In a brilliant strategic move, General Electric has announced its commitment to creating products and services that protect the environment and reduce global warming. They realize it’s not enough to release new ‘green products’ but they also have to demonstrate environmental sensitvity throughout their production and management systems. And finally, they’re lobbying to support the most centrist of environmental policies. They’ve got politicians on all sides nodding along. I hope they can make it last!

G.E. Chief Urges U.S. to Adopt Clearer Energy Policy – New York Times article by Felicity Barringer and Matthew L. Wald

In an interview, Mr. Immelt [CEO of GE] said that packaging these and other technologies, and adding promises like cutting the company’s own carbon emissions and making public reports, was "connecting the dots in the breadth of G.E., and putting a finer point on it."

With a liberal sprinkling of euphemisms like "carbon constraints," Mr. Immelt managed to have environmental advocates like Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, and their adversaries in the Bush administration embrace his vision as an affirmation of their own views. "They have forthrightly embraced the need for government policy" on heat-trapping gases, Mr. Lash said.

In the interview, Mr. Immelt said the legislation introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph I. Lieberman that would create an emissions-trading system for heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide includes elements "that make sense," but said he was not prepared to endorse specific legislation.

Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, issued a news release thereafter saying that Mr. Immelt had called for emissions caps and market mechanisms – he did the second explicitly but the first only implicitly – and saying "those are precisely the principles behind the Climate Stewardship Act that Senator Joe Lieberman and I introduced."

At the same time, David Garman – assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said he had lunch with a senior G.E. executive and came away with the message that "G.E. is highlighting innovation as a solution to technological problems. We sort of view G.E.’s pledge as the president’s climate policy put into practice."