The Human Angle Behind Greener Cars
Pictures and Stories Move Automakers; New Poll Shows Attitudes Going Green
By Dave Tilford
With all the buzz surrounding Al Gore’s acclaimed new film, An Inconvenient Truth, it appears that global warming has gone Hollywood.
New American Dream is trying to see that it “goes Detroit,” as well.
In June, New Dream staffers traveled to Motor City to meet with automakers and ask them to do their part in helping us break our oil dependence and transition to a more sustainable future. We didn’t have Al Gore and his traveling slideshow with us, but we did have the next best thing: a scrapbook of powerful words and images created by members of the New Dream Community — each entry articulating a deeply personal vision of why we need cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.
It’s all part of our “Green Cars Today, Blue Skies Tomorrow” campaign, an effort to help ordinary citizens take their demands for fuel- efficient vehicles directly to automakers. In conjunction with the campaign, we asked New Dream Community members to think about the people, places, and things they care about most that are affected by climate change. We then asked them to encapsulate what’s at stake in words or images telling just exactly why “I want Green Cars Today.”
We received a whopping 25,000 submissions. With a little nudge from bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver (who offered her own thoughts on why we must curb our dependence on fossil fuels), New Dream Community members sent in photographs, artwork, poems, and prose. With words and pictures conjuring up misty mountains, coral reefs, family members, and people they most likely will never meet, members spoke movingly of a planet at risk if we don’t change course and curb emissions. Not surprisingly, a vast number of the submissions contained photographs of individuals too young to drive — children who will face the consequences of decisions we make today.
We chose a selection of the most vivid submissions to create the scrapbook, copies of which we then presented to the Big Six automakers. While in Detroit, we met with executives from General Motors and Ford. Executives at Ford presented the book to CEO Bill Ford, who personally looked through the scrapbook and read the submissions. (This wasn’t our first contact with Ford Motor Company. Last year, the company invited us to sit on the select committee reviewing its corporate social responsibility report.) We also delivered copies of the scrapbook to Toyota, Honda, Daimler-Chrysler, and Hyundai.
The response to the campaign isn’t the only indication that more Americans are focusing on this critical issue. In June, we commissioned a nationwide poll, conducted by Widmeyer Communications, to gauge American attitudes toward climate change. We found that nearly all Americans (94 percent) agreed with the statement that “Global warming is a major threat to our country and the world.” More than half (56 percent) believe our dependence on oil is a problem. A strong majority (80 percent) believe automakers could do more to help reduce our dependence on oil.
Our Green Cars Today, Blue Skies Tomorrow campaign is part of our overall mission of helping Americans take individual actions, while at the same time banding together for greater leverage in calling for greener products and more sustainable policies. Visit us online to read some of the submissions and take part in our letter-writing action to Ford (see below) holding them accountable to their promise to deliver more fuel-efficient vehicles to market.
Dave Tilford is Senior Writer at the Center for a New American Dream. Communications Fellow Nicole Berckes contributed to this story.
Update: Hey, Ford: Where’s the Pudding?
Flex-Fuel Vehicles Won’t Solve Our Oil Dependence Problem
Last fall we encouraged thousands of citizens to thank Ford Motor Company for their promise to deliver 250,000 hybrid vehicles across all its vehicle lines by 2010. We also noted that the proof would be in the pudding. Well, we now regret to report that Ford has changed the menu — and the pudding is nowhere to be found.
In June, Ford announced a replacement promise: to instead deliver flex-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol (but that can also run on regular petroleum). This trade is inadequate. While ethanol might help alleviate some of our energy problems in the future, the fuel faces significant obstacles and requires new infrastructure that could take years to develop.
Americans need economically feasible and environmentally sensitive solutions now. A few facts:
- There are about 5 million flex-fuel vehicles on the road today — about 2 percent of registered vehicles.
- There are 800 E85 fuel pumps (providing an 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent petroleum fuel blend) in the United States, half of which are in Minnesota, Illinois, and Missouri. Half of U.S. states have less than ten of these pumps, and 13 states have none at all.
- If all 5 million flex-fuel vehicles ran on E85 fuel, they would consume over 3.5 billion gallons of the ethanol blend. That’s 158 times more E85 than what is currently used in highway vehicles, indicating that the vast majority of flex-fuel vehicle owners simply use regular gasoline.
- A flex-fuel vehicle running on E85 averages 12 mpg/city and 21 mpg/highway. A flex-fuel vehicle running on gasoline averages 16 mpg/city and 21 mpg/highway.
- A hybrid vehicle averages 34 mpg/city and 33 mpg/highway.
With the growing desire to reduce oil consumption, it’s no surprise that the manufacturers who produce the most efficient vehicles are enjoying the most success. Just this past summer Honda, perennially dubbed “Greenest Automaker” by Union of Concerned Scientists, announced a 30 percent growth in quarterly profits. July 2006 was also the first month that Toyota has ever sold more cars in the United States than Ford.
Urge Ford to refocus on efficient vehicles, set an ambitious target for its fleet fuel economy, and take a positive step in the fight against climate change.
Send your own message to Ford at www.newdream.org/make/ford.php.