Not As Green As They Claim To Be
Just how green should you feel driving the new Chevy Tahoe hybrid sport utility vehicle?
The eight-passenger vehicle is plastered with “hybrid” labels. An automobile magazine panel that included the executive director of The Sierra Club named it the “Green Car of the Year.”
But the Tahoe gets only about 20 miles per gallon - not much better than the nonhybrid Honda Pilot SUV, which also seats eight. The celebrated Toyota Prius gets around 46 miles per gallon.
“How a 6,000-pound behemoth can be the green car of the year is beyond me,” said David Champion, director of Consumer Reports Auto Test Division. “It’s a marketing exercise rather than reality.”
As the world goes eco-friendly - even eco-vodka is coming to martini bars - it’s not clear how much environmental good will come from all the green products consumers are buying. Companies regularly tout something as green when it is not even good for the environment - it might just be less harmful than a competitor’s product or than one the company sold previously.
Few companies out and out lie, but they often use vague terms with no defined meaning, such as “earth friendly,” or tout an environmental benefit while leaving out the environmental harm their product can cause.
Consumers in the United States are expected to double their spending on green products and services in the next year to an estimated $500 billion, according to an annual consumer survey by Landor Associates. Turn on the television or walk down any store aisle, and it’s impossible to escape products and services being sold as greener: potato chips, household cleaners, garage doors - even trash hauling.
One marketing consultant calls the phenomenon “shop for salvation.” It began in earnest with rising public concern about global warming, though marketers now also highlight other environmental benefits. Still, green buying won’t come close to cutting emissions 50 percent worldwide, the amount that the leading scientific authority on global warming says will be needed by 2050 to avert the worst consequences.
Marketers, some environmentalists and marketing specialists say, are merely tapping into people’s desire to feel like they’re saving the earth - but not sacrificing their lifestyle.
“That’s the paradox,” said Frederic Brunel, associate professor of marketing at Boston University. “Most people agree green solutions are better than less green solutions, but how green? You could have the green McMansion with energy efficiency, but well, the house is still 6,000 square feet. . . . We need goals and standards.”
The marketing of faux green products is now so widespread that there is a term for the practice - “greenwashing.”
Few products have raised more objections than Nestlé’s new single-use “eco-shape” water bottle. The bottle, which uses 30 percent less plastic than similar products, is touted by Nestlé-owned Poland Spring as “doing our part.”
But eco-bloggers say there is no need for bottles at all. They say the energy that goes into creating and transporting the bottles is wasteful and most recyclable bottles end up in landfills. Taking water can also draw down local water tables. Drink tap water, they urge.
A Nestlé Waters North America spokeswoman said bottled water is healthier than other bottled beverages. The company studied the life cycle of the water bottle and found the best way to reduce carbon emissions was to reduce the amount of plastic, said Jane Lazgin, director of corporate communications.
Another example: Simple Green, the popular household cleaner that bills itself as nontoxic and the “safer alternative” to other cleaners. But one of Simple Green’s key ingredients, butyl cellosolve, is the same toxic solvent found in some traditional all-purpose cleaners. The label even cautions users not to “dispose of . . . near storm drains, oceans, lakes or streams.”
A Simple Green spokeswoman said the company stands behind its claim that the product is nontoxic, but acknowledged it does contain trace amounts of the solvent. She said the company is launching an all-natural brand of household cleaners to respond to consumer desires.
The Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to investigate false marketing claims, says the increasing use of environmental marketing has prompted the agency to move up a review of its “green guides,” which outline general principles and definitions of environmental claims. Some terms, such as “sustainable” and “carbon offset,” weren’t widely used the last time the guides were updated, in 1998.
The agency has not issued any decisions about green marketing in the past five years, a spokesman said, and he was unable to say how many complaints about the topic the FTC has received in recent years.
