Byline: Fareed Zakaria

The head of General Electric's green-energy program says firms need the government to step in.

A few years ago, saying "General Electric" in a room full of environmentalists could prompt a round of boos and hisses. The company had dumped 1.3 million pounds of toxic PCBs into New York's Hudson River over the course of three decades, and then dragged its feet on cleanup efforts. But since 2005, the company has spiffed up its image, accepting responsibility for the Hudson cleanup and launching a new initiative, dubbed Ecomagination, to unite the com-pany's green technologies, such as wind turbines and solar panels, under a single umbrella. The ...