A failure of leadership in the private sector.
This is not a new story, but given our common theme regarding the failure of federal government officials to provide leadership on environmental issues, we thought it would be useful to give an example of a private leader also failing to provide leadership. As has been widely reported, General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz described global warming last month as a “total crock of s–t” to a group of reporters in Texas.
Although Lutz claims his remarks have no bearing on his company’s overall policy towards greenhouse gas emissions, it is not insignificant that he holds these views. GM has often been criticized for failing to adapt rapidly enough to the changing consumer market, which shifted from demanding big gas guzzling SUVs to smaller more efficient vehicles.
Even today, the one big “green” product from GM on the roads is their “flex fuel” vehicles that can run on petroleum or on ethanol (E85). Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed, ethanol may be worse for the environment than the fuel it is supposed to replace. Even more telling is that a major reason GM sells these flex fuel cars is because of the break on fuel efficiency standards given to them by the federal government for cars that can burn ethanol. Apparently it only costs GM a few hundred dollars to convert a regular car into a flex fuel (and probably just a couple cents to attach that cool looking flex fuel logo).
This seems to us to be a failure in private leadership. GM’s leaders, like Lutz, can only have the luxury of claiming their personal opinions on global warming don’t affect company policy when that company is doing the right thing to address environmental issues (especially when that is what the consumer desires). And in this case, not only is the private management at GM failing to provide leadership on the environment, but they are being supported in this policy by the federal government.
However, in spite of this critique, it should be noted that GM does say that it will be selling an electric car, the Volt, by the year 2010.
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- Billions spent by federal government on alternative fuel cars with little to show
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