Greene on Green

For Immediate Release:

"Geoff Greene of Greene Futures announced today that he will be transitioning toward a carbon-neutral blogging model, by hooking his MacBook Pro to a Voltaic Systems solar-panel backpack for clean energy, and buying carbon offsets to reduce the ecological impact of his Blogger server space..."

Well, not really.

But it sounds quite familiar, eh? Yes, everyone from British Petroleum ("What size is your footprint?") to the Miami Beach Marina Sailfish Tournament ("The world's first carbon-neutral fishing tournament") are jumping on the green-wagon. Great news, right?


"Man, Billy-Bob, ice fishing just ain't the same, what with global warming 'n' all..."

Ladies and gentlemen, if I hear another beaming reference to eco/green/clean/organic shoes, toothbrushes or lawn gnomes, I may become green with nausea. And not because my name is Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and consider global climate change the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

No, it boils down to the fact that a pig with lipstick on is still a pig. And just the same, slapping the label "green" on any good or service you durn-well please merely causes apathy and cynicism among consumers.


"'Well BP, I'm gonna need a few more drinks to become
convinced that you really care about the environment"

The environmental marketing company TerraChoice came out with a study last month called the The Six Sins of Greenwashing, which asserts that a full 99% of 1,018 common consumer products are guilty of "greenwashing." That is, these products are far more style than substance, marketing to the consumer the image of environmental consciousness and health without any substantial evidentiary basis. Enviromedia Social Marketing's Greenwashing Index catalogs such "sinners" by having users post and rate ads according to the Index, very similar to TerraChoices's Six Sins metric. Thusly, does a web 2.0 tool apply consumer pressure via social networking in an attempt to keep companies honest.

This is not merely an image issue, either. TerraChoice, in its study, judged the products in question according to existing Federal Trade Commission false advertising regulations guidlines, as well as parallel regulations in all 50 states. In the early 1990s, the combination of muckraking journalists and a regulatory crackdown deflated the last incarnation of this green business trend. At that time, the FTC cracked down on several purveyors and in 1990 A task force of state attorneys general, headed by Minnesota's, Hubert H. Humphrey III, held hearings and issued two reports with new guidelines. The result was a cooling effect on both the producers and on consumer perception of green business that lingers to this day. Might the same occur once again?

Consumers (such as myself) are overtired of hearing green claims shoved down their throats from all angles. Canadian market research company Ipsos Reid published a report last October finding that 70% of Americans and 65% of Canadians say green labeling is "just a marketing tactic."

EcoAlign's 2007 EcoPinion Survey found among the 54% of consumers who haven’t already adopted green technology, they perceive it to be “ugly,” “expensive,” and “difficult to understand and maintain.” In other words, potential converts are quite skeptical, and have generally negative feelings towards green products and services.

According to IBM Global Business Services' Plugging in the Consumer: Innovating utility business models for the future (2007), only 15% of Americans have quantified their “carbon footprint,” despite widespread attention given to the fad.

Even green energy, the most talked-about and well-financed wing of the green business movement, still leaves consumers scratching their heads. According to the same 2007 EcoPinion Survey, 30% of consumers don’t know what “clean energy” is at all. Only 13% of the studied think energy efficiency has to do with saving money or cutting down on fuel costs.

What does this all mean for you?

• Transition to green business for pure marketing value is a waste of time and money. Consumers are confused and skeptical. Worse still, you may likely incur the regulatory wrath of Uncle Sam (or "the Governator").

• If you do do it, it should be for cold hard dollars and cents. You can witness dramatic savings in production, operation and distribution costs through increases in efficiency and decreases in waste. Ernst & Young speculates that rising energy costs and efficiency will drive the green business trend. When energy costs rise--and $100/barrel oil is only the beginning--so do the competitive advantages of efficiency. Furthermore, you can reap opportunity for growth if you are the first to a developing market. Guess who the richest man in China is right now? None other that Shi Zhengrong of Suntech Power, who made his billions by selling cheap solar panels worldwide.

• Don't even include your marketing department. Leave this one to the bean counters and the engineers. The "boy who cried wolf effect" assures that even the most sincere and substantial efforts will be viewed with skepticism if you market them to forcibly. The type of consumers whom you can impress through your efforts are information-savvy, and will discover what you've done themselves. Be nuanced, and allow your actions (not words) to matriculate through the infosphere via word-of-mouth and third-party reports (newspapers, magazines, television shows and blogs).

So remember, aspiring enterprise environmentalists, get real before you go green!

