Green Inc.: An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad

In this scathing indictment of the surprising profligacy and complacency of some of the world's top environmental organizations, journalist MacDonald, a former media manager at Conservation International, exposes the “clubby, well-upholstered world of conservationists.” The posh headquarters and six-figure compensation of top environmental leaders (from the Wildlife Conservation Society's $825,170 to the Sierra Club's $229,000) gall the author, but she's most outraged by organizations routinely accepting donations from oil, lumber and mining industries and corporate behemoths such as Wal-Mart without holding them accountable for ongoing pollution practices. MacDonald singles out BP's “Beyond Petroleum” campaign as a particularly egregious example of “greenwashing” (the label for corporations marketing themselves as green while paying lip service to environmental concerns) and lambastes Ikea for failing to ensure that the goods it imports are manufactured from sustainably harvested timber. Her lament at the loss of activist edge among top-tier environmental groups is heartfelt—MacDonald exhorts them to “stop being such lapdogs and start acting like the watchdogs they were conceived to be”—and her umbrage and ample evidence are impossible to ignore. (Sept.)