There is virtually “zero enforcement,” said Scot Case of TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, a consulting company based in Philadelphia and Ottawa. Last year, his company conducted a study that found that 99 percent of 1,018 green advertising claims of everyday consumer products could be misleading. The products were not identified, but the report did highlight examples, such as shampoos claiming to be “certified organic” on their label, though TerraChoice could find no organic standard for shampoo, or garden insecticides being promoted as “chemical-free,” though even water can be considered a chemical.
The government “needs to require anyone making a green claim to provide proof of the accuracy and relevance of the claim,” Case said.
Some countries are taking more aggressive action. Last year, the British Advertising Standards Authority, an independent watchdog and regulating agency, told Shell to pull magazine ads in that country that showed flowers coming out of smokestacks, because the images suggested the company was using most of its carbon dioxide emissions to grow flowers, when that was not true. The board also told Lexus to pull an ad that boasted an SUV was “High Performance. Low Emissions. Zero Guilt,” in part because the spot erroneously indicated that the car had little or no impact on the environment. A report the British group last month said the number of complaints about environmental ads increased almost fivefold in the past year to 561.
Many customers, however, seem all too happy to trust companies’ claims. According to a survey released this year by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Cone LLC, a Boston-based brand strategy firm, about 47 percent of respondents said they trusted companies to tell them the truth in environmental messaging, and 45 percent said they believed companies are accurately communicating information about their impact on the environment.
Yet marketing specialists say companies can mislead consumers in many ways - including by selectively using information. Last year, Gianfranco Zaccai, president and CEO of the innovation and design consulting firm Continuum, headquartered in West Newton, was called to task by two popular environmental blogs, treehugger.com and inhabitat.com. Zaccai, whose company helped develop the Swiffer, wrote a BusinessWeek column praising the cleaning instrument, which uses disposable sheets. Zaccai said the Swiffer is a sustainable product in part because it allows people to stop using a mop and wasting millions of gallons of water. But the blogs said he was a bit disingenuous: He didn’t discuss the disposable, chemical-laden sheets that would be thrown into landfills.
Later, in a question-and-answer piece on inhabitat.com, Zaccai wrote that he believed the Swiffer is still the best environmental choice. “Of course, the Swiffer has some environmental impact,” he said. “That single sheet of paper goes into the trash.”
As for the Tahoe hybrid, Don Butler, executive director for truck marketing for Chevrolet, said the vehicle is for people who are going to buy plus-size SUVs anyway. But now, he said, they have an option to get much better gas mileage - on par with the Toyota Camry.
“It’s not like this is the one silver bullet,” Butler said. The company is working on many other energy-efficient vehicles, he added.
Ron Cogan, president and CEO of Green Car Journal and greencar.com, which declared the Tahoe the Green Car of the Year, said the vehicle was chosen in part because the technology the company used would have reverberations throughout the industry. Carl Pope, executive director of The Sierra Club, said he deplores the fact that so many people drive SUVs, but voted for the Tahoe because it was a “category changer.”
For others, however, the idea that a large SUV could ever be considered green is unfathomable.
“I know how this goes. The manufacturers say, ‘We know, we know, but the consumer wants it,’ ” said Timothy Gutowski, a professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But I say, where is the adult here? This is a lot of feel good stuff.”
© 2008 The Boston Globe
Carl Pope is a joke.
This big green orgs are sell outs.
Elbow grease, electric cars, water filter and reusable bottle.
There, that is green.
Does anyone know if Citrasolv has any nasty chemicals in it? This is the primary cleaner we use in my household and didn’t know how it rates.
“How a 6,000-pound behemoth can be the green car of the year is beyond me,”
If it’s beyond you, you must be clueless. Utterly clueless.
Green is simply another word with a meaning that has been lost. Oh sure, grass is still the colour green, at least when it’s not dry. “Green” as “environmentally responsible” has been co-opted by the money makers. Of course you can be green without being environmentally responsible. Green is hip. Environmentally responsible is for HippieCommiePinkoLiberal Tree-hugging Queers. By the same token, “conservative” now means excessive, radical, loud, and wasteful.
