NGO's : Don't Try to 'Green' That Company!

Why do people protest when businesses take on polluting practices?

• There is one winning reason, bad PR can be expensive and theirfore can concievably drive a business towards less damaging practices. However it is extremely difficult to push a whole sector in the desired direction; it's a true race to the bottom.
  
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• But, you might say, green business is profitable, greed can be green. I`d agree with this, it can be, however it often isn't in the real world. The real world is defined by the distorting subsidies and political environment.
  

Which leads to my conclusion. We do ourselves a dis-service by campaigning for corporations with a fiduciary duty to maximise proffits to internalise costs, they are externalising machines! This sort of behaviour by greens is a result of neo-liberal indoctrination. Companies do not rightfully hold the power, govornments representing us do, go to those who hold the power to make the change.

So given the option I would rather protest at the Department of Transport when aviation expansion is proposed, not the company (BAA) that runs the airport; and i would rather protest at the department for the environment when coal expansion threatens, not at the company headquaters. We don't have the resources to go after every polluting company, busineses are going to teach themselves about running thier busineses more efficiently, what no other group of society is going to do is bring corporate interests in line with community interest through relavent regulation.

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