Tears and Praise for Champion of the Green Movement: Walmart
March 13th, 2007I’ve written, repeatedly, that things were going to get weirder than any of us could imagine. Just how weird, exactly?
In 2005, I wrote:
Walmart built its empire by destroying the planet and turning human beings into nutrient agar… And now, Walmart as posterchild of the green revolution?… Watch the idiot Left slobber all over this.
Here you go, watch the idiot Left, greenwashing, enemy collaborator, boot licking, limousine liberals praise Walmart for saving the planet.
I’m getting sick of this issue. I called this years ago. I’ve been right. Enough. (Now I’ll get Becky to duct tape my hands to the desk so I can’t write any more posts about fake environmentalism and clean green fascism.)
Via: Business Week:
In recent years, the TED conference has gained a reputation for blissfully big ideas buoyed by unrelenting optimism. So few conference goers were prepared for venture capitalist John Doerr to choke up with emotion as he kicked off the second day of talks on Mar. 9.
“I’m scared,” he told the audience, looking down at his 15-year-old daughter in the front row. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
Doerr issued a passionate call to action for everyone to make environmental concerns their “next big thing.” As one of several positive examples, he praised Wal-Mart for making great moves to address what he called the three largest energy drains in business—heating and cooling systems, lighting, and refrigeration. The giant’s initiative forced its 60,000 suppliers to focus on environmental issues as well, he said.
I, for one, welcome our clean, green fascist overlords. May I keep my hybrid SUV with custom iPod interface, man?
HA. Matt J has the idea.
I think a lot of people have grown very comfortable with the idea that protecting the environment is a “liberal” value. Historically, there may have been some truth to that, but the two don’t intrinsically go together any more than capitalism and democracy do.
We’ve been trained to associate ideas that have nothing to do with each other. We hear the bell and the saliva ducts know what to do.
We need to be able to break these ideas apart and pick and choose the things we support and the things we oppose. Life is not black and white — I can hate Walmart for a hundred reasons, hate them overall in fact, but still recognize that some good is being done if they adopt “greener” policies.
This sudden environmental concern (about topics that a lot of people have been yelling about for years) is a doomed, self-serving grasp at legitimacy and survival by questionable institutions. I’ll be happy if a little good comes of their “concern”, but I don’t believe it will make any real difference in the long run. Ultimately our problems come from the very same place that Walmart comes from.
Sadly, as I’ve recently discovered, Wal-Mart is also one of the few remaining stores that sell canning supplies…
“Ultimately our problems come from the very same place that Walmart comes from.”
Exactly right. My dad and I were working in the garden last weekend and talking about this sort of thing. He appreciates some of the problems that we face, and at the same time he still retains some faith in “the system” to fix things. I told him that the problem IS the system. It doesn’t matter what bullshit green initiatives Wal-Mart makes, because there’s no room for Wal-Mart (or ADM or Haliburton or Citibank or the federal government) in any sort of “sustainable”/environmental friendly/non-fascist world. I still don’t think he got it, but I’ll keep trying.
– Mike Lorenz
Kevin
I consider myself a liberal on the far Left, and I say this will all certainty: I hate Wal-mart. I hate them with gut-deep hatred for the things they’ve done. Other liberals may fall for this idiocy, this ridiculous paper thin wad of chicanary, but not me. There are as many idiots out there on the left as the right.
PeakEngineer -farm supplies stores and local hardware stores still carry canning supplies, and you can always order them online.
I havn’t looked up the word ‘sycophant’ since college.
If Becky is going to get out the duct tape, surely you can have more fun than just taping your hands to the desk.
Thankfully, Walmart’s business model of giant, now-slightly-less-energy-inefficient big box stores in the exurban hinterlands, with acres of hot petroleum-based parking, 10000 mile supply chains to Chinese slave labor factories, vaunted “warehouse on wheels” just-in-time inventory system, and “I can barely make my minimum credit card payments” customers, is utterly reliant upon cheap energy and non-disturbance of a global supply chain.
Their corporate future, as modeled presently, is short lived and even THEY know it. Hence the attempts to green up, which are both “show”/propaganda value, and to reduce costs (the real driving reason). Walmart’s profitability has been slipping recently, as energy prices soared (higher costs for Walmart) and folks cut discretionary spending (fewer sales).