Hoya Philosopher-Kings: Epologue

In retrospect, getting dragged into an email flame war with right-wing talk-radio host John Ziegler was not only juvenile, but completely irrelevant to the purpose of Greene Futures. Many apologies to my wonderful readers especially, but also to Mr. Ziegler. He is what he is, and is entitled to his opinions, no matter how bigoted I consider them. And Greene Futures is certainly not the place to seek for monsters to destroy.

Thusly, in the future, Greene Futures will be resolutely dedicated to the future. Leave the politicking to the present.

Best regards,

Geoff Greene

Hoya Philosopher-Kings

Today's entry is addressed primarily to my alumni peers, but will be of interest to anyone interested in what leaders and ideas emerge from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, former stomping ground of President William Jefferson Clinton, and many other Future Leaders of the Free World:

The Atlantic Monthly, which in my humble opinion is one of the two top magazines in the United States (standing shoulder-to-shoulder with The New Yorker), just opened its website to non-subscribers, as well as its archives back to its genesis as an abolitionist paper in the mid-19th Century. Here is a very interesting 2005 article about fellow Hoya and (former) radio host John Ziegler, which gives an enlightening glimpse into the world of right-wing talk radio:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200504/wallace



That being a medium that the more liberal populace is only vaguely aware, and totally unacquainted with directly. However, in its aggregate, this crackling chorus of immigrant-bashing, "Islamo-fascism" rabble-rousing, Bible-thumping, shout-you-out-of-the-room "straight talk" is the bass-line of propaganda which delivers a pre-chewed spoonful of opinions to half of the electorate every morning. The faithfully regurgitated refrain "Rush [Limbaugh] is right" is code for the unquestioning fervor with which devotees of these modern-day Joseph Goebbels demure to he loudest voice they can find on the AM spectrum. Concerning Mr. Ziegler, it is interesting to consider how a "recovering Catholic" who studied government and philosophy on the Hilltop would court an opinion of "the Arab world" as follows:

"We're not perfect, we suck a lot of the time, but we are better as a people, as a culture, and as a society than they are, and we need to recognize that, so that we can possibly even begin to deal with the evil that we are facing."

Now, Mr. Ziegler graduated in 1989. I wonder how many Georgetown graduates have carried such zealous ideas into the seats of power from that era, and how many might exit Healy Gates thinking the same today? Does a Catholic institution, which is based upon the continuing Vatican ideology of the "One True Church," encourage such feelings of cultural supremacy? Has this the oldest university in Washington, DC, which traces its genesis to the birth of the Constitution in 1789, inherited and fostered the old Puritan conception of the "New American Israel" carrying out God's Divine Plan in the world?


Cotton Mather (1663-1728), influential American Puritan, Salem Witch Trial rabble-rouser, and author of Theopolis Americana: An Essay on the Golden Street of the Holy City and The Negro Christianized: An Essay to Excite and Assist that Good Work, the Instruction of Negro-Servants in Christianity (PDF).

The pedagogy of the government department--if it includes references to "the Arab world" at all--tends to do so through the prism of terrorism or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (i.e. lumping the region with Africa as a land of unremitting and irrational ancient violence). Philosophy courses too include mainly Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc. but only peripheral coverage of "Eastern philosophy" (and only then with a quick and dirty gloss). Don't believe me, check the Spring 2008 course listing for yourself. Browse too the government department offerings, and notice the consistent theme of "security" among almost all courses concerning Asia, Africa or the Middle East. In fairness, the School of Foreign Service (which does not house Mr. Ziegler's government or philosophy majors) offers several more nuanced courses--to those who seek them.


This is what all Arabs look like, even when showering.

Would the average undergraduate take a course on the great Islamic philosophers, or appreciate the pan-Mediterranean development of what we now consider to be "Western" thought? Where would men like John Ziegler learn that while the post-Roman European continent effectively lost literacy for a full millennium, the Islamic and Jewish scholars of the umma preserved the works of Aristotle and his ancient Greek contemporaries? Where would they learn that until the 18th Century, China far outshone Europe in wealth, power and influence? Where might they connect the half-century of violence in the Middle East with the exploitative and ideologically-blinded 20th Century foreign policies of Great Britain, France, Russia, Israel and the United States?

Where might you take a course that teaches that the world outside the United States and Europe is filled with real-live human beings who work, get married, have children, fear war, pine for peace, eat McDonalds, faithfully tune in to Oprah, and are likely be crying to Atonement ("the most achingly romantic movie since Titanic!") on bootleg DVD as we speak.

