomiest of the gloomy
predictorsliars can’t predict that with any credibility.Anyway, as covered in a previous post, China’s a much bigger “problem†than we are, and will be getting much “worse†very soon. Try to tell the Chicoms to stunt their industrial and economic growth, which though it is too command-and-control for my liking, is lifting millions out of poverty — every year. Good luck.
Hope your hearing has improved.
Comment by TBlumer — March 6, 2007 @ 6:43 pm