home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Only $6,000 to Go, CounterPunchers!
Annual Fundraising Appeal


We are entering the third week of our annual fundraiser and as you can see, we have a way to go. Many CounterPunchers have responded generously. BUT WE NEED MORE OF YOU. If we don't meet our goal of $70,000 by Thanksgiving we'll have to cut back on everything we do. Our continued existence depends on YOUR support.

We get thousands of emails from you each day. Hundreds of thousands of you visit this website every week. If each page view cost a dollar we'd be flush. But the website is free, and we need YOU to help us keep it going. Unlike many other outfits, we only ask for your support once a year. But when we ask, WE MEAN IT, BECAUSE WE NEED IT.

Please, use our secure server make a tax-deductible donation to CounterPunch today or purchase a subscription and a gift sub for someone or one of our award winning books (or a crate of books!) as holiday presents. (We won't call you to shake you down or sell your name to any lists--even Dick Cheney's.)

To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683

Alex, Jeffrey, Becky, Alya and Deva
CounterPunch
PO Box 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories

November 20, 2007

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Norman Finkelstein

November 19, 2007

Winslow T. Wheeler
Why Congress Won't Reform

China Hand
The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan

Allan Nairn
Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia

Uri Avnery
How to Get Out?

David Macaray
The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements

Dave Lindorff
Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008!

Bill Quigley
Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials

Ron Jacobs
Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie

Sunsara Taylor
Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs?

Binoy Kampmark
Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead!

Heather Gray
Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois

Website of the Day
The Meat Market

 

 

November 17 / 18, 2007

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India

David Rosen
The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery

Mike Whitney
Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

George Wuerthner
Saving the Big Wild

Brenda Norrell
The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent

George Ciccariello-Maher
Of Submarines and Loose Screws

Karim Makdisi
Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread

Marie Trigona
Wal-Mart in Argentina

Valerio Volpi
The Catholic Church, Incorporated

Fred Gardner
The Straight-Ahead Runner

Robert Fantina
The White House Press Office

Mike Ferner
Thank God for the Senate Republicans!

Missy Comley Beattie
The Radical Majority

Kenneth Couesbouc
Circles of Power

Patrick O'Hayer
A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet

Poets' Basement
Davies, Buknatski and Ford

 

November 16, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War

Dave Zirin
The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System

Gary D. Barnett
A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent

Alan Farago
Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption

Dave Lindorff
Two Brothers and Two Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?"

Robert Ovetz
Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea

Brenda Norrell
"Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border

David Swanson
Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate

Peter Letheby
Outside the Box on the Great Plains

Website of the Day
Why Activism Fails

 

November 15, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
Hillary Clinton in Arkansas

Adolfo Gilly
The Spirit of Revolt

Peter Bohmer
10 Days That Shook Olympia

Andy Worthington
The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier

Gray / Derks
Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups

Liaquat Ali Khan
Liberating Pakistan

Dave Lindorff
Where's the Party?

Christopher Brauchli
Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip

Anthony Papa
Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences

Martha Rosenberg
Merck's Big Write Off

Ben Terrall
Thank You, Ehren Watada

Website of the Day
On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies


November 14, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Making of Hillary Clinton

James Petras
Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets

Al Giordano
Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lobby

Andy Worthington
Innocents and Foot Soldiers

Stephen Lendman
Torturing Palestinian Detainees

Fatima Bhutto
Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy

Martin Smith
Norman Mailer and the "Good War"

Jeff Leys
Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding

Website of the Day
Why the Writers are Striking

November 13, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It

Jeffrey St. Clair
Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter

Robert Bryce
The Pakistan Fuel Connection

David Macaray
The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike

Mike Whitney
Bulletins from the Titanic

Ralph Nader
Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers

Nikolas Kozloff
Chavez Blasts the Spanish King

Jordan Flaherty
Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana

B. R. Gowani
Dear Mrs. Bhutto

Website of the Day
Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"

 

November 12, 2007

Vicente Navarro
Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed

Ben Brown
Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father

Omar K.
A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency

Sadia Abbas
The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military

Farzana Versey
Mailer's Miasma

Richard W. Behan
The Political Crimes of Complicity

Paul Krassner
Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert!

Cindy Sheehan
Faith and War

Peter Stone Brown
The Return of Levon Helm

Dave Lindorff
Dennis, You are Not Alone

Website of the Day
Police Attack in Olympia

 

November 10 / 11, 2007

Alain Gresh
Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard

Mike Whitney
For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

Ron Jacobs
A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Jeffrey St. Clair
The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story

Alan Farago
Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism

Binoy Kampmark
When Language Drowns: Torture in America

Robert Fantina
Legitimizing Torture

Fred Gardner
Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The General in His Labyrinth

Nicola Nasser
NATO's Southward Drift

Philip Rizk
The Blame Game in Gaza

Michael Dickinson
Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins

Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties

Paul Krassner
Flunking Out of the Electoral College

Wadner Pierre /
Joe Emersberger
The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti

 

November 9, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK

Mohammed Hanif
Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle

John Ross
Blackwater Goes to Mexico

Mike Whitney
Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate

Tom Barry
In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy

Corporate Crime Reporter
Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care?

