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President Obama has rightfully linked our economic recovery to our environmental recovery. But we need to break the link between the corporate behavior that drove us to the brink of financial ruin in the first place and that which continues to drive us towards ecological ruin.

Like the economic collapse, our ecological collapse is being fueled by industries creating widespread social risk in their reckless and dangerous pursuit of short-term profits. What’s worse, their modus operandi includes massive public relations campaigns, philanthropy and lobbying efforts that portray their self-interested behavior as part of the societal solution. Think Clean Coal.

In the green building movement, the leading example of this behavior is the rebranding of virtually every building material as a “green” product, officially recognized by one label or another. The green label craze resembles the virus-like uptake of the financial assets known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), the so-called derivatives that brought down the financial house. CDOs purported to apportion risk, protect conservative investors and assure long-term economic stability. But CDOs, like green labels, were really a Trojan horse.