It costs a lot of green to be “green,” as anyone involved in manufacturing can confirm. It isn’t just the cost of new controls and technologies to make plants and operations compliant with evolving regulations, nor the cost of investments to achieve “sustainability.” For companies like Alcoa, and many others, there are significant expenses for lobbying federal and various state legislators on issues relating to manufacturing’s energy costs and climate-change issues. They also lobby on a range of other matters, too, of course.

They pay for it, but that doesn’t mean they’re buying it. General Motors Corp. chairman Bob Lutz stirred up some trouble for himself when he observed to a crowd of reporters that last month that global warming is a “crock” — an opinion he offered along the way to discussing the cost of developing new fuel-cell technologies and other automotive products. This week, Lutz used his blog to discuss the furor that followed: “My beliefs are mine and I have a right to them, just as you have a right to yours,” Lutz wrote with a bit of frustration, as though this shouldn’t need to be reasserted. “But among my strongest beliefs is that my job is to do what makes the most business sense for GM,” he continued. There’s more, and it’s worth reading.