Badruddin Khan
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby

David Macaray
The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back

Martha Rosenberg
The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents

Website of the Day
Stryker Blockade!

 

November 8, 2007

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine

William Loren Katz
Waterboarding in American History

Mike Whitney
The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes

Sheldon Richman
Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life

Liaquat Ali Khan
Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers

Marc Gardner
The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes)

Jackie Corr
The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker?

Brenda Norrell
Between Bombs and Border Walls

Dave Lindorff
Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times

China Hand
Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity

Sen. Russ Feingold
FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act

Website of the Day
The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez

 

November 7, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor?

Vijay Prashad
The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf

Alan Farago
To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse

David Macaray
The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey

Charlotte Laws
What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign

Daniel White
Zahid's Story

William Cook
The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby

Website of the Day
Safe Lawns

 

November 6, 2007

Mike Whitney
Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution

Ralph Nader
Who Determines the Price of Oil?

Andy Worthington
The Torture of Ali al-Marri

Pam Martens
Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Dark Future

William Schroder
The Return of Water Torture

Stephen Lendman
Punishing Gaza

William Blum
Cuba and Original Sin

Former US Intelligence Officers
A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey

 

November 5, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer

David Macaray
How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer)

Gary Leupp
General Musharaff's "State of Emergency"

Dave Lindorff
Those Minot Nukes

Ludwig Watzal
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan

Peter Stone Brown
John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past

Michael Simmons
Yo! What Happened to Peace?

Website of the Day
Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students

 

November 3 / 4, 2007

Tariq Ali
Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night

David Price
Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship

Jeffrey St. Clair
Splitsville

Alan Farago
The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class

Paul Krassner
He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards

Rannie Amiri
Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals

P. Sainath
Indexing Humanity, Indian Style

Ayesha Ijaza Khan
Pakistan in a Daze

Robert Fantina
Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran?

Seth Sandronsky
The Politics of Health Care in California

Ron Jacobs
The Bebop of Baraka

Ramzy Baroud
A Case for Arab Dignity

Heather Gray
When Capitalists Get a Free Ride

 

November 2, 2007

Dr. Mary Pipher
Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations

Saul Landau
How Pete Stark Became a Pariah

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as House Arrest

Sharon Smith
A Tale of Two Stadiums

Gary Leupp
Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood

Gregory Harms
The Chorus of Slander on Palestine

Christopher Brauchli
Racism in High Places

Peter Morici
The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit

Dave Lindorff
The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran

David Penner
Zombie Nation

Website of the Day
Fall in Yosemite

 

November 1, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
The Wages of Hegemony

Patrick Cockburn
The Most Dangerous Dam in the World

Dave Lindorff
The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight

Jonathan Feldman
The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South

Mike Ferner
They Met the Resistance in Iraq

William S. Lind
A Question for Would-Be Presidents

Diana Johnstone
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"

Jacob Hornberger
The War on Telephone Privacy

A..K. Gupta
The Apocalypse will be Televised

Lyuba Zarsky /
Kevin Gallagher

The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley

Felice Pace
Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?

Website of the Day
This One's for You, Ed Abbey

 

October 31, 2007

Bill Quigley
New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System

Rev. William E. Alberts
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News

Ray McGovern
Attacking Iran for Israel

Eric Walberg
Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War

V. G. Smith
The Second Death of Guy Môquet

Luis J. Rodriguez
"Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA

Sheldon Richman
Bush has Time to Run the World

Walter Brasch
A Real Halloween Scare

Website of the Day
Boogie Rocks!


October 30, 2007

David Price
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

M. Shahid Alam
The Pakistan Question

Andy Worthington
The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo

Patrick Cockburn
The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba

Anthony Papa
The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws

Floyd Rudmin
What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means

Sherwood Ross
Giuliani and Torture

Website of the Day
The Worst Lobby? You Decide

 

October 29, 2007

Lisa Hajjar
Inside Israel's Military Courts

Joe DeRaymond
The Politics of Lethal Injections

Patrick Cockburn
The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan

Isabella Kenfield /
Roger Burbach

Corporate Murder in Brazil

Fred Gardner
The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner

Farzana Versey
Caricaturing Islam

Stephen Fleischman
The Greening of the Oligarchy

Marcelle Cendrars
The Congressional Rip Cord

Eamonn McCann
Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables

Martha Rosenberg
For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter!

