- planting a tree to clear your conscience of your new carbon emitting SUV purchase.
- Kyoto accord, the theory of emissions credits, where a country may go over their limit, but instead of dealing with the issue they just buy the unused credits off of a country that has not used all of theirs.
Political term, meaning a whitewash except over something ecological. A greenwash is when an environmentally destructivecorporation or institution gives itself a makeover to make itself look ecologically friendly, without really changing anything. For instance, it embraces green-sounding rhetoric and imagery, produces glossy PR about its supposed environmental initiatives and makes a show of "listening" to opponents, but it doesn't actually abandon the practices which led to its being condemned as being anti-ecological in the first place.
BP's rebranding, including a new logo with a yellow sun on a green background and slogans about looking after the planet, is a classic example of greenwash.
The act of corporations using public relations propaganda to distract from corporate malfeasance in their environmental policy, in order to give the impression that the degraders are benign, beneficial, or caring about the environment.
Instead of addressing environmental concerns, all Exxon Incorporated did after their last oiltanker spill was a greenwashing of the issue by printing up lots of glossy advertising posters with happy children playing in the ocean, talking about the 100 birds they scrapped oil off of out of the kindness of their hearts--while completely ignoring they destroyed hundreds of square miles of oceanfront.