Chile's impressive record of economic growth over the past 20 years has come with significant impacts on the environment. Though Chile's postdictatorship governments have embraced a discourse of sustainable development and created new institutions to address environmental issues, ecological degradation has largely continued unchecked. The government of Michelle Bachelet promised a series of institutional and regulatory changes that would substantially renew and advance the state's commitment to greening Chile's development model. As did her predecessors, however, Bachelet governed in a milieu in which the ideology of neoliberal modernization and elite power resisted interference in the cycle of capital investment and accumulation. Two case studies, one concerning the salmon farming industry and the other hydroelectricity, reveal the ways in which apparently "green" intentions were transformed into institutional support for the continued unsustainable exploitation of Chile's social and ecological capital.