Governments’ Greenwashing Under The Back Ground Of Global Green Energy Transformation

Green economy and sustainable development have become a hot topic in current social development,and the international community’s awareness of the importance of reducing carbon emissions is also constantly improving.With the increasing demand for green products,services,and sustainable development,companies and other business actors have experienced a ’green shift’ in economic promotional activities-exaggerating their commitment to environmental protection and their contributions to the cause of environmental protection,in order to obtain high benefits from the expanding green market in a low-cost manner.This behavior is referred to as greenwashing in economics.However,it cannot be ignored that greenwashing has not only become a fashion in the business community,but some governments have also begun to highlight the policy alienation trend of greenwashing.In recent years,against the backdrop of addressing global climate change becoming a mainstream international issue,the issue of climate change and energy transformation has become a new element affecting the power distribution of actors within the international system.However,differences in the natural geopolitical environment,economic development patterns,and natural endowments between countries determine the self-interested nature of their environmental governance policies.In order to solve the problem of balancing environmental responsibility and development,while winning resources and competitive advantages for the country,government decision-makers may choose to engage in many speculative symbolic activities driven by a profit-seeking mentality.However,their substantive green behavior in the green transformation is significantly deviated or completely deviated from the symbolic green behavior,only to create and demonstrate a false image of responsible performance to the outside world.Currently,greenwashing has become a popular green transformation speculation strategy favored by central governments.Taking Saudi Arabia as an example,as a major global oil and gas production hub,Saudi Arabia has shown unprecedented enthusiasm in the current green transformation in recent years.After taking office,the Salman government successively proposed transformation initiatives such as Vision 2030,Saudi Green Initiative,and Middle East Green Initiative,advocating that Saudi Arabia will become a global green leader.However,upon closer examination,it can be found that Saudi Arabia’s energy transformation is largely about packaging itself with low-carbon shells,but there are huge loopholes in the formulation,implementation,and evaluation of strategies.The grand transformation plan is not only disconnected from the actual situation of Saudi society,but also lacks a systematic action plan and specific transformation path,and does not provide effective policy resources to match it,resulting in a disorderly state of high goals and low efficiency in Saudi Arabia’s renewable energy development.Backward from the current transformation status,we can reasonably infer that Saudi Arabia has chosen to launch the energy transformation motion at the current time node,which implies a self-interest consideration contrary to publicity,that is,Saudi Arabia attempts to gain green politics capital through low-cost transformation speculation,while providing political cover for safeguarding Saudi Arabia’s existing energy power.Therefore,Saudi Arabia’s energy transformation has obvious instrumental characteristics,and it is necessary to conduct a more comprehensive review of its energy transformation to understand the contributing factors,implementation process,and sustainability of this transformation.Analysis shows that once the government chooses the greenwashing strategy in the green transformation,it will have extremely negative impacts,which is determined by the important position and role of the government in the international system.The green transformation under the trend of greenwashing is just a fruitless empty check,and its inevitable breach of promise will not only lead the country into difficulties and dead ends in the green transformation,but also further trigger negative demonstration effects that are difficult to resolve in the short term at home and abroad,leading to the proliferation of greenwashing,posing a great constraint on the steady progress of global action to address climate change.Therefore,the international community urgently needs to be vigilant about the spread of the government greenwashing phenomenon.