If you do a rapid scan of environmental organizations, you will notice that the PR greenwashing of WalMart is mentionned, and that the feedback is quite sceptical (for obvious reasons)…mostly along the lines of: “conspicuous and vacuous johnny-come-lately PR greenwashing for damage control”, the most conciliatory standpoints being “wait and see”…
Ha Ha! Here in backwards land USA (ASU?) Waste Management landfill is the new rainforest/wildlife refuge!!
http://www.wm.com/
I don’t understand how a venture capitalist is apart of the “Left”…
E,
What don’t you understand about it?
In one instance, I think I’ve failed (until now) to see one of Their Tactics because I’ve been so dedicated to discerning Their Strategy: The reason They’re so focused on collectively forcing humanity to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Carbon dioxide is the byproduct of all human-related metabolic processes,
a. both internal, e.g. the cellular respiration that produces the ATP that provides the cell with an energy resource, and
b. external, i.e. reducing internal energy consumption by externalizing the costs of a particular energy-consuming activity, e.g. using a locomotive device, such as a car or an airplane, to move from point A to point B instead of walking.
In order to surreptiously force humanity to reduce its resource/energy consumption–and effectively subsidize Their gargantuan, unneccesary, and categorically frivolous consumption of resources/energy–They are declaring the by-product of internal and external human metabolic processes an environmental poison, hoping that humanity will be driven–by an irrational “fear of resource-consumption,” born of an propaganda-induced fear of causing more “earth-murdering” carbon dioxide to “pollute” the atmosphere–to halt and reverse its procurement and utilization of resources/energy.
This tactic will undoubtedly fail, which is why They’re going to resort to drastic population reduction measures, i.e. massive wars and synthetic, human-engineered plagues, to achieve Their goal of diminished resource consumption by the public.
I’m 100% sure They will attempt to establish a relationship between these “false-flag plagues” and Their global warming meme.
The penultimate move in the social engineering endgame:
http://goldismoney.info/forums/t118694-john-perkins-new-confessions-and-revelations-from-the-world-of-economic-hit-men.html
p.s.
I’ll explain my assertion, as it is difficult, even for seasoned veterans of Ruling Class Studies, to see the angle:
Everything discussed in Mr. Perkin’s introduction is true, as well as disgraceful; however, the purpose in publishing this EDITED compilation of predatory EHM behavior, as a mainstream-media-promoted account of:
the avaricious behavior on part of the dominant citizens of the Global North as they economically interact with citizens of the Global South,
is not to create a revolutionary force to overthrow the Ruling Class; the Ruling Class is behind the publishing and promoting of Mr. Perkin’s (and contributors) new book.
The Ruling Class profits from instigating conflict between other social groups, i.e. other social groups kill each other and the Ruling Class, to an extent, divides among themselves the resources the previously-warring, now-dead groups leave behind; in this case, They are attempting to:
a. ideologically unite the exploited, disaffected, bankrupt citizenry of the Global North (who haven’t yet felt the effects of said exploitation, but will feel them within the next 2-3 years) with the exploited, disaffected bankrupt citizenry of the Global South (who have experienced economic exploitation firsthand)
in order to
b. foment a cold to semi-hot conflict between:
1. the aformentioned exploited and disaffected persons and
2. the Ruling Class’s institutions of power and control (Multinational Corporations, Governments).
“But why would the Ruling Class attempt to sway the Global North’s and Global South’s publics into attacking the very institutions It uses to exert power and control,” you ask??
And I answer: The public cannot win a war against these institutions; it will attack, but the retaliatory response of said institutions will be merciless, and it will result in the destruction of warring members of the public and the enslavement, as a precautionary measure, of the remaining members; consequently, They will attempt to instigate, support, and use such a conflict, which will begin to unfold in the forthcoming global financial and economic chaos resulting from the manifest bankruptcy of the U.S., to get Their New World Order.
The intro’s last few sentences gives the tactical purpose of the book away:
“How you and I choose to react to this global empire in the coming years is likely to determine the future of our planet. Will we continue along a road marked by violence, exploitation of others, and ultimately the likelihood of our self-destruction as a species? Or will we create a world our children will be proud to inherit?”
My paraphrase of the last few sentences: “Attacking Our institutions=Tragedy (your destruction and enslavement as a result of Our institutions’ retaliatory responses) from attempting to prevent tragedy (public aggressively trying to force said institutions to reform), then Hope (Totalitarian Order).”