In a front page article Saturday, “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus,” the NYT opens with some mostly bad messaging advice from EcoAmerica:

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

Yes, EcoAmerica is pushing the inapt phrase, “our deteriorating atmosphere” over “global warming” (and even over “climate change”).  And EcoAmerica recommends generally skipping or dumbing down most of the climate science message.  And EcoAmerica is pushing stuff that is just plain counterproductive — I quote now from material they handed out at a 2-hours presentation I attended last week:

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… the sugar you find in specially marked packages of Domino® Sugar have been certified CarbonFree®.

I’ve never been a fan of companies who try to greenwash hawk their products with terms like Carbon Neutral for several reasons:

• There’s no meaningful way of verifying the claim.
• Lifecycle analyses are notoriously easy to fudge and/or omit key inputs.
• The “neutrality” is typically achieved with rip-offsets, which are, after all, rip-offsets (see “Question from WSJ blog: Are Bogus Carbon Offsets Really That Bad?“).

Probably the silliest and most unfortunate recent attempt to capitalize on the carbon neutrality craze is Domino’s with their “certified CarbonFree® sugar.”

Many commenters, such as our friends at Scholars and Rogues in “Chemistry: FAIL,” have mocked pointed out informatively that:

The chemical formula for sucrose, aka sugar, is C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁:

Take the carbon out of sugar and you’re pretty much left with water. Methinks Someone failed their chemistry class. Or their marketing class. Or both.

What I think is particularly unfortunate about this is that Domino has a pretty good story to tell (at least for a sugar company):

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