Website of the Day
Campaign 2008

 

October 27 / 28, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Dam That Isn't There

James Bovard
Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture

Ralph Nader
Beyond the Rule of Law

M. Reza Pirbhai
The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming!

Robert Sandels
Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations

Jacob G. Hornberger
Ruling By Decree

Missy Beattie
The Arsonists in the West Wing

John Ross
U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca

Robert Fantina
Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader

Ron Jacobs
Labor at the Crossroads

Ali Moayedian
In Search of Logic About Iran

David Michael Green
What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism?

Poets Basement
Block, Davies and Ford

Website of the Day
Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video

 

October 26, 2007

Brian Cloughley
Revenging Bloodshed

Saul Landau
Portrait of Rudy

Ahmad Al-Akras
Getting Justice in the HLF Case

Franklin Lamb
Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Mike Whitney
Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest

Dave Lindorff
Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

Alan Farago
A Castro Behind Every Bush

Yifat Susskind
Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror

Website of the Day
Dead Life in a Political Prison


October 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Iraq's Environmental Crisis

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homes of the Crash Test Dummies

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fraudulent War on Terror

Col. Dan Smith
The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment

Alan Farago
The Way to Paradise?

Chris Kutalik
The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels

Brian McKinlay
John Howard and the Curse of Bush

Cindy Sheehan
Pete, Nancy, George and WW III

Website of the Day
Support the America's Program!

 

October 24, 2007

Natalie Washington-Weik
White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Suicides

Michael Birmingham
What Happened in Nahr Al Bared?

Corporate Crime Reporter
The Nuclear Democrats

Tariq Ali
Bush's Cuba Detour

Farzana Versey
Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf

Dave Zirin
White Noise

James Murren
What "Support Our Troops" Means

Todd Chretien
Looking Reality in the Face

Martha Rosenberg
What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage?

Website of the Day
Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power

 

October 23, 2007

Ralph Nader
Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric

Lawrence R. Velvel
Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept.

Vijay Prashad
The Nuke Deal is Dead

Bonnie Bricker /
Adil E. Shamoo

The True Cost of War for Oil

Dave Lindorff
Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment

Mike Whitney
The Big Squeeze

Farzana Versey
Race with the Devil

Stanley Heller /
Ben George

Something New from the Antiwar Movement

Marcelle Cendrars
You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive

Regan Boychuk
Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response

Website of the Day
King Corn

 

October 22, 2007

Ishmael Reed
Should Blacks Go Green?

Marjorie Cohn
Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie

Rannie Amiri
Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness?

Diane Farsetta
Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams

Todd Alan Price
Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education

Robert Jensen
The Quagmire of Masculinity

Stephen Lendman
The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers

Jemima Khan
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf

Sunsara Taylor
David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth

Binoy Kampmark
No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections

Website of the Day
Support the Center for International Policy

 

 

October 20 / 21, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld

Tariq Ali
A Massacre Foretold

Jeffrey St. Clair
Greetings from Echo Park

Andy Worthington
The Shame of Diego Garcia

Mike Whitney
Housing Flameout

Daniel Wolff
Play It As It Lays

David Rosen
Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution

Saul Landau
David and Goliath in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
COINTELPRO and the Panthers

Robert Fantina
The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones

David Heleniak
Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm

Joe Allen
Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS

Prairie Miller
Lions for Lambs

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Crash!

 

October 19, 2007

John Ross
Che's Mexican Legacy

Sheldon Rampton
Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda

Rahul Mahajan
A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha

Devra Davis
Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer

Christopher Brauchli
Blasphemous Science

Wadner Pierre
Haiti After the Deluge

Bill Quigley
Jailed for Justice

Website of the Day
Textbook Sticker Shock

 

October 18, 2007

Saree Makdisi
Academic Freedom is at Risk

Meg Dwyer
What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead?

Alevtina Rea
Sketches of Russian Life

Norman Solomon
The United States of Violence

Kristoffer Larsson
Something is Rotten in Sweden

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes are Back and So are We

Website of the Day
Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"

 

October 17, 2007

Steve Niva
Counter-Insurgency, American-Style

Andy Worthington
The Case of Mohamed Jawad

Alan Farago
The Credit Shock

Russell Mokhiber
The New Billionaire-Criminal Class

Sharon Smith
Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered

Mike Whitney
Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman

Robert Fantina
Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual

Chris Irwin
Where Have All the Rednecks Gone?

Website of the Day
Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University

October 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize

Paul Findley
Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby

Robert Bryce
Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts

Uri Avnery
The Mother of All Pretexts

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraqi Genocide

Ray McGovern
What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It?

