Here’s another entry in the Alice-In-Wonderland contradictions of our world: An auto-industry trade group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, launched a national campaign to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, caled Eco-Driving.
All well and good–except that this is the same group that bitterly resisted attempts to achieve a fleet average of 52 miles per gallon by 2030.
Found both of these links in the How Online blog–found the juxtaposition quite telling:
First, an inspiring (and long-overdue) article on MarketWatch about how people are seeking MBAs not just to acquire personal wealth but to make a difference in the world. I could quote many parts of this terrific article, but I’ll pick just one:
“The New Green Focus for Future MBAs” headlines Greenbiz.com. And, it’s the most popular story on the site. At the same time, a new poll by Experience Inc. shows more students are hoping for a job with a green-minded company. The poll says 81% of students believe there is value in working for an environmentally aware company, while 79% would likely accept a job at an eco-friendly company over a conventional one.
“In a few short years, eco-friendly practices have gone from being new-fangled selling points to becoming essential requirements, with states vying with each other to offer incentives and legislation that promote green technology and business. While the corporate world is scrambling to devise strategies to address sustainability, business schools across the country have been incorporating it into their curriculum for the past several years, both in response to student demand and in line with industry trends,” Greenbiz says.
But the same page of the same blog links to another story (International Herald-Tribune) that shows, once again, the same-old-same-old of too many giant corporations just doesn’t work. and deceptive business practices have cost General Motors, and its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, over $300 million combined:
Under the settlement, GM would pay $277 million to investors, while its auditor, Deloitte & Touche LLP, would pay $26 million, pending approval from U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in Detroit.
The two-year-old class-action lawsuit claimed that GM misstated and mischaracterized its revenue, earnings and cash flow, artificially inflating the company’s stock price and debt securities.
Let’s hope those green and ethical MBAs of tomorrow remember that they know better when they’re presented with opportunities for fraud.
Talk about head-in-the-sand behavior! Apparently June 12 was Carbon Belch Day:
Proud of their antisocial behavior, these ninnies wanted to be as environmentally destructive as possible that day, asking people to
oppose U.S. participation in the Kyoto treaty or any such successor agreement, mandatory domestic limits on CO2, and any federal or state carbon “tax” or “cap-and-trade” system — including the current Lieberman-Warner bill.
One could make a good case for opposing Lieberman-Warner on the gorunds that its cap-and-trade system is essentially a giveaway to polluters–but that’snot the argument being made here.
What’s next: Celebrate Racism Day with the KKK?
Pretty cool! If it turns out to be true, anyhow.
The world’s first zero-net-energy city is being planned for (of all places) the United Arab Emirates, just outside Abu Dhabi.
Solar power, in the form of photovoltaic panels, concentrated solar collectors, and solar thermal tubes will provide 82% of the citys energy needs.
An additional 17% of the citys power will come from burning composted food waste in a highly efficient method that developers say will emit greenhouse gases at a rate 10 times lower than if the food were allowed to decompose in a landfill.
The remaining 1% of the citys energy will come from wind turbines.
This is the same UAE that is on a massive, insane-looking skyscraper binge in Dubai, creating a beautiful modern city but one that is anything but carbon/energy-neutral.
Hmmm!
The U.S. Senate did two idiotic things regarding energy policy yesterday. In both cases, Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican filibuster.
First, they voted against a windfall oil profit tax that would fund alternative energy. OK, I can understand the logic of rejecting a windfall profit tax on the big oil companies; the argument could be made that this would ultimately lead to higher gas prices and more foreign oil imports. But this time, the oil companies could avoid the profit tax by investing those runaway profits in much-needed renewable energy technology.
But for the life of me, I can’t see the argument against extending tax credits for homeowners installing renewable energy.
According to the New York Times, the Democrats’ energy package (not dead but on hold, currently)
…would require electric utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from wind, solar or biomass energy by 2020.
But the energy bill would make profound changes in other areas as well. It would require car companies to increase the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. It would also require a huge increase in the production of renewable fuels for cars and trucks and require the federal government to set tougher efficiency standards for electric appliances. The measure would also give the government more power to prosecute “price gouging” by oil companies.
This is incredibly shortsighted. It increases dependence on foreign oil, increases demand, and contributes to the myth that our current energy supplies are limitless. And then people wonder why it costs $70 to fill up their SUVs, and why they can’t even sell those SUVs.
Water is complicated. I recently wrote an article in my Monthly Frugal Fun Tips about why most people drinking bottled water should be switching away.
Of course, there are situations when you need bottled water–such as if your water happens to be toxic.
I found this AlterNet interview with Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte on the water controversy to be thorough (considering its relative brevity), readable, and understanding of the depths of complexity.
