England's Advertising Standards Authority recently required Lexus to pull an ad claiming that its premium hybrid SUV was "perfect for today's environment." The auto manufacturer claimed that the language only intended to compare the hybrid favorably to standard SUVs. The watchdog agency ruled against the company, though, concluding that the ad invited the incorrect inference that "the car caused little or no harm to the environment."

In stretching the truth on its green claims, Lexus has company. Greenwashing is widespread—so much so, in fact, that MTV International recently felt inspired to issue a public service announcement warning its audience against the practice.

It's not just corporations that greenwash. Politicians do it too. And how.

Back in the year 2000, George W. Bush protested during a presidential debate that he was quite "concerned" about climate change. Oh, really?

More recently, the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who had previously expressed doubt about global warming being man-made, did some serious hedging in her debate with Joe Biden (at least I think she did; I don't speak Palin-ese very fluently): "I'm not one to attribute every man—activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?"

Greenwashing is happening in down-ballot races, too. In Colorado, for instance, a conservative political group calling itself the, ugh, Western Skies Coalition recently underwrote an ad buy for Republican state Senate candidates, depicting them as champions of renewable energy when they are anything but.

Meanwhile, over on the east coast, Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire touted his concern about climate change in a debate with rival Jeanne Shaheen, despite having denied a year earlier that global warming and human activity are linked.

Of course, what you say depends on who you're saying it to. In a radio interview with climate change denier Glenn Beck, Sununu sounded a different note:

Beck: All right. Talk to me a little about oil. Are you a global warming guy?
Sununu: Drill here, drill now.

It's a law of nature, almost. If you're in the business of selling yourself, it helps to come across as squeaky-green, the only exception being if you're playing to a deep-brown crowd. So out come the paint brushes, almost reflexively. Greenwashing is a fixture on the marketing and public-relations scene and there's no reason to expect it to change, watchdog reprimands notwithstanding. There's another law of nature at work here: people will test boundaries.

People come and go, it seems, but greenwashing is forever.