For every "Arabist" who steps across the Georgetown stage to inherit the world, there are two security studies graduates who view the "Islamo-Confucian" world (an actual Samuel Huntington neologism from his 1993 article-cum-book The Clash of Civilizations) as a dreamworld of wealth and war. Enticing for her Eastern riches, but alien and somehow unrecognizable. And so these people are more than happy to spread a condescending hand to the "more-rational" few that can be found among the Oriental mass, sending money, advice, and arms to our men in the Jordans, Egypts, Moroccos, Saudis, Bahrains, Pakistans, Japans, South Koreas and Taiwans of the world. Even these--our "friends"--are merely children in our foreign policy family. They are given a yearly allowance of foreign direct aid, and expected to jump when told. As Mr. Ziegler stated (with refreshing candor, at least), "we are better as a people, as a culture, and as a society," and only we can deserve the responsibility of democracy. Thus, it is no coincidence that our primary allies in the Arab world are monarchies and dictatorships, and our nominal enemies are in the more democratic elements in the area (Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine). In the global Platonic Republic, the United States comprises the philosopher-kings and warriors of the guardian class, along with the elites of our client states acting as middle-management. The oil fields and trinket factories of the East are populated by the inferior producer class who's role it is to create wealth to support the guardian class, but who lack the ability and education to direct their own destiny.

I don't perceive that a standard Georgetown education would do anything to contradict this worldview. If anything, I've believed that Georgetown's self-aware role is to educate the American philosopher-kings, as well as their viceroy elites abroad. My Jordanian friend offered me the (apocryphal) anecdote yesterday that half his country's Parliament was educated at Georgetown. Crown Prince Abdullah II, for one, achieved a School of Foreign Service master's degree in 1987. Our many international students, past and present, comprise a laundry list of elite children from all corners of the globe--they who have the capacity to shell out $45,000 cash per year.

It is not my intent to monger conspiracies, rail against the "Illumniati cabal" directing the world or to indulge in anti-American self-loathing. I will argue fiercely to anyone that among the practical options, the United States is the least-bad guardian of the world. Nor do I blame Georgetown solely for the propagation of unfortunate beliefs among its students. I sought out and found there a wellspring of elucidating knowledge and empathy for the global human condition. But for many, if not most, of my peers, the promise of such enlightenment was lost. For them, the highest opportunity lies in an investment bank.

I don't buy that "we are better as a people." Furthermore, it seems to me that such thought is self-defeating and contrary to the interest of American leadership. I've bemoaned the foolish pride and bravado superiority that has led us into fiascoes like Iraq, that leads us to support Israel in starving the Gazans in the midst of a Middle East peace process. I've lamented how those who would sort the world into a hierarchy of humanity have both undervalued the worth of innocent lives and underestimated the potential of our competitors and enemies. It is not only long-suffering civilians in Baghdad and Gaza whom we hurt, but also our ambitions and our selves.

That great Catholic thinker Thomas Aquinas once said "inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin," and certainly our recent experience would seem to bear that out. Can we learn to practice humility as well as forthrightness? Can we lead by example rather than by force? Or will we become the next Soviet Union, treating the world as a canvas for our ideology rather than a vast land ripe with hope? These values will determine the future of American leadership, and academies like Georgetown determine what values these leaders will embody. Leaders who truly embody the Jesuit promise hold true to both the Ignatian ideals of "men for others" and "men with others." It is the latter that differentiates the loved from the feared.

America: The Future is Bleak

I am not bullish on the macroeconomic future of the United States. Let us cast aside issues of which party will win the presidency next November (though I will go on record to state that it will certainly by the Democrats). Let us pay no mind to the "political issues" of our age: healthcare, taxes, Iraq, terrorism, etc. No, travel along with me for a moment down to the sub-dermal layer of our society's future... Down to the fundamentals. The meat and potatoes of our destiny.

1) America is a free-market capitalist society, with some socialist elements (the Postal Service, utilities, roads, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, etc.).

2) The logic of capitalism is one of infinite growth. All present investments of capital are made with the expectation that the future will witness a larger market to consume the products of the capital inputs. Otherwise, there can be no profit off these capital investments, and rational investors will not apply resources toward them.

3) Ergo, unless the United States' economy is growing, capital will dry up, leaving businesses and consumers with fewer and more restrictive choices for borrowing. Without such ability to take on debt under reasonable conditions, entrepreneurial opportunities will be left to wither on the vine, potential homeowners will not have access to mortgages and homes, and even established businesses will have difficulty mustering the capital to invest in innovation, growth and expansion. Only those economic actors which have sizable amounts of cash saved will be able to finance such expenditures. Considering the savings rate for Americans now hovers consistently at 2% (down from 10-12% a generation ago), this cashflow is impossible for the average consumer. With few exceptions, businesses, especially small businesses, lack the luxury of slapping cash on the barrel for capital outlays. Thus, without cheap and easy capital to fuel it, the economy could "run out of gas."

