Yesterday, a post on the Wall Street Journal's energy blog discussed the controversy over GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz calling global warming a "crock of shit." It said:
Some, like Wired and Grist, buy his argument: As long as GM keeps making progress toward electric cars and expanding the role of alternative fuels like ethanol, the auto maker is clearly blazing a new trail.
This is a bad misreading of my point, which I probably didn't make very clearly. I was only trying to say that Lutz has a right to whatever personal beliefs he chooses, up to and including a devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Thought Police give me the creeps, even if I agree with the thoughts in question.
I was most decidedly not saying that Lutz's statement is forgivable because GM is "blazing a new trail."
To the contrary, GM is not blazing a new trail. GM has been, and continues to be, a strongly reactionary force in American energy politics, thwarting progress at every juncture.
I won't get into a whole historical diatribe. Suffice to say, the company, with Lutz's vocal backing, has been a long-time opponent of any boost in U.S. fuel efficiency standards. Even now, as the Minnesota legislature considers signing on to California's tailpipe standards, GM is working behind the scenes to stop them. Arizona has provisionally decided to adopt the standards, and will finalize them on March 3, but GM is leading a last-ditch, behind-closed-doors effort to stop it.
This is to say nothing of "live green, go yellow," the stupid marketing slogan meant to convince gullible consumers that corn ethanol is great -- by building vehicles that can, but rarely do, run partially on ethanol, and using those vehicles primarily as a means to game fuel economy standards.
The Volt is great, and kudos for Lutz for pushing it. But at best it boosts the overall grade for GM's record on climate and energy from an F to a D. Indeed, the company is using the car specifically to lobby against fuel economy regulations.
If I were a GM shareholder, that's the crock of shit I'd be worried about.
What to make of the new climate poll
Skeptics claim global warming is fake after top scientists’ emails hacked at CRU
Comments
View as Flat
Pompey Road Posted 10:03 am
26 Feb 2008
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 11:21 am
26 Feb 2008
I suggest you check further.
http://greyfalcon.net/brazil
http://greyfalcon.net/brazil2
http://greyfalcon.net/brazil3
http://greyfalcon.net/brazil4
http://greyfalcon.net/cerrado
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 12:02 pm
26 Feb 2008
I did not mean for sugar cane to be the only road to energy independence, as a matter of fact the only way corn or sugar cane is of interest to me is pollution reduction.
Corn has to be mixed with 85% gasoline, sugar cane ethanol can be run with less fuel additive and in some cases pure ethanol.
Neither will be the total solution to the consumption problem and will have to be incorporated with fuel conservation as the main objective.
Tougher MPG standards need to be set and met. I know that Brazil is still heavily dependant on oil but it's their own oil at least they are not having to spend 12 billion a month trying to secure an oil reserve where the means of production nor transportation can be secure.
Sugar cane is has 7 times the btu and is a more efficient as a fuel. It will not raise the price of everything from meat, eggs, bread and a host of food additives that increase the price of food at the market.
What prices the extra demand for sugar cane drive up is something we can and should do without anyway.
Corn is costing us more in its production, and is heavily subsidized by the U.S. tax payer. Its costing us three ways and three times more than an equivialent gallon of regular gas if you factor in the subsidy, the extra cost for food, and the subsidy.
Sugar cane will not make us energy independent but since you can use less gas to mix with it it will reduce oil consuption. A 70% mix runs very close to what regular fuel does.
I don't feel the same insecticides used in Brazil can be used in this country. The big plus for me is to get all the land that was used for growing tobacco planted in Sugar Cane.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 12:14 pm
26 Feb 2008
50 billion dollars less oil in Brazil from 1975-2002 and the waste cain "bagasse" is used as a fuel in the manufactoring of cane ethanol.
The corn lobby is very powerful and protecting its subsidy is what killed sugar cane.
I am more into, electric and hydrogen and feel both technologies have been sabotaged by big oil.
The ethanol portion if there is to be one should be Sugar Cane.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 12:19 pm
26 Feb 2008
The reason Bob Lutz is getting play is not so much for the absolute correctness of his statements, but because he is the first top drawer leader to stand up to the lies and chicanery of Joe McCarthy/Al Gore and confront him.
It took an Eisenhower to blast McCarthy and tell the American People, look, I don't like Commies, you don't like Commies, but I also don't like a madman labeling people and gaining personal power by rolling up a pack of lies.
