The Greenwashing Thing

Mayor Marty Chavez gave a 'lateral arabesque" to the head of the City's Environment and Health department after it was discovered all of their claims on Albuquerque being a "green city" turned out to be highly overstated. Marty used those claims to get him self some awards for being a great environmental Mayor. Will he give those awards back?

In Marty's defense it is easy to become the victim of over zealous aides and bad math. I remember I was the victim of bad math when I was Land Commissioner. We had calculated some bad grazing fee numbers because a decimal point was in the wrong place. A simple math check would have fixed it and from them on we had a math expert check all of our numbers. Then we started using computers shortly after that and things got much better. I remember getting the first PC in the land office. I sealed myself up and learned the Lotus program and then input all the financial statements that were regularly handed to me. None of them added up correctly so the accountants spent the night finding the errors.

I was always skeptical of the numbers that the Mayors office was using on their claims, but I had assumed Marty's folks had checked them. It has turned into an embarrassment. This greenwashing by politicians should always be subjected to analysis. The important thing is to make progress on slowing global warming and not pad a politicians resume.