Forgiveness,
Electric cars aren’t green. No car is green.
I think the big news here is that more and more people/consumers/citizens are concerned enough about climate change that they are making (somewhat) informed decisions to limit it (and their contributions to it). The fact that many business see this as a growth opportunity is great. Let green become a “hip” term. Let us fight to reclaim its true meaning from those who would co-opt it improperly (think about how badly the term “democracy” is misused for profit or politics- it certainly doesn’t change what democracy actually is or its value when the word is misused and abused).
The fact that this term (and the idea of green) is being co-opted means that it is growing in power. Whatever it takes to (correctly) educate the public about climate change is part of the job of those who really care; it seems somewhat idealistic to think that businesses are going to change their behaviour based on this one issue. Businesses always jump on the bandwagon to sell their products. It’s great that climate change is now a bandwagon! It certainly wasn’t 5 years ago. How can this not be a step in the right direction?
ps for all those who will instantly argue that these steps aren’t enough or aren’t done properly enough, I say: change has to start somewhere; global warming/climate change/green/sustainability etc were fringe concepts 5 years ago. Now they are mainstream enough that businesses are lying about their products to get a little green money. How is this not an advance?
Ok Tommy, so if we are generating electricity out of wind, solar and other renewable energies to power those electric cars, how is it not green?
Are you one of those techonology hating people who want us to go back to the stone ages?
We have a very short window to use the last of our oil to build green or it wont happen. Doomers are not helping.
It’s not “green” because you’ll have to create the machines, the energy into making the machines, into transporting the machines, into disrupting land to putting the machines there. The chemicals used to create the machines….
I’m with you Forgiveness. It’s a slippery slope. For every “green” solution Tommy gives, I can find a non-green factor in there. It’s a very slippery slope you’re on.
The green movement is growing, but it’s not nearly as impacting as you’d wish it to be. You won’t be able to get the entire world to change overnight..it takes baby steps and time for people to accept the changes.
Should hybrid SUV’s be praised? YES they should. Why? Because people still want to drive their SUVs. So at least they can choose something that is slightly less impactfull. That doesn’t mean to stop there though. While people get used to the idea of hybrid suv’s, the companies continue on to finding an even friendlier solution. Again it takes time for people to accept the change.
Are “eco-friendly” water bottles to be praised? Yes, it’s the next step…at least they are using less plastic than before. Maybe later on their will be a move to PLA (although that’s just as impactful as before). You’re not going to be able to convince the world to start drinking chemically treated tap water.
Would you rather have them do nothing? Realistically that is the only other alternative.
The Ford Escape Hybrid gets nearly 30mpg…. so why the heck did that stoopid Chevy win an award?
All those bake-sales and tree-sits and protests to save the earth; all the loving labour of penniless hippies and activists co-opted for corporate profits, frequently by companies that did all they could to crush the environmental movement for decades. With their diabolical akido they will use the movements’ momentum to their advantage.
Unfortunately the necessary changes involve NOT BUYING things. Who can sell that? Let’s go forth and sabotage their advertisements. Just carry chalk or a marker and add “OR DON’T BUY IT AND SAVE EVEN MORE!” to any ad that stings your eyeballs with it’s hypocrisy.
Once upon a time I drove a small car that got 30 MPG commuting and more on the highway. That was 50 years ago when the VW beetle was popular. And gas was about 25 cents per gallon…maybe Pogo was right.
The swiffer is better b/c it uses less water? Uh…here’s a question: How much water is used to produce the swiffer disposable sheet? Probably more than the 2 gallons I use to mop.
Wanting to eat the cake and have it, is still believed to be the solution to the present problem. The only way we might be able to maintain part of our life-style is by downsizing: the houses we live in, the cars we drive (if any), the extra weight we carry on our buts. In Europe gas is $ 7,80 a gallon, so driving monstrous cars has never been an option here and we are smart enough to own and actually use bikes for smaller distances. Time for N-America to face the music and join the rest of the world. It won’t kill you at all, saves money and you might even be healthier after a while.
