"Greenwashing"

From SciAm.com:

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Green: Your Place in the New Energy Revolution by Jane and Michael Hoffman.

Greenwashing is what happens when a hopeful public eager to behave responsibly about the environment is presented with "evidence" that makes an industry or a politician seem friendly to the environment when, in fact, the industry or the politician is not as wholly amicable as it or he might be. We touched on this concept when we talked about the Christmas tree-growing industry presenting partial evidence of its ecobenefits—tree farms as carbon sinks—while neglecting to mention the polluting pesticides or harvesting helicopters. Greenwashing is a marketing strategy, and one the public might grow ever more susceptible to as our need for energy expands and the CO2 in our atmosphere continues to accumulate. As we grow ever more anxious for answers to our energy problems, we need to foster a healthy skepticism and understand that some of the answers that result won't be wholly reliable. Read more for additional examples of greenwashing...