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Unfortunately it is not clear from the article exactly what it is that Wal-Mart plans to do. The author At Harvard Business Publishing says only, "an environmental labelling program disclosing to consumers the environmental costs of making products sold at Wal-Mart". We are told that this has "just changed the game with respect to environmental issues" but we are not told how or why except that "environmental skeptics... are soon to be put out of the picture. And it did not take legislation to neutralize them. It took a principled action by a self interested company."

Does this mean that we no longer need to Cap and Trade? Has Wal-Mart done it all?

Evidently so because the author concludes his ecstatic remarks with the following:

The beauty of the Wal-Mart innovation is that it doesn't ask anyone to change anything except the information that is provided and received. If polluters want to keep polluting, they are free to do so as long as they provide that data on their Wal-Mart labels. And if consumers choose to buy from polluters whose labels they can read, they are free to do so. In theory.

In practice, of course, we know that suppliers will change their practices to avoid embarrassing disclosures, and consumers will think twice about the choices they make. Consumer activists have been clamoring for information.

So, the author thinks we have the perfect marriage of environmentalism and capitalism:

We should applaud Wal-Mart for joining the vanguard and leading a new parade. First for the green program and all that might follow from it. Second for showing that a new model of principled, not just greedy, American capitalism can take shape.

Even the left now sees the triumph capitalism and the superfluity of Cap and Trade.

I should point out that I found the original article on Bloomberg and not at HBP. Can’t post a bloomberg link though.

Remember when though when you attack Cap and Trade you are attacking a system and not what that system is intended to accomplish.

By the way, Cap and Trade as a system has been proven to effectively reduce powerplant emissions (SOX and NOX) in a market-based cost-effective manner. Your real bone of contention is with the need to reduce CO2 emissions at all. By attacking the system rather than the goals of the system you are implicitly agreeing that the goals are correct, but the system is the wrong one. Thus, if you don’t think CO2 needs to be controlled, you let the left win by saying their goals are correct, but their system is wrong becaues they can always find an alternative system.

There are SO many points in this article to pick apart. He pretty much hits every enviro-wacko capitalism-hating talking point there is in this screed.

The author states that those of us who think the environment isn't a major issue are now irrelevant. I don't HAVE to buy the greenest products. He says that businesses will have to change their practices to comply. Yes, or change their labeling to make it LOOK like they've complied.

He makes the standard Marxist point about a business doing good instead of just being greedy (as if there is no mutual benefit between business and customer, e.g. even though I hate insurance companies, where else would I get insurance if they disappeared?)

This is an ingenious move on Wal-Mart's part. I can see Wal-Mart using this move in two ways. The first (they think) is that it will disarm the left's hatred for them. That's not going to happen of course, but they'll advertise it so much that it will make the left look shrill. It demonstrates that businesses can strike back against activists. The second thing Wal-Mart will do is use this to further beat down their suppliers on price. "Give me a lower price or I'll announce that you aren't complying with our green standards".

Finally, if I'm a Wal-Mart stockholder, who's going to enforce this wonderful utopian idea? Are Wal-Mart profits going to be spent on policing this idiocy? Why should the environmentalists' utopia come out of my pocket? The last is a rhetorical question, of course - we know they're going to take it out of my pocket one way or the other.

I suspect we're going to go from the Left hating Wal-Mart to the Right hating Wal-Mart before long. I just read somewhere the other day that the bigger a business gets, the more a part of the establishment it gets to be. At this point in history, make no mistake, "the establishment" is liberal.