Let us review.

A system designed to advise a captive audience about the features and quality of available products would look a lot more like Consumer Reports than the world of advertising we see. But this situation isn't especially puzzling - we understand that neither those who make ads nor those who watch them have product information as their primary goal. Ad makers want to sell, and ad watchers want to be entertained.

For example:

It is the same market flaw that gives us beautiful flawless large red apples in supermarkets - with no taste. To get the old intense flavour varieties that everyone loves when they taste, we would have to choose small bruised discoloured apples when we shop, and leave the flawless big red apples with no taste in the bins. But collectively we do not, and the market responds.

So I am puzzled why seemingly bright and caring folks fall for these gimmicks and become shills for peddlers?

One is the growing ability of consumers to better measure the environmental impacts of everyday choices, and a growing variety of tools to reduce those impacts. Both are equally important.

To simplify a bit, in the past, information was more high-level, and choices were binary. You could know in general terms whether certain kinds of products were likely to be environmentally sound, and you could either buy them or not; but that was about it. Companies and products could pitch themselves as organic or environmentally-friendly, but the claims were sometimes more accessible than the proof.

Now, however, consumers are slowly getting access to more information about the energy required to produce or transport goods, and the environmental impacts of goods and services. As an article on labeling notes,

Just as food products are labeled with calorie and nutritional information, consumer products are beginning to bear details about their environmental impact, like the amount of greenhouse gases produced in making, transporting and selling them.

The evolution of the concepts of "food miles" and "carbon footprint" don't just represent a growing general awareness of environmental impacts of agriculture, industry, and modern life in general; they also reflect an attempt to make sense of information that wasn't easily available in the past.

Anyone who has paid a bit of attention to food labeling in the past several decades knows that they are merely advertising, trumpeting compliance with (or edgy defiance of) each new food fad. This is an inevitable consequence of the state of nutrition science: no one has a clue. It doesn't matter what peddlers peddle so long as it is fad compliant, because there is no factual standard to conform to. Governments amplify the confusion by publishing standards that have no basis in science, and modify them periodically when the embarrassment becomes severe.

This is precisely the situation with green exploitation. In many ways it is a continuation of and extension to the food exploitation we have come to know well. One thing you can be certain of: when someone uses the terms "food miles" and "carbon footprint" they are selling everything, and have abandoned whatever principles they may once have had. They are kin to spammers and other destructive market predators. They aren't showing the value of their products in flattering light, the are deceiving the public by offering products that have no value other than the entertainment of the advertising. It is, in effect, bait and switch.

Buyer beware.