Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the NY Times has taken a break from writing a book (he has been on leave from writing columns for many months).

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

So we see from Mr. Friedman’s introduction that this is an issue both parties, to some extent, are getting wrong.

Until recently, “Going Green” in corporate America meant one of two things: either a company listened to the Jiminy Cricket of its environmental conscience and accepted less than stellar returns on the investment or it had a CMO (that’s Chief Marketing Officer) interested in looking at the business through green colored glasses and spinning a feel-good “green” marketing campaign.

I’m sure both of these situations still ring true in many cases today; however, while a “green” marketing campaign does not a green company make, revenues, profits, and ROI are now soaring for many of the green, and in many cases, “greener” (not necessarily “green”) companies.