Smart bombs: Not easy being green

Just over a year ago, 10 giant U.S. corporations teamed up with four environmental groups to announce a blockbuster breakthrough on the global warming front. They had agreed to form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership to lobby for substantive changes in U.S. policy in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions and pursue clean-energy technology.

Environmentalists were jubilant when they heard of USCAP’s call to cut emissions by 10 percent to 30 percent in 15 years and by at least 65 percent in 2050.

This might be too good to be true, according to a recent article in BusinessWeek.

It seems that while companies such as General Electric, General Motors, Alcoa and Caterpillar were publicly vowing to tackle global warming, they still belonged to groups seeking to downplay and even mock the environmental threat.

Those companies also sit on the board of the Center for Energy & Economic Development, or CEED, a group that is battling regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions. Four months after the big climate partnership announcement, the CEED board was unanimous in signing a document that called the 2050 target for emissions “draconian.” Many of the USCAP members also belong to the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which recently ran an ad campaign that noted: “Climate legislation being considered by Congress could make it too expensive to heat our homes, power our lives, and drive our cars.”

So what are we to make of this we’re-so-green public relations campaign? Perhaps I should borrow a phrase from Bob Lutz, General Motors’ vice chairman, who recently described global warming this way:

“A total crock of ” … wait, I can’t do that. It’s a family newspaper.

Check the mirror. It’s interesting to watch governments react to ways they can watch us versus the ways we can watch them. The city of Spokane just approved the use of cameras at six intersections to catch red-light runners. I think that’s reasonable, and I agree with council members who found the “Big Brother” argument to be overblown.

But the city, along with just about all governmental bodies, would never allow cameras to record executive sessions. How do we know this? Because it opposes even audio recordings of closed-door meetings for the purpose of determining whether closed-door meetings violate the state’s Open Meetings Law. Those recordings would only become public if a judge determined that the discussion was the public’s business.

It’s certainly true that if motorists don’t want to be fined $124, they need only obey the law. The same holds true for public officials in secret meetings. Funny how they don’t see it that way when they’re in the driver’s seat.