Norman Solomon
The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

Martha Rosenberg
The Curse of Cymbalta

William S. Lind
Out of the Frying Pan

Joel S. Hirschborn
Time to Boycott Voting

Website of the Day
Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

November 20, 2007

Natural Capitalism

Green is Gold?

By RALPH NADER

The "Business of Green" and "Green is Gold" are among the phrases finding their way onto the nation's business pages and into the advertisements of major corporations.

After years of corporate greenwashing, is this wave of corporate greenmania for real? Is it more than hype when the New York Times marks a recent article with the sidebar "The market tells producers: It's go green or goodbye."?

Well, not if the impetus has to come from stronger regulation or environmentally driven government purchases. Those two pressure points have largely been kept dormant or are de minimis.

When business sees environmental management as saving it money, increasing productivity, becoming more competitive and attracting young talent, the prospect of sustainable policies taking root becomes more likely.

Obviously, it was not always viewed this way by corporate bosses who, not long ago, saw our air, water and soil as their toxic sewers.

There is still a long way to go to "green" the entire supply chain from the mines to the markets.

No corporation illustrates this broad continuum better than the Atlanta-based Interface Corporation-the country's largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer. In 1994, founder Ray Anderson started his company on its goal as a "restorative enterprise," which he described as zero net pollution and 100% recycling by 2020. The company is 45 percent there, he estimates.

Anderson speaks figures in his 100 plus lectures around the nation and world. His company's use of fossil fuel is down 45 percent, net greenhouse gas production is down 60%, while company sales are up 49 percent. Water use is down by a third in its manufacturing and the filling of landfill with waste is down 80%.

"Sustainability," Anderson told the New York Times, "pays in customer loyalty, employee spent-hard cash," plus 336 million dollars in savings since 1995.

Anderson is unique in that what he and his team have done is not anecdotal, but system wide in scope. The news is replete with one large company achieving this with lighting or that with their transportation. With Interface, ecological efficiency is across the board.

Since even a stodgy company like General Electric is moving quickly into selling "green" technology as the next profit center, why are the aggregate figures on hydro-carbon use, greenhouse gases still increasing? Because there are no national missions to take these successful examples-these best practices-and make them a mandatory floor for all companies.

I refer to mandatory performance standards by the federal government-not specific design standards-backed up by specifications set by Uncle Sam, who is the buyer of so many products we all use, for its departments and agencies. These include vehicles, building construction, paper and many other goods and services that could be purchased only from solid "green companies." (See: Forty Ways to Make Government Purchasing Green by Eleanor J. Lewis and Eric Weltman. Available from the Center for the Study of Responsive Law for $10. Mail orders to PO Box 19367 Washington, D.C. 20036.)

Mandatory federal standards and government purchasing specifications brought the people safer cars, higher recycled paper content and greater fuel efficiency for their vehicles and appliances. The deregulation craze of the past twenty-five years ended most of this forward progress.

Moreover, the retarding corporate powers are still going anti-green. They oppose a carbon tax and long overdue upgrades of fuel efficiency and pollution control standards. They want to build dozens of costly, unnecessary, unsafe atomic power plants with no less than 100% federal government loan guarantees.

This overall persistence of corporate intransigence needs to be kept in mind as the blizzard of green announcements by companies continues.

To keep our demands on industry and commerce to become more efficient, productive and environmentally benign, it is worthwhile to quote a passage drawn from Natural Capitalism, a book co-authored by a physicist, a lawyer and a successful businessman:

"Whether through better design or through new technologies, reducing waste represents a vast business opportunity. The U.S. economy is not even 10% as efficient as the laws of physics allow. Just the energy thrown off as waste heat by U.S. power stations equals the total energy use of Japan. Materials efficiency is even worse."

The New Print Edition of CounterPunch
Contains the Explosive Investigation That Rocked the Pentagon!

Stolen Scholarship Devastates
General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

Anthropologist DAVID PRICE exposes how the fabled Counterinsurgency Manual contains a chapter filled with "borrowed" quotations. Price reveals the crucial role in the debacle played by anthropologist Montgomery McFate. The University of Chicago Press is badly compromised. And much more. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now

Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of
"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair



Shop at Amazon.com


 

Now Available!
How the Press Led
the US into War


Buy End Times Now!

New From
CounterPunch Books

The Secret Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy

WINNER OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!


Click Here to Buy!

Cassidy on Tour
Click Here for Dates & Venues

"The Case Against Israel"
Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz


Click Here to Buy!


Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal


Click Here to Order!

 

Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism

 

 

 

 


The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn


Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont


 


CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed

 

 


Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh

 

The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"