4) Which brings us to our next point. The American economy is an energy-hungry one. This is evident to anyone who drives to work in the morning. Americans have few attractive alternatives for transportation to the internal combustion-powered car. Only two cities, New York and Washington, DC, offer public transportation systems for commuters attractive enough to display wide usage. Domestic shipment is reliant upon trucking, domestic and international travel rely upon air travel, and the vast majority of electricity generation in the nation emerges from coal, natural gas, gasoline, and oil-fired plants.

5) Every industrial economy relies upon energy inputs for economic output. The relationship between the units of energy required for every unit of GDP is referred to as energy intensity. The United States has a higher energy intensity (more energy required for each unit of GDP) than Japan, most of the nations of Europe, China and India. With only 3% of the world's people, the US is responsible for a quarter of world resource consumption. This is partly due to the geographic difference between the smaller, more densely populated economies of Japan and the European nations, and the larger, more disparate demographic of the United States (making transportation costs more of a factor). More than 80% of the economic output of the United States is produced in urban zones, and this is consistent among other well-developed nations. This due to the "clustering effect" of reduced transportation costs from density, university research-innovation pipelines, more educated pools of talent, cross-over between firms and industries, etc. However, this geographic difference cannot account for all the disparity, because the Netherlands actually suffer a higher energy intensity than the United States, and India and China are large nations as well (albeit with much more dense populations). The important point here is that the United States requires relatively more energy for every incremental increase in economic output than most other well-developed nations. Furthermore, because Americans have few attractive alternatives to cars for transportation, gasoline is a very inelastic good. In other words, gasoline, like food, is an essential good to Americans, and prices do not affect consumption patterns very much. This is born out by the fact that Americans have not significantly reduced their driving habits, despite spiraling oil prices. Energy costs, from the pump to the thermostat, merely eat up more of the American consumer's income.

6) For this reason, the United States is much more susceptible economically to rising energy costs than its global competitor nations. This is exacerbated by the continued weakness of the US Dollar. Consumers shopping for oil at the world price will have more buying power with the British Pound, Euro, or even Canadian Loonie, relative to the US Dollar.

7) This in the midst of the American housing crisis, which is already putting tremendous strain on the American financial system. More and more signs are emerging of an imminent recession in 2008, with the weak employment numbers this week only being the most recent. If world oil prices continue to increase to and above $100/barrel, the flagging American economy is kicked as it is down.

8) Though I've instructed us to lay aside the political issue of Iraq for a moment here, it will play into this scenario in important ways. Aside from the obvious human costs and geopolitical turmoil resulting from the conflict, estimates for its economic cost have ranged from $1-1.5 trillion. The tremendous outlay by the federal government for a war that is costing $1 billion a day is not being financed by taxpayer monies. It is instead being thrown on top the already tremendous federal debt. This debt is contributing to the weak dollar, increasing economic risk, and a strained regime that requires continued confidence among foreign central banks to continue buying up more debt through US treasury bonds. Furthermore, this debt has merely borrowed against the future, with the requirement that it be paid back eventually. The electorate faces talk of a looming Social Security crisis with mass Baby Boomer retirement, plans for universal healthcare, chronic homeland security costs, an inflating defense department budget, and bleeding sores in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless the economy grows appreciably in future years--and tax revenues increase substantially from present levels--the government will be hard-pressed to pay its debts while addressing the expensive concerns of Baby Boomer retirement, healthcare woes and the War on Terror.

9) If the primary owners of America's national debt in Japan, China, Britain, and the oil-exporting nations decide that the United States is a credit risk, they will cease to finance more government debt. Furthermore, the flagging dollar may likely convince more and more nations to reduce their dollar reserves in favor of the Euro, or a basket of currencies. Without enjoying the unique status of the world reserve currency, the dollar will continue to grow weaker. Thus, imports, and energy imports, most importantly, would grow increasingly expensive for Americans.

