11.15.2007 | Too easy to be green?

Ecstasy is all you need
Living in the big machine now …
Now your world is way too fast
Nothing's real and nothing lasts

These lyrics from the Goo Goo Dolls' 2002 release, Gutterflower, serve as pretext to a larger point about the state of the auto industry ahead of this week's Los Angeles Auto Show, not just in America but abroad as well. As German automakers struggle to increase fuel efficiency, America's largest, GM, is celebrating today's pronouncement of its 2007 Chevy Tahoe Hybrid — using a hybrid drive co-developed with its German counterparts — as Green Car of the Year.

Excuse me. Chevy Tahoe? Green? Car?

This effusive article from Reuters praises the Tahoe as "the first full-size hybrid SUV" that gets "21 miles per gallon in the city, the same as a Toyota Camry sedan." 21 miles per gallon? Break out the champagne! We can all go home now.

Even more galling is this gem from GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss:

When you think of a hybrid, you think of a small car that has been built from the ground up to eke out the most miles, but now you can have that kind of system in a large vehicle.

Yes, by all means! Let's throw away any mileage gains that could come from designing a new kind of SUV with efficiency in mind and just throw an electric motor on the existing one. That's progress! (To be fair, GM did make the doors out of aluminum, but most likely only to offset the added weight from the hybrid drive train.)

GM's mild Malibu and Aura hybrids, meanwhile, eke out only small mileage gains (perhaps why GM is advertising them as America's "most affordable" hybrids — they can't win on engineering).

Honda, for its part, is rolling out the first hydrogen fuel cell production car in the middle of next year to a "limited" number of customers in southern California for a bargain $600 per month ("affordable," according to MSNBC — we can only hope they took "relatively speaking" as granted). Good luck finding a filling station!

The Los Angeles Times' Dan Neil takes a longer view, saying that automakers cannot "throw a switch" and turn all their cars into hybrids at once — though that's exactly what GM seems to have done with its Tahoe. And, again according to Neil, automakers have more reason to appear green than just good PR:

Consider the context of this year's auto show. The price of oil is flirting with $100 a barrel. Recent studies suggest that, as the energy demands of emerging giants India and China increase, world oil consumption could rise 55% by 2030. Even oil executives concede we cannot drill or mine enough to satisfy that kind of energy appetite.

Two automakers seem to be headed in the right direction. Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, talked about reducing vehicle weight as a means to increase fuel efficiency. Toyota, meanwhile, has a concept car with reduced weight instead of added batteries (though its larger image as a green company may be faltering).

On the plus side, automakers are finally waking up to the reality that oil is a finite resource. Their attempts at introducing greener technologies, if self-serving, are about as much as survival as social responsibility. But as they fight higher fuel economy standards at the same time, by and large their green effrontery remains a façade.

6.29.2006 | Fight Global Warming

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com

5.13.2006 | The hatchback is back

Just in time for record-high gas prices, small cars are making a comeback. Derided as ugly in the 1970s and 80s, today's hatchbacks are slim, sleek and begging for attention. The new 2007 Toyota Yaris (pictured above, in blue) gets 40 mpg highway, more than any gasoline-only car I know of. It definitely has my attention – normally I wouldn't care about gas mileage, but with gas prices so high and the road trip I'm taking this summer, I did a little research. For people who can't afford hybrids (like me when I get my first car, most likely), the Yaris is an excellent choice.

On the other hand, the Volkswagen Rabbit is making a comeback. After 22 years of being sold under the worldwide "Golf" nameplate, VW is betting that a little nostalgia, a lower starting price and a fresh redesign will make the vehicle competitive in the small car once again. It comes with loads of standard features, and it has a 5-cylinder engine (makes me wonder what the mileage will be). Still, it will be on my radar. Lots of great hatchbacks out there (or as Toyota calls their Yaris model, a "liftback") – lower starting price and great gas mileage to boot.

12.18.2005 | Wake up! Global warming is real

 

The atmosphere now holds more than one-third more carbon dioxide than it did before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, European scientists reported last month that analysis of ice cores from Antarctica shows that today's level is 27 percent higher than any previous peak looking back 650,000 years.

As temperatures rise and global warming talks stall, it seems global warming is increasingly becoming an inescapble fact. Inescapable that is, for all but the U.S., who staunchly refuses to participate in any forced reduction of carbon emissions. China and India, rising giants whose economies still hover somewhere between developing and industrialized, sit on the sidelines as well.

The problem with modern environmental regulation is that countries that have already polluted to build up their economies (or in our case, still want to pollute) have to contend with developing economies that want to be able to waste their environment just as much as the industrialized nations have. Between these two factions we could find a balance if we had a leader willing to work out the compromises. But the U.S. under the Bush administration, as it does on other matters, continues to hold its head in the sand.

Bush once escaped the problem by saying "we need more study." But the facts are in, even in a report released by his own administration last year. Global warming is real, and between tons of emissions on a daily basis and rampant deforestation (trees, if you recall, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen), we are at least partially to blame.

7.22.2004 | Smart Energy Policy... from Business?

Normally, you'd expect environmental reforms to come from laws. The Clean Air and Clean Water acts of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s especially come to mind. But what about when business finds a way to serve the environment because it actually coincides with their need to make a profit? One such example is the Greenville, S.C. BMW plant, which has become a plant in more ways than one. Not only does it make cars, but it also powers its own electricity using escaping Methane gas from a nearby landfill.

It may not sound environmentally friendly because of the source of the fuel, but in fact using Methane gas to generate electricity helps the environment by reducing emissions of a potent greenhouse gas. Escaping gas that comes from the decomposing trash in landfills usually ends up in the atmosphere, where it can be as much as 23 times more effective than the well-known greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at trapping heat from the sun's rays, accelerating global climate change. Burning the Methane, on the other hand, produces minimal carbon dioxide emissions, creating a net positive effect for the environment.

My question is: if this method of producing electricity is good enough for businesses, why isn't it good enough for our government? The last president to make a commitment to renewable energy was Jimmy Carter, and that was because we found ourselves in the middle of an energy crisis. Today we're dealing with record gas prices, and the only renewable energy proposal on the table -- which may not be as renewable as it sounds -- is hydrogen-powered cars. The rest of the current administration's energy policy focuses on creating more production of current energy sources.

We never got anywhere by sticking to the status quo. Government can be a positive force in society to achieve great things, not the least of which was our journey to the moon and the vast progress we've made in space exploration since then. As long as we're sending satellites to kingdom come, why can't we create more innovative energy sources like these here at home? Let's just hope this example out of South Carolina will be followed, and that it will encourage the government -- local, state, and federal -- to take a look at how it can promote more common-sense solutions like these.