GE started a big ecomagination advertising campaign. I think that proactively spending to be a net cleaner of the environment by buying up carbon emission permits (where they are for sale) would be more effective than their research spending at abating pollution. But of course, the image is more important to them than the results.

If GE wanted to reduce internal pollutants at lowest cost, it would have an internal tax on GE polluters and provide cash to corporate abaters. The pollution permit trading scheme would decentralize the decisions about what abatement projects to fund out to the individual profit and loss units. That is good public policy for the world if it decides to cut carbon emissions. It is also good public policy for countries, states or cities that want to cut the maximum emissions for the least social dislocation.

China and India have probably reached the tipping point in many of their cities where their inhabitants are rich enough to want a cleaner environment even if it has some associated increases in the cost of doing business. US reached that point in about the 1940s and has been getting cleaner ever since.

I think the campaign may be a flop. It sounds to me like Echo Machination and is a little too reminiscent of HP's Invent! campaign. But they are the masters of their sound and image and they are probably right on the winning emotion if not on the details.

For two takes on "echo think" (fka group think), read this novel-length fictional account, Rigged by Ross Miller, my former boss and czar of risk management at GE R&D. There is another article in today's FT (trial/subscription required after first two paragraphs).

The banning of CFCs didn't become a reality until Dupont realized that they could make a bundle on CFC replacements. I've been waiting for corporations like GE to jump on the Global Warming Band wagon for some time, if for no other reason than to sell reactors and clean up on carbon credits.

Actually, the banning of CFCs (in the US) started long before Dupont had replacements ready. CFCs were banned in spray cans way back in the 1970s.

What ultimately pushed the ban on CFCs was the rather alarming Antarctic ozone hole, and the conclusive proof that it was caused by anthropogenic chlorine. Dupont had shown foresight and knew that the science was such that a ban could be coming, and had been working on substitutes. IIRC, Dupont had been burned decades earlier by very bad PR from munitions sales (in WW1?) and that event had sunk into the corporate culture, which helped them do the right thing.

I think the whole Green movement is vulnerable to marketing/propaganda efforts since most of the movement depends on some degree of emotion (particularly fear) to keep its base motivated. In the past, authority in Green matters has come from academians and activist groups, both which have been hard but not impossible for corporate interests to fake. GE might have some success here, but I think that a divide and conquer tactic would be more successful.

For example, fund groups with vastly conflicting messages. Which threat to Earth do you worry about first? The media is very useful here since they'll readily report alarming threats on the first page, and any subsequent retractions further towards the end of the paper.

If a corporation has a really bad reputation, that reputation can be used as a weapon. After all, if you received a donation from US Steel, even if you didn't know it was US Steel, then you are evil, right?

"What ultimately pushed the ban on CFCs was the rather alarming Antarctic ozone hole, and the conclusive proof that it was caused by anthropogenic chlorine."

Oh yeah, all those sheep and penguins blinded by the excess antarctic UV, as published in New Scientist.

K: I don't know about that, but I do know about the in situ measurements of chemicals in the ozone hole itself (using sampling instruments taken up on a NASA U-2). These results conclusively demonstrated chlorine is the culprit. There is also conclusive evidence that most of the chlorine in the stratosphere is anthropogenic.