Adam Werbach makes me puke
I heard Adam Werbach, the onetime boy wonder of the Sierra Club, on Forum this morning, talking about how wonderful it is that Wal-Mart is starting to use special trucks that rely on batteries when they idle to save diesel fuel.
And I have to say: He made me want to puke. I wanted to jump into the radio and slap some sense into him and say:
Adam, Adam: Wal-Mart is the very definition of an unsustainable business. This is company that imports cheap shit made with near-slave labor in countries where there are no laws against putting 12-year-olds in factories, ships it to a few distribution points in the U.S. and then trucks it all over to shopping malls with giant parking lots where everyone drives. Wal-Mart cuts costs so aggressively that its employees go on public assistance, and in the process drives locally owned, independent businesses into bankruptcy.
Wal-Mart represents a fundamentally flawed economic model that is as much to blame for the problems in the American economy as the subprime mortgage meltdown. Money is sucked out of communities to profit one of the richest families in the world as main-street businesses, which might actually serve pedestrians and shoppers who take transit, businesses that keep money in the community and create and preserve decent jobs and wealth for middle-class people, are killed off.
I know Werbach thinks that moving the world’s largest retailer toward better practices is worth the effort.
But you can’t make Wal-Mart anything but an environmental train wreck and an economic disaster, and to even try gives credibility to a truly awful corporation with a horrible business model.
But I guess that’s what happens when you sell your sustainability consulting company to an ad agency.
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Comments (9)
Where are you guys on this?
http://www.presidentialmemorial.org
Posted by Arthur Shotwell | April 7, 2008 10:21 PM
He is definitely an Uncle Tom. I wonder how much he is getting paid.
Posted by expatriate | April 8, 2008 07:09 AM
I agree fully. Equally bad, even though Werbach is gone from the Sierra Club, the groups last magazine issue was full of nauseating corporate greenwashing for Wal-Mart and others.
This led me to one article with encouraging example of state-level action to control big boxes: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/2007/green_oxymoron.php
Posted by Eric | April 8, 2008 08:21 AM
I think it is fantastic that Walmart is going green. I think it will change America's attitudes. I say Go Walmart!
Posted by Barbara | April 8, 2008 09:10 AM
Thanks Adam Werbach. I always knew we could shop our way out of an environmental crisis. Lets all spend our
George Bush extra tax return at WalMart
Posted by CE | April 8, 2008 04:19 PM
Well at least one of Wal*Mart's former inside corporate communications firms got P.O.'d enough after getting shabby treatment. Like a scorned lover, of course, they've got juicy secrets to spill
-- for a price to the highest bidder. Guess they learned something from their former bosses after all:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080410120051.aspx
Try spinning Wal-Mart's waste-mush with greenwash after this stuff flies out...
Posted by Dan | April 10, 2008 12:43 PM
Tim Redmond's response is a typical knee jerk reaction and proves Adam Werbach's point. I suggest really thinking about what Adam is trying to do before casting judgement.
Posted by Joe | April 15, 2008 10:57 AM
others have made the same point i was going to: don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. walmart is such a giant entity that any changes they make will be significant. i can't believe you would rather keep them at arms length instead of trying to tag them in.
Posted by bs | June 9, 2008 11:41 PM
'Tagging Wal-Mart in' is burning the village to save it, and a ridiculous idea that can't possibly work. The whole concept of supposedly forming alliances between the corporate world and environmentalists was cooked up by PR firms in the late 70's and early 80's as a backlash to the environmental movement, in order to fool the public into thinking that corporations 'get it' and have now become our friends.
The reality is that this approach cannot work. Corporate capitalism can not function without constant growth and endlessly escalating competition, which all inevitably -must- completely consume the entire Earth and all of its resources. If capitalism doesn't do this, it will die.
It would therefore be impossible for Wal-Mart to be a 'green' company and any short term window dressing that it puts in front of us, will be just that, an illusion.
Wal-Mart doesn't need to be 'tagged in', it needs to have its corporate charter revoked and then be shut down.
Posted by Eric Brooks | June 10, 2008 11:03 AM