雪乡自驾旅游攻略:帮忙翻译

RUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executives of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate's attitude to the internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climate-change movie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by his son, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carbon into the atmosphere.

The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that it was carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, in waging war on climate-warming gases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last year General Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output of greenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced a series of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade. Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7th some leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involves harsher regulation.
The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motors helped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with the daft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firms are engaged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, the most prominent corporate advocate of action on climate change, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, high-profile investments in green energy, and even a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measure their personal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits are largely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.

On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latest attempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, notes darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, because it was good for its business”.