Bob Lutz is the hammer smashing the PC in the 1984 Apple Ad. It is breakthrough, stunning and a blow for Free Speech after 3 years of repressive Eco-Terrorism, the terrorism of Gorebots.
Permalink
Pangolin Posted 3:53 pm
26 Feb 2008
So what is Bob, "the new Eisenhower," Lutz doing with his time? He's crying to congress that we can't possibly have new CAFE standards because it can't be done. Meanwhile people are driving around California in plug-in Prius that get better than 100 mpg of gasoline burned and half the remaining power comes from renewables.
So next time jabailo, when you compare a corporate disaster to a general please dig a little in your history books and get the right one. Bob Lutz is the Rommel of corporate executives. You remember Rommel; the Nazi German general who got his ass kicked in North Africa because he didn't understand logistics and then in Normandy because he didn't understand weather. I understand that his plan for the world came to a bad end. Fancy maneuvers and big iron don't mean shit if you run out of gas.
GM has gone to hell and is losing money because they refuse to acknowledge the FACT that the world has changed around them and that they must adjust to survive. We don't know anybody who has a problem like that do we?
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
spaceshaper Posted 11:01 pm
26 Feb 2008
I live in central North Carolina, the heartland of old tobacco country. Many farmers hereabouts are making big progress turning former tobacco land over to actual food production, much of it organic or transitional and much of it for local markets. They're doing just fine thank you without having another environmentally-destructive low-profit low-benefit non-food commodity crop thrust down their gullets.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 1:09 am
27 Feb 2008
Food goes along with my main grip about corn for fuel. Land for food is a novel idea, using the natural stuff for fertilizer, can't go wrong there.
We may have to send someone from the ag dept. of UK down there to check it out.
The only viable replacement crop we have currently is marjurana. We are becoming a top producer in the nation but the government is kinda frowning on it.
Of course most of it is snuck over on government land to keep from losing the ol tobacco patch in case of a bust.
Might be able to work out an ag trade here, send us some heirloom tomato seeds and we will send you all a bud or two. I feel it would do better organically grown but they like to do the quick method here and its hard packing a sac of manure through the hills.
It may be our main problem, some of those guys are just to laid back to worry about a replacement crop, I think they are smoking to much of the product..
They are a big help on my campaign to stop coal stripping and mountain top removal. They like to plant in the forest so the choppers flying around in the fall can't see the crop. Large stripped off area's deprive them of planting space and provide landing Zones for the feds if they are close to where their garden is.
Sometimes it ain't easy being green!
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
ViridianSeattle Posted 4:42 am
27 Feb 2008
Being CEO of a big American car company means you're making policy decisions that mean thousands of Americans will needlessly die this year so you can increase short term profits. (They'll die from crash incompatibility (too many light trucks instead of sedans/station wagons and minivans), lung and heart disease because of dirty diesels in trucks (diesel particulate loopholes), etc, etc, whatever.)
Lutz doesn't even care that he's probably doomed much of the American car industry by his short-sighted approach to product development and brand management.
His me-first you-die approach has worked really well for him. (He is after all, rich and CEO of a major corp - so what's not to like?)
Dead people? Somebody else's problem.
When you're dealing with someone like that "why can't we all just get along" isn't exactly going to get any traction.
In the medium and long term, Lutz is and has been bad news for the American auto industry.
That fact should be at the core of every outward-facing Green commentary on Lutz. The fact that he's bad for American health and the ecosystem and the climate and pedestrians and cyclists and your grandmother and whatever else ought to be mentioned after that main fact is rammed home.
(Just read all the fan-boy posts on the GM blog and our own jb above. These folks don't care about anyone else. Until we can make the case about how screwed they've been by this guy, they're not going to care about Lutz.)
Permalink
askantik Posted 1:46 pm
28 Feb 2008
Owned.
Anyhow, ethanol is a bad idea. Even cellulosic ethanol, which by some scientists is hailed as an actually valid pursuit, doesn't seem so great. We need to be concentrating on wind and solar.
The more steps involved in the harvesting of energy, the worse the process is. Taking energy (almost) directly from the source of all energy (the sun) is a much smarter idea, in my opinion.
Additionally, we need to rely less on electricity, automobiles, etc. altogether. No amount of alternative fuels or energies will ever be able to keep up with the exorbitant usage of energy by the average American. Even if it was all solar, there's be a zillion square miles of solar panels if we all continue to use as much energy as we currently do.
Permalink