Here’s a brief excerpt, a “taste,” if you’ll pardon the pun.
I just did a story for the New York Times Magazine about Orange County’s toilet-to-tap program, where wastewater is being reclaimed for drinking.
At first I wondered — if people know that they are going to be drinking this water again, it would be nice to think that people would take better care of what they put down the toilet, like would we switch to biodegradable cleaning products, would industry use nontoxic materials, would farmers cut their use of pesticides? Then I realized that is a false hope, because everyone is relying on the technology to clean it up, and it might even have the effect of letting polluters off the hook while we are spending $29 billion a year to run this very high-tech plant, and it gets everything out, so why should we bother. That’s the “faith in technology” problem.
General Motors just announced that it’s considering discontinuing the Hummer line.
Quite frankly–I’m delighted.
Out of all the people who buy SUVs in general, I’m guessing somewhere between five and ten percent actually need one:
There might be a few other categories but I can’t think of them at the moment.
Not one of these people actually needs a Hummer!
Extreme even among SUVs, Hummers get terrible mileage, hog more than their share of natural resources, block other drivers’ view of the road, and are wildly overpriced in my opinion.
The 2008 Hummer H3, maybe the most fuel-efficient in the brief history of this GMC division, gets 14-15 miles per gallon. Some of the older models get 9.
I don’t think any responsible person could justify a Hummer.
By the way, if you’d like to know how it happened that SUVs went from almost a non-category to such major market dominance, read It’s the Crude, Dude, by Linda McQuaig. It wasn’t an accident, but had a lot to do with U.S. government policies that allowed these monsters to bypass fleet-wide passenger car fuel efficiency regulations.
Also, for a nice piece contrasting the Hummer with, of all things, Prius, here’s a cool article in Slate.
Safe energy vs. nuclear energy is something I know about. When I was a college student in the mid 1970s, I did a school paper on whether nuclear energy was safe. Though I came in with a more-or-less open mind, I was shocked and horrified by what I found. The more I researched, the worse it got.
Among the hundred or so good reasons NOT to use nukes:
True energy security involves renewable, nonpolluting, decentralized technologies such as solar wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–coupled with innovative engineering that slashes our energy consumption, of the sort Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute have been proposing for 30 years. Even here in cloudy, cold New England, I have both solar hot water and solar electric (photovoltaic) systems on the room of my house, which was built in 1743. If we can do it here…
So when I got a mailing from the respected environmental group Friends of the Earth saying that the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill is fatally flawed because it opens the door to new nukes, I wanted to share that message with you.
Tell your Congressional representatives.
Fascinating and far-ranging interview with European philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Democracy Now this morning.
He covered war, energy, US presidential politics, and much more. But the statement that really got to me was:
A true act creates the conditions of its own possibility. That is to say, it appears impossible, you do it, and the whole field changes: it’s possible.
He went on to cite President Nixon’s opening US relations with Maoist China, and postulated that if Obama becomes president, he will seize a similar window with Cuba.
But this concept has reach far beyond international relations. In sports, the 4-minute mile was an unassailable barrier for decades; once Roger Bannister broke it, many people followed quickly. In science, it was unthinkable in 1955 that a human being would walk on the moon before 1970. In energy and the environment, the work of Amory Lovins and others show new ways of reinventing society as a more earth-friendly place (see my article here). And in business ethics, I like to hope that my Business Ethics Pledge campaign will make a similar difference in the consciousness that ethical business is actually more profitable.
Ethical Corporation magazine, a UK offering that’s always interesting, has a wonderful cheery article on how ethical corporations will fare better in a recession.
This echoes many of the sentiments I discuss in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First–that when you establish customer loyalty based on ethics and sustainability, those customers will give you the benefit of the doubt.
For those who buy on energy efficiency, the higher prices will not be a deterrent compared to long-term savings. And those who seek out fairly traded goods,
Jim Hawker, spokesman for green insurance group IBuyEco, goes as far as to say: “Ethical brands are recession-proof – they are perceived as luxury consumer goods, targeted at a niche market that will be less affected by the credit constraints of a recession.”
In fact, the opportunity is growing, they say–and here’s a conclusion I personally haven’t seen articulated before (and fully support):
According to research by the Climate Group, consumers not only expect leading brands to have strategies in place to tackle climate change issues, but also expect these brands to help consumers develop their own strategies, via the choice of products and services made available to them.
For the companies responding to this demand, it is an exercise in brand building.
I believe this is very much true, and smart companies have been educating their consumers on social issues as they relate to product choices for decades. But I haven’t seen anyone talk about this from a brand-building point of view before, nor have I seen the argument that consumers increasingly rely on these companies to provide that education.
