There’s a reason the right conflates “green” and “Green”

Ever noticed how whenever some shyster releases a dodgy scheme and calls it “green”, its failures are blamed on the conservation movement or the Greens political party? When BHP or the Commonwealth Bank – or News Ltd – advertise some “green” policy they’re implementing, could anyone seriously believe they’ve anything to do with the Australian Greens? (Or that simply using some recycled paper makes a company “green” in any meaningful sense?)

The Greens don’t own the word, and it is easily co-opted by the cynics of the corporate world – and outright crooks – for money-making ventures that the Greens would vigorously oppose: not that it stops their critics from using those failures to bash them. Critics who deliberately conflate “green” and “The Greens” and then, to add insult to injury, pretend that it’s the Greens who’ve fostered that confusion.

When BP changed its logo to one that looks like a flower and allocated a tiny proportion of its resources to “renewable” energy, its failures suddenly became the fault of Green parties around the world.

Senator Christine Milne writes in the Punch today criticising the “Green loans” scheme – a great idea mismanaged into a debacle – but see the name? It’s an ALP scheme to which the party applied the word “green”.

So you can guess who’ll get the blame, even as they’re trying to hold the real offenders to account.