Greenwash of the year?

In my daily Web travels looking for stuff to write about, I came across The Greenwash Brigade, a blog run by the public radio folks. They've announced their "winners" for the 2008 greenwashes of the year, which call out the biggest events that are spun as being "green" but, you know, not really.

Frankly, I find it just as irritating when so-called greens tear their rotator cuffs patting themselves on the back for all the "good" they do, but I was intrigued by one of the brigade's selections for this year: the Detroit CEOs driving hybrids to D.C. for their bailout beg-a-thon.

As you're all aware, when these guys jetted in on the company Gulfstreams to tell Congress how poor they were, it was a PR debacle of the first order -- and deservedly so. Of course, PR flacks are also masters of overreaction, so round two saw Rick Wagoner (GM), Alan Mulally (Ford), and Bob Nardelli (Chrysler) all drive (or get driven) from Detroit in whatever eco-tinged vehicles they could pull from the company motor pool.

Mulally came in an Escape Hybrid. Nardelli, somewhat appropriately, came in the D.O.A. Chrysler Aspen Hybrid and also worked in a photo op involving a Jeep Wrangler EV concept. Wagoner drove down in the Chevy Malibu Hybrid, but made his grand arrival in a Chevy Volt engineering mule.

Of this theatre, the Greenwash Brigade's Jan Flisrand says, "The only reason I can think of for them to drive hybrids is to make the companies look green."

She's 100% correct, of course. And as a bonus, it was later reported that as all this went on, the automakers flew the execs' co-drivers back and forth on commercial flights anyway.

But let's be fair, too. If you watched the hearings, you saw two days' worth of Congressmen and Senators browbeating the CEOs over their plans for, what else, more green cars. Seriously, then -- what the heck else were they going to drive?