"Greenwashing" - Lake Worth Style

Reading the article about how Governor Crist has flipped-flopped on his environmental agenda got me thinking about Lake Worth and recommendations from the Mayor's Climate Control Task Force. You remember - this is the task force that was formed soon after the last "1-3-Mayor" election in 2007. The task force assembled, met, made their recommendations and then was dissolved. One unsuccessful Mayoral candidate this time made the fact of him being chair of the task force a continual theme in his campaign literature and candidate forum appearances.

Supporters of the current majority on the Commission often point out attempts at "greenwashing" by organizations such as FPL, developers, etc., but fail to cast a critical eye on the city's efforts at following its own recommendations. This is one definition of "greenwashing" I found courtesy of Wikipedia.

Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.^[1] It is a deceptive use of green PR or green marketing. The term green sheen has similarly been used to describe organizations that attempt to show that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.^[2]

Below are the fifteen (15) recommendations made by the Climate Control Task Force from March of 2008.

Reading through this list, it would be great to have a report on how the City is doing meeting the stated goals. I am not sure about how these numerous recommendations add up to fifteen, but the task force said there were fifteen so it must be so.

I'd be really interested to know about the City's power consumption. I know just by running around town the the City seems to be the number one violator of watering restrictions - not setting a good example for residents to follow. In fact, I was told that the city water truck was going down Lake Avenue this past week - WHILE IT WAS RAINING - and watering the street trees. The water truck wouldn't have been necessary had the city installed the proper underground watering system, but that's a story for another day.

Perhaps the newly composed Commission will ask for an up-date on how the city is meeting its own environmental recommendations. Perhaps this could be included in a "State of the City" address by our new Mayor?

A small, but practical and symbolic, step would be to have the City Commission packets delivered to the Commission electronically - saving preparation of 3 inch plus thick notebooks of paper each time the Commission meets.

The Commission should also consider building a LEED certified NEW Casino building at the beach - landward of the Coastal Construction Control Line.