LA Weekly

No, only from a wack job named Steven Milloy.

Fortune magazine would like you think it's bigger than that, but the argument doesn't hold up past the nut graf. Immelt argues his plan to cut the company's carbon emissions is good business as well as good citizenship. Sounds good to me, good to most people, and plenty of other companies are following suit. Writes Business Week:

A surprising number of companies in old industries such as oil and materials as well as high tech are preparing for this profoundly altered world. They are moving swiftly to measure and slash their greenhouse gas emissions. And they are doing it despite the Bush Administration's opposition to mandatory curbs.

This change isn't being driven by any sudden boardroom conversion to environmentalism. It's all about hard-nosed business calculations. "If we stonewall this thing to five years out, all of a sudden the cost to us and ultimately to our consumers can be gigantic," warns [Cinergy CEO James] Rogers, who will manage 20 coal-fired power plants if Cinergy's pending merger with Duke Energy is completed next year.

Milloy, however, has set up a "Free Enterprise Action Fund" to counterbalance environmentalist pressure on companies. But hardly anybody's signed up for it -- the fund has only $5 million in investments, which Milloy could probably pay himself in the bucks he rakes in as a corporate shill playing journalist. I hope that's because even at Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, people know he's nuts.

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