Forgiveness wrote:
“Are you one of those techonology hating people who want us to go back to the stone ages?”
I see… no cars = stone age.
Lets see what such a car-free stone age might look like…
1. Clean, quiet, car-free cities, served by quiet, fast, frequent elctric public transportation throughout the city, and to outlying parks and satellite communities;
2. children playing in car-free streets and public plazas,
3. Fine dining and cultural activities - outdoors in summer, free of traffic noise and smell;
4. Riding a bicycle anywhere one wishes without constant fear of violent death under the wheels of a car or truck;
5. Fast, frequent comfortable 400 kph trains or maglevs to surrounding cities and even national parks and outdoor recreation areas.
Doesn’t look like the “stone age” to me…
I wonder if that new Poland Spring bottle now contains 30 percent less water than the old design. Usually when a company redesigns its container, it ends up putting less into that container while hyping up its “new look”.
USAn, I am down with everything you said but finding a way to charge electric cars with renewable energy sources is a much faster solution.
The concept you are talking about is where I would like to live as well. Only problem is our cities public transportation systems were all torn up a long time ago and to retrofit our current cities would require a massive amount of restructuring.
And how do you propose anyone move around equipment needed for their proffesion via only public transportation? I know I can’t lug 200 pounds worth of bass equipment onto a lightrail train.
Are there going to be any ambulances, firetrucks or polic cars in the car free city?
What about people who live where public transportation wont go? Like my brother who could only afford a house way out of town but works in the city.
I love the way people like ‘forgiveness’ try to argue.
They take the constant attitude that if someone can’t outline a perfect solution, then we have no choice but to continue with what we have today.
And, then they try to use the proven fact that companies like GM destroyed our earlier public transportation to somehow argue that we shouldn’t build public transportation. Very strange.
Then he uses the fact that today’s cities were built based on cars and cheap oil to somehow argue the strange fact that a different kind of city can’t be built.
Like anything, we take steps to get there. Here’s a few I’d propose.
– we should immediately pass large increases in gas taxes. This would both force conservation by say doubling the price of gas. And it would provide the funds we need to make changes.
– we do need to move back towards denser cities. Suburban American was a fluke of an age with cheap oil. Zoning laws can start to head this way. Increasing gas taxes would also help reverse this.
– we need to start building better public transit systems.
– we can combine public transit with other systems. Say free bicycle racks at every station. You get off a train, you pick up a bike. You go where you need to go. When you come back to the train, you drop off the bike.
– you could do exactly the same thing with electric cars. Have a rack of electric cars plugged in at the train station and charging. You ride the train close to where you want to go, then pick up one of these electric cars to get to your destination.
– It doesn’t have to be perfect. If you don’t have a completely car free city, how about one with only 5% of the vehicles we have today? You have a few public safety vehicles, a few eletric cars for those who need them. A few electric vans if you need to haul stuff.
If you ever travel to Europe, you’ll notice the difference. Not a SUV in sight. Largely because of the gas taxes. Also, not a huge American pickup truck in sight. If you look closely, the tradesmen who need to carry tools to a job site use much more fuel-efficient small vans.
The key is, are you someone who only wants to deny and prevent change? Or are you someone who’s willing to work towards change? Those who always want to deny and prevent change will always point out that you can’t have utopia tomorrow. But if you are willing to work for change, you’ll find you can take steps towards something better.
Forgiveness,
Yes, emergency and delivery vehicles would still be allowed.
What happened to cause USAns to forget how to dream, and translate those dreams to reality - and in a very short time frame.
In the 1960’s as a kid, I watched a show called “the year 2000″ by Walter Cronkite which showcased all sorts of neat technologies that were to have transformed our lives by now (computer technologies being only a small part) - the big advances being urban design and transportation.
