Monday January 7, 2008, 10:57 pm
This is a laugh!! Wal-Mart go GREEN no way. When then they violate peoples' rights and they wish to reprimand
you or get rid of you of course it is a matter of integrity,but they do not know the meaning of the word! Get Real
Thanks for the post,Randy!

Tuesday January 8, 2008, 8:55 pm
Hi Linda - I think the article shows there is real hope. They're also already widely recognized even by many of their harshest critics for their impressive sustainability work.

Also, Adam is about as authentic / real as they come - people may argue he's not going to make a difference, but I absolutely believe he's doing it for the right reasons. I applaud him for his pioneering efforts (and of course, as the saying goes, "the pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs")

Tuesday January 29, 2008, 3:29 pm
from Letters to the Editor, SF Chron, Sunday, January 27, 2008...

There is a long history of former radicals and environmentalists who have sold out. Werbach is not the first, nor the last. Remember Jerry Rubin? Ron Arnold? By selling out, I mean that they attempt to justify working for the very things that originally outraged them - and other sane people. So let's talk about whether the essence of Wal-Mart, which is to sell as many items as possible (capitalism) can ever be reconciled with the essence of environmentalism (not destroying this planet). If he can reconcile that, then Werbach would truly be a visionary. But it can't be done. The utter destruction of China's soil, air and water is driven by its turn to industrial modernization. That is making Wal-Mart possible and profitable. Great, Werbach is persuading people that Wal-Mart is going green, rather than persuading people that we have to live without Wal-Mart if we are going to save this planet.

ALAN RAUSCH
San Francisco

Wal-Mart's big-box retail business model (regardless of what is in the stores, where it's made or how it gets there) is polluting and inefficient. In recent negotiations with Wal-Mart on its Bay Area store and parking lot designs, we [the writer is an engineer for a Bay Area public agency] found it to be inflexible and unwilling to consider even basic measures that are implemented by other big-box retailers (e.g., Target, Lowe's, etc.). It does have a prototype green store or stores in Arkansas, but when it should have all green stores, that falls short. The store design itself - requiring lots of driving and pavement for parking, lots of interior lighting and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning - cannot be particularly green, and the big-box retail model allows for only "parsley 'round the pig."

KEITH LICHTEN
Oakland