10) Beyond all the slogans for reducing our reliance on oil imports, increasing energy independence, and moving past the fossil fuel economy, any significant changes will be costly and take several decades. Infrastructural projects to give consumers and businesses transportation options beyond automobiles will take political will, many years, and many more billions. Furthermore, technologies to make solar or wind energy cost competitive with fossil fuels for energy are years off. The "hydrogen economy," if it ever materializes, will take decades to develop proper distribution infrastructure, cost-competitive vehicle offerings, and a cost-effective method of sustainable hydrogen generation. Right now, the vast majority of hydrogen is derived by burning fossil fuels. Similarly, ethanol and biodiesel production right now consumes far more energy than it produces. Since modern agriculture requires chemical fertilizers derived from oil, ethanol producers are literally "growing oil with oil." Since electricity is mostly generated from coal, oil, and gas-fired plants, this offers no way out of the fossil fuel trap. Nuclear plants take over a decade to build, face severe "not in my back yard" opposition, present safety and security concerns, and their electricity is far from "too cheap to meter." The price of natural gas has been increasing right along with world oil prices, and will likely soon be organized into a global market (meaning increasing world demand will bear even more heavily on price domestically). There now exists no viable alternative to gasoline that can match its cost-effectiveness, energy density, and portability.

11) China, home to a quarter of the world's people, has grown 9% per year for the past decade, and shows no signs of slowing. It's average household savings rate is a massive 30%, it is a global creditor rather than a debtor nation, and it shoulders no costly wars or overseas military commitments. The United States spends 48% of all world military spending, almost as much as every other nation combined. China only shoulders a seventh this cost for its military. With endless growth, no debt burden, small military expenditures, and easy sources of domestic capital, China is on increasingly good footing relative to the United States.

Implications: What Does All This Mean?

1) America is a big and self-sufficient enough economy that increased import prices from a weak dollar do not matter much per se. However, increased oil import prices do matter--a lot. As oil gets more expensive from increased world demand, peaking supply, refinery undercapacity, and the weak buying power of the US Dollar, the economy will suffer.

2) Until we are able to transition to a more sustainability energy regime beyond fossil fuels (a generation or more hence), the fossil fuel crunch will hurt the United States, and hurt it more than most other industrialized nations.

3) Transportation costs for both businesses and consumers will be a major and increasing percentage of spending. Finding ways to reduce transportation costs will be decisive. Expect the suburban sprawl of the past half century to begin to reverse, as businesses and consumers realize the benefits of density for energy cost reductions. Workers will choose to live closer to their places of work, and to telecommute more often. Political pressure for light rail options will increase. Also, expect the benefits of the aforementioned clustering to increase, drawing more firms toward metropolitan areas, despite the higher real estate costs.

4) The 20th Century shift from rail to trucking in domestic shipment will also begin to reverse, with the energy efficiency of rail preferred over diesel-thirsty trucking. As demand for rail shipment increases, more investment from the public and private sectors will be forthcoming, increasing the versatility and convenience of rail, and decreasing its cost further. This positive feedback loop will ensure the primacy of rail in domestic shipping.

5) Container shipping will be more and more preferred for international applications, over air shipping, which will only grow more costly. A high premium on fast international shipping will call into question the feasibility of the Just in Time (JIT) inventory strategy pioneered by Toyota and in wide use in global business today. Warehousing costs, though significant, will be more and more preferable to even more significant air shipment costs. Improved inventory models may reduce this problem, but in general the paradigm of expensive real estate and relatively cheap transportation will begin to tilt back in favor of real estate.

6) Economies that can increase their energy intensity will win in the world economy. As energy costs increase, those who can eek out more GDP growth on less energy input will enjoy competitive advantage. For now, this confers much advantage to European and Japanese firms relative to American ones. There are many more variables at play, so this is not to suggest that America will be left behind. However, it will occupy a less competitive position relatively than it has.

7) The United States will face an inevitable and painful day of fiscal reckoning within the next decade. With birthrates declining, the workforce aging, and a glut of Baby Boomers entering their winter years, Social Security outlays will be gigantic. Furthermore, there will be fewer and fewer productive workers feeding into the system for every non-productive retired person drawing from the pot. This problem is far more pronounced in Japan, Singapore, and Europe, where birthrates have now dropped to as low as half the replacement rate (the births per woman required to maintain the population steady). In the US, this fiscal crisis will be compounded by the problem of healthcare (which will be very expensive whether the system is universal or not), the massive federal deficit and debt, and a slowing economy. Furthermore, if the dollar is foresaken as the world reserve currency, and central bankers and investors loose confidence in America's economic future, capital will dry up in a negative feedback loop. With potential sources of capital not forthcoming (from either non-saving American citizens or risk-averse central banks and foreign investors), and with a recessionary economy and large fiscal commitments, the federal government will either have to raise taxes (inflaming the economic distress) or cut back on services to close up the deficit and begin paying back the principal and interest on the national debt.

8) All-in-all, you might want to either demand to your boss that you get paid in Euros, move to Canada, or invest a sizeable portion of your pension or 401K in global markets.