In Europe, they must still dream, because they are building things that here in the US, in spite of being (supposedly)the richest country in the world, we cannot even imagine anymore - like a high speed rail link between Milan and Zurich - including a 57 km long tunnel under a substantial part of the Alps. Spain is putting in place more than a 7000 km of new 300-350 kph rail line costing many tens or hundreds of billions of Euros.
Meanwhile in my town, a $300M, one mile tunnel link under a river to the north side of downtown recieves howls of protest. Boondoggle!
As far as your 200 lb of bass equipment (you mean musical equipment - amps and speakers?). You are confusing cause and effect. You are only lugging so much stuff _because_ of the car, obviously, in a car-free society, you musical pursuits would be such that you not involve hauling so much heavy equipment. Did Mozart need a car or bemoan the lack of a car to get to the opera house? I’ve seen Pittsburgh Symphony members on the bus with their violin cases.
Green SUV. An oxymoron. It’s a gimmick to make consumers feel OK driving such a gas guzzler.
My question is: Why is any automaker still making standard (non-hybrid) vehicles of any kind? Why would a consumer buy a regular internal-combustion-engine-only car? Why is the tax credit for buying hybrid vehicles exhausted (the cap was 60,000 vehicles, period.)? I think it shows a complete lack of will to make any true and lasting change.
“GREEN” is now a marketing biz word. Green enthusiasts were kind of like the first vegetarians, who only ate plants. Then came the lacto-ovo vegetarian fish eaters because being a vegetarian was cool, but most of the wannabe vegetarians couldn’t live without their animal products. Ask most people, today, about being vegetarian and the think it means you don’t eat red meat. Enter the Vegans, too weird, fierce and orthodoxed to be cool so the marketing people stay away from that moniker, for now.
Green has lost its original meaning, thanks to the marketing miscreants and bandwagoners. So now you can be Green and drive your Hybrid SUV, with the Mt. Bikes strapped on to the top, to the corner market to pick up some bottled water for your bike ride that is a mile away.
Hey, that’s okay, most of us, who are long time environmentalists, know who you are. You can have the term “Green”, we don’t need a name for how we choose to live our lives.
Forgiveness has a good point though. Say he installed solar systems instead of creating smokin’ bass lines (which I feel is just as crucial) - there is still a hole in the world where hybrid vans should be. Briefcase commuters have options that tradespeople with hefty gear do not. Instead of a Prius sedan we need the Prius cargo van. I’ll invent it if you like. You stick a big box on the back of a Prius. There. And I’m not even a car designer!
The secret to becoming “greener” is simply to buy less stuff. Bottled water is expensive (at $1-2 a bottle) and is an ecological disaster (like disposable batteries) when the empties end up in landfills. Recycle! Reuse! Start thinking of yourself as a Conservator rather than a consumer and you’ll be “greener.”
Tommy slothrot:
The Air car is as green as a car can get. It uses compressed air that is filtered the same as a scuba diver uses so the air coming out of the exhaust is cleaner than the air you are breathing sitting in the park. The compressed air to refill the tanks can be done using electric power with solar cells or a windmill at your home. www.theaircar.com have a look since it burns no fuel and no batteries to recycle
Just how green should you feel driving the new Chevy Tahoe hybrid sport utility vehicle?
You should feel like you can have your cake and eat it too because that’s the “American Way” and that’s the way it’s gonna be. God Bless the United States of America!! Don’t forget to put your O’Bama sticker on the rear bumper.
Green is to the capitalist what peace is to the militarist - a gimmick, a pretext. Most world cultures are able to transcend these delusions and rackets, but not the American culture of mental shutdown and media opiates.
Some good comments here, folks, and a few I take exception with, but not nearly as much as a congressman on CSPAN today touting the use of natural gas as the way to go because it’s a, “…clean green energy source”. I wanted to throw something at the TV to squelch his outright lie & stupidity. It’s kind of the same argument many of us have with this beast of a still gas-guzzling vehicle lauded with a ‘green’ award.
