Yahoo!'s New Soap Box.

Yahoo!, which last month announced its plans to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2007 is launching a new service today called "Yahoo! Green." Essentially, the site is a new information portal designed to educate consumers about simple steps they can make to combat global warming.

If Yahoo! Green is as advertised-- a single destination on the web where people can learn about easy to implement behavioral modifications that, in the aggregate, can make a big difference in the fight against climate change, then its a good thing. Making basic, even inconvenient changes to one's daily routine is preferrable to the sweeping, global-economy-wrecking initiatives proposed by some of the more radical global warming activitsts.

Furthermore, as noted last week, the only way we are going to affect significant behavioral change is to reach out to educate the public. While a Yahoo! portal is not the same thing as as a face-to-face encounter with an individual consumer, its reach and influence as an Internet media company is undeniable.

So net-net, this looks like a good and worthwhile project, but I reserve the right to pull that endorsement if and when it joins the chorus of impractical reactionary interests who wrap an across-the-board anti-corporate agenda in the cloak of environmental/social responsibility.

Yahoo Puts Marketing Muscle into Climate Campaign [Reuters]