The humerous Dilbert cartoon reiterates an important fact about companies "going green." While there are probably individual employees at the company who are passionate about helping the environment, the sole purpose of the company is to make money. Companies use terms like "environmentally friendly," "reduced carbon footprint," and "green" to create a positive impression the the consumer which is designed to lead to more sales.
In many of the IPC Halogen-Free meetings, people would ask why go through such an undertaking. Other people have asked to wait for scientific methodologies for determining which halogens are actually bad. Those questions ultimately don't matter. The process is about developing a system that companies can refer to in order to make their claims of being better for the environment (and ultimately make more money).
Eliminating halogens may actually be better for the environment, but it is still too soon to tell. We have no idea how good/bad the alternatives are. Unfortunately, if switching to an unknown material allows the company to put a green sticker on it, then they don't have the incentive to carry out further testing on those alternatives.