Joel Makower

by: Joel Makower

There's a growing school of thought that unfettered information about the environmental impacts of our world will smoke out the bad guys and help the good guys win.

I wish it were that simple.

What to make of this week's bankruptcy filing by General Motors? The beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? A death? Rebirth? Something in between?

Given the months-long anticipation of this development, much already has been written and said, and many fingers pointed. GM, as Paul Ingrassia recently opined in the Wall Street Journal, made "decades of dumb decisions."  

by: Joel Makower

An updated version of the 2007 report The Six Sins of Greenwashing has just been released. And like its predecessor, this version offers sensational findings: of 2,219 products making environmental claims that researchers found in North American retailers, "over 98%" committed one of several "sins." The 2007 report identified six such sins. This year's edition adds a seventh.

Here we go again. In the run-up to yet another Earth Day, here is my third annual take on the bounty of polling data on consumer environmental attitudes that seems to hit my in-box this time each year. (See here for the 2007 and 2008 installments.) This year is no different. I've counted more than a dozen different surveys, market segmentations, and opinion polls since Barack Obama became president. By my estimation, that's a record.

by: Joel Makower

by: Joel Makower

by: Joel Makower

What is it with pollsters and green consumers? Why do nearly all of the surveys seem so gushingly optimistic, even during pessimistic times? That's a question that's been nagging me the past few weeks.

by: Joel Makower