For your information, you dumb assed ill informed congress critter, natural gas might be clean(er) than other fossil fuels, but it still emits a considerable amount of green house gases when burned, and in this respect can in no way deserve a label of ‘green’.
good luck, you’re on the right track with the air car (www.theaircar.com), and we need a concerted effort to force GM to bring back (and mass produce) the EV1 electric car also. What they did with the 4,000 that were successfully deployed in California (crushed them even after happy leasors wanted to buy them AND raised the funds) in a few smog choked years might even qualify as a crime against humanity…I sure hope so. (See the movie, “Who Killed The Electric Car?” to see what I mean).
They could be recharged with a at your house (from electricity that could be generated by solar, wind, tidal, or goethermal), emmitted no exhaust pollution, met the mileage, speed, & carriying capacity requirements of most American drivers, BUT were so reliable GM couldn’t further gouge customers with after-market profit-making servicing, so they killed the cars…but not the idea
(BTW, India now will be marketing an air car that only costs $2,500 (in India I guess), expected to be out in a year or two, but for those looking for sportier there is a $50-70,000 model that will do 135 MPH due out at about the same time. Some of these aircars at the moment are hybrids, but they get over 100 MPG.)
One of the saddest, most outrageous things I see whenever out on the road is huge SUV’s going down the road with only one driver/passenger, not always, but very often a woman because she has been propagandized into the belief bigger is safer. Well that’s a pretty self-centered attitude; what about the person you are going to plow into with your mini-tank? Doesn’t their life have any worth?
Also, if you have the funds to buy one of these huge, often completely un-neccesary vehicles, can’t you afford a smaller one for those shorter trips, and plan your trips with another passenger as well? When you are driving to shop for your family, or going to pick up the kids from their soccer game consider what their future will be like if you don’t get ‘green’ now.
In the early part of this too oil-friendly administration I saw a few statistics that didn’t go un-noticed (by me anyway). The first was 53% of the oil we burn in this country goes toward transportation, primarily cars & trucks. The second was the CAFE (combined average fleet economy) which at the time was about 22.5 MPG for light trucks (many of which were SUV’s because the manufacturers added as much as 300 pounds of extra useless weight just so they would qualify as a truck rather than car), and 27.5 for cars. The third was that with a reduction in gasoline demand in this country of 12-13% we wouldn’t need any oil imported from the quagmire known as the Middle-East at all. Try the math on this problem. Looks to me if we increased our CAFE by about 25% we wouldn’t have even needed to spend the $3-6 Trillion (and 4,000+ un-necessarily sacrificed lives) it has taken to illegally invade Iraq to STEAL their oil.
Like him or don’t it was really nice to hear someone (Obama, who has never been my first choice for president, but the media makes that selection for us now anyway) stand up and ask a very crucial question for not only social programs, rebuilding the decaying infrastructure in THIS country, and the necessary switch from fossil fuels (AND nuclear) toward really green renewables; “Imagine if we had spent a trillion or more dollars on other things instead of wasting it in Iraq?”
I still have hopes we haven’t wasted too many financial resources to effect the changes necessary to prevent what looks like a rapidly approching total environmental meltdown. The only people who can save us from ourselves IS ourselves, but a concerted effort by only a portion of the population just won’t cut the mustard. For the sake of ourselves & future generations we can’t afford to be wrong on this issue, my friends. Let’s get busy.
Will people PLEASE quit clinging to these snake-oil-panacea solution-salesman like this hypothetical “air car nonsense? At very best, a car running on compressed air would very limited range, far less efficient than batteries, noisy, present an powerful explosion hazard in a crash. The tanks would have to be swapped out for hydrostatic testing every 5 years.
In contrast, new generation liFePO4 batteries are are 95% charge-efficient, store much more energy,can last the life of the car, and are intrinsically safe.
Even if you had a car that would run on air that you personally exhaled, cars would still not be green.
Millions of acres are paved over to provide highways, streets and parking lots for cars. McMansions sprawl into farmfields because cars make it possible.
