By Rich Kozlovich
History is the paved road leading to future, and it's good to go back and see what happens when people get stupid and become infected with the latest philosophical flavor of the day.
Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company became the “Carbon Laughingstock” in April 2011. For years he shot off his mouth about CO2 emissions and then someone took him seriously, and he found out what happens when industry sides with green leftist loons. Thirteen states adopted more stringent CO2 tailpipe emission standards that was going to seriously impact production, and then he whined about it to Congress. What did he think was going to happen? How stupid can someone be?
When business people get to that level you have to think they are pretty smart. I no longer think so. Apparently they had been listening to the wacky ideas promoted by the activists who have taken over the Ford Foundation. If Henry Ford could see what happened to his company and his foundation he would roll over in his grave.
Somehow they think they are making points with the greenies and their lackeys in government, and they believe that is some way they will get a leg up on their competitors. In reality they are undermining everything they are and everything they do.
No agreement with the greenies will ever be honored because they have no command and control system. Just as soon as one group makes a deal with industry the others will attack both. And there will never be an end of their demands because everything you give them is a "good start"!
This Neville Chamberlain policy of appeasement approach with environmentalists is madness.
That same year Wal-Mart had to give up on "going green" and return to basics "after suffering seven straight quarters of losses, today the merchandise giant Wal-Mart will announce that it is “going back to basics,” ending its era of high-end organic foods, going “green,” and the remainder of its appeal to the upscale market. Next month the company will launch an “It’s Back” campaign to woo the millions of customers who have fled the store. They will be bringing back “heritage” products, like inexpensive jeans and sweatpants."
I remember when Wal-Mart made the decision to go down this road. The pundits all predicted that they were so big that this would alter the merchandising landscape in favor or “organic” and “all natural” forever. Wal-Mart was going to turn the world green. I said then and I say it now, Wal-Mart is today what Sears was fifty years ago and fifty years from now someone else will be what Wal-Mart is today. Get over it!
They did not and will not turn the world green and the CEO who took them down this road should be fired and anyone on the board of directors who supported him should be escorted right out the door with him. The other officers of the corporation should be looked at very seriously also. Unfortunately they guy who pushed this is a greenie who was awarded an obscene amount of money for promoting failure.
I do so hope that those who've been reading P&D will remember that I had said when they went down the “green brick road” that if Sam Walton was alive he would roll over in his grave….so to speak.
It is impossible for “green” to be a good business proposition. Those who promote green and those who promote capitalism are fundamentally at odds. Greenies want to destroy capitalism and capitalists wish to expand capitalism. How can there possibly be any common ground?
The more you give in to the greenies the more they will demand. We shouldn’t be trying to cooperate with ‘green’, nor should we be trying to define or redefine ‘green’. We should be defeating it.
Thinking that we need to be at the table in order to help define “green”, or believing that we will enhance our business image by going green is delusional.
Green is their issue and they will define it the way they choose to define it and your being at the table will be meaningless in the long run. Green ideas have consistently shown that they are bad business because greenies don't have a clue as to what works and what doesn't. Because everything they promote.....doesn't .
In the retail market it is clear much of society is suffering from “green fatigue”; people just can't stand it anymore and don't care because they have come to the correct conclusion that 'green' is a load of horsepucky. I do believe that 'green fatigue' is a phrase I coined and I give everyone permission to use it…..often.
It is also bad social policy because history has spoken! To be green is to be irrational.
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