No accusations of corporate whoredom are warranted, unless WalMart is paying you for the piece or supporting Grist to win support, neither of which I think is the case.

There's nothing wrong with noting progress wherever it occurs; the point that environmentalists need to remember, however, is this: just as you should resist the tendency not to overlook progress where it occurs, neither should you allow the halo effect to cause you not to note ongoing misbehavior where it occurs.

So, commending Wal-Mart's green initiatives doesn't mean that you stop pointing out that the company is the essence of the unsustainable business--

Wal-Mart is the business analogue of a broad-spectrum pesticide, destroying the infrastructure of whole communities at a stroke, radically simplifying the economic relationships in the community and acting as a hyper-efficient parasite that tends to weaken, rather than strengthen the communities it "serves."  

It depends 100% on radically underpriced and overconsumed energy and encourages wasteful consumption of nonrenewable resources.  It is the essence of sprawl development, paving square miles of America and then abandoning those same sites the instant that its profit targets aren't met (or its workers think about a union), leaving hulking shells and destroyed city budgets.

It demands extraordinary tax abatements and subsidies through its labor policies, both of which have a direct deleterious effect on the environment, as local and state governments wind up devoting more and more resources to provide the health care and services that better paid workers used to get through their jobs.

Where enviros get into trouble is that they fall prey to the natural human tendency not to want to say nasty things about people/companies that you have just praised for doing something right.  That's why co-opting strategies work so well, and that's why there is a cadre of PR consultants who  make a living telling businesses like Wal-Mart how to identify just the right people to please in order to isolate and silence their critics (at the lowest possible cost, and with the least change in the objectionable behaviors).

So here's a cheer for what Wal-Mart does right--and here's to redoubled efforts to reveal the deep brown business model that undergirds the green behavior.

What the hell -- here's a short bit that got cut in editing:Two sets of circumstances ensure that Wal-Mart's delicate balance of large volumes, small margins, and low prices can keep on working. Either could change.

The first is cheap energy; Wal-Mart is in many ways the quintessential product of a global economy awash in oil. Why does it make sense to make products in low-wage Chinese factories? Because it's cheap to fly them over here. Why does it make sense to build gargantuan stores in the middle of nowhere? Because it's cheap to manufacture and transport the materials, and cheap for customers to drive to them.

If, as many predict, energy prices become substantially higher -- or just substantially more volatile -- in coming years, Wal-Mart may be forced to shorten its enormous supply lines. As a general rule, when energy becomes more costly, economies localize and human labor rises in relative value.
I hesitate to be fatalist about it, but it seems to me that Wal-Mart is an inevitable excretion of a cheap-energy economy. If it didn't exist, late-stage U.S. corporate capitalism would have to create it. All the noble urges in the world on the part of progressives won't knock it down -- what will knock it down is the end of cheap energy.

(Obviously I don't hesitate too much to be fatalist about it.)

www.grist.org

I read that same article, only I picked up a copy of the LA Times business section someone prior to me left on the cafe counter.  The wage caps concept is probably the most innovative thing in the policy but it the one that is least discussed.  I imagine the wage cap means that over time one does not get wage increases related to general inflation, in order to get wage increase one must advance in title.  In other words, five years from now the old time employees will make less than the new hires.  Certainly a new model.

I doubt if labor unions work the same in China as they do in the USA.

The "compact form" argument Roberts presents here is articulated wonderfully. And the caution offered by JMG is compelling as well. Both of these represent blogging discourse at its thoughtful best, in sharp contrast to the ad hominem crap being spewed by bloggers venting on Joe Lieberman. Congrats to both of you.

As for Wal-Mart ... As it happens, a close friend, Leslie Dach, has just been appointed SVP there for Corporate Affairs. He has deep roots in the enviro community. Fact is, in his new role he'll have more actual power to achieve concrete results for environmental betterment, on a worldwide basis, than most of us mere bloggers (and some governments) will. People with values we share can make a huge difference in the corporate world (I for one am prepared to accept that corporations are here to stay, like Republicans!) Knowing Leslie, I expect Wal-Mart will be doing more and more of the right thing ... not always, not in every instance ... but steadily.

Tom Belford TheAgitator.net