40,000+ humans and 1,000,000 animals are killed by cars EVERY year. Thousands more humans are brain damaged or crippled for life. Millions more are afraid to ride their bikes or let their children walk the streets for fear of death or injury.
It takes a lot of energy to produce cars.
I’m all for the hardcore environmentalists who want us to have our car free utopia with our 5% air car population. I’d love to see SUVs removed, and consumption taken down and lots of change to the N.American lifestyle.
But how exactly do you propose that happens? You can whine and complain and point fingers at all the problems and the Utopia solution…how about offering a plan of action instead? How do you propose changing a nation of 300 million plus to suddenly jump on your bandwagon hmm? Because unless you become the dictator of US tomorrow and overthrow the entire legal system…it’s NOT going to HAPPEN TOMORROW.
The BEST that can be done now is the small steps and public awareness and education. The small steps lead to bigger steps and the change we want. Otherwise your wah wah wahhing about how nothing is good enough until we become your PERFECT society is just annoying.
I would love to see the US become more like Europe at least, but how do you propose we do that hmm? I know…let’s just go get rent some bulldozers so we can destroy all the mcmasions tomorrow without any permits without any legal authorization…hey then lets hold construction companies hostage and force them to make denser cities…and and we’ll threaten and pilage and be vigalanties and force all the suburbianites to live in cardboard boxes until their new urban home is doing being created. Maybe if we start tomorrow it’ll be done by the end of the week…Hey! It actually is a piece of cake!
Please, let’s be realistic. These greenwashing options aren’t the end all be all perfect solution, more needs to be done. But you have to figure how to convince people of changing what is already established for them, especially since the Environmentalist/Green movement STILL is still less than a quarter of the entire population.
The only thing ‘green’ about the vast majority of these products is the ink or paint used in the PR campaign.
I wouldn’t worry too much about greenwashed SUV’s. There’s no need to bother with raising gas taxes, either. Peak Oil will fix all that for us.
RE: USAn May 15th, 2008 10:27 am
“Will people PLEASE quit clinging to these snake-oil-panacea solution-salesman like this hypothetical “air car nonsense?”
USAn, I have seen a number of your post and respect a lot of what you have to say, but I believe you need to do a little more research. India is ALREADY producing air cars for people in that country, and I expect you will start seeing them made here in quantity within a couple years (if the idiots running Detroit don’t stand in the way). The containers for the air are safe, too, much safer than being immolated by one of Detroit’s brainchilds…the Pinto.
We are in complete agreement that electric cars, with good batteries, are a must, though. What we really need is a concerted drive toward utilizing ALL these new technologies, and keeping an open mind to new ones that come up while these are put in place
Sure, they won’t have the range of a twenty gallon 20 MPG gas guzzling SUV (at first), but eventually they will far surpass that. The intent should be to completely eliminate burning fossil fuels (and ethanol) altogether. Even now the hybrid with an 8 gallon gas tank gets over 800 miles per tank, and even more at city speed limit speeds when running entirely on compressed air.
RE: kiara May 15th, 2008 12:35 pm
kiara, these are not ‘utopian’, but realistic AND HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
“But how exactly do you propose that happens? You can whine and complain and point fingers at all the problems and the Utopia solution…how about offering a plan of action instead?”
Who is whining & complaining except you? Be part of the solution or part of the problem, and your expressed negativity is problematic.
“…it’s NOT going to HAPPEN TOMORROW.”
You are absolutely correct there, but it will NEVER happen if we keep being bamboozled by Big Oil & American auto manufacturers, and government people accepting their lobby money (read bribes here). The first step is keeping an open mind and spreading information that there ARE proven alternatives around. Sadly, most Americans are ignorant of that fact. Now you are not one of them, so help by trying to educate instead of being negative, ok? Nothing will happen unless we make/demand it, but there are enough of us (even 25% is 75,000,000 people in this country alone & this is a world problem/effort, not just one about self-centered Americans) that WE CAN DO THIS!