Fox News commentator: Ford's 'Green strategy' a mistake
On Fox
News, Steven Milloy writes about the backlash suffered by Ford CEO Bill Ford, Jr. at the hands of various
environmental groups. The organisations have expressed their displeasure by pointing out that the Blue Oval
still produces too much pollution from its manufacturing (“more heat-trapping pollution into our skies each year
than the entire country of Mexico”); continues to produce gas-guzzling SUVs; and argues that the
automaker opposes proposed California legislation requiring reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 2016.
The ridicule climaxes adjacent to the pictured ad in the New York Times.However, Milloy takes issue with the criticism, pointing to what he considers the fallacies of the groups' talking points. But he reserves the bulk of his ire for Ford himself, who he believes is too 'occupied' trying to appeal to the environmental groups, even when such overtures threaten the company's bottom line. For example, Milloy points out that according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, complying with the California law may reduce CO emissions by a 'minuscule' amount while raising vehicle costs by thousands of dollars.
Specific details can be found at the link. When you come back, fire off in Comments.
[Source: Fox News.com]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mooseman 7:41AM (3/27/2006)
He has a point. But, you have to understand that the attitude of many, and I'd argue a case could be made for most, of the folks in the community start out with an anti-populist anti-American mindset. This is the very reason Toyota gets a pass for introducing the largest light duty truck extant, the new Tundra.
They haven't received the same backlash Ford gets for their truck line, even though it meets the same criteria for being un-"green" as Ford's line.
It is simply politics played out in the marketplace.
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hj 8:40AM (3/27/2006)
I totally agree with you mooseman. I really want to know why these enviros aren't attacking bmw, benz, hyundai, nissan, and every other automaker who dosen't have a hybrid. Theres no arguing with enviros. They're anti-american socialistic in nature which is why they attack companies (and only american companies) instead of the market which is why all products exist in the first place. Ford isin't forcing people to buy SUV's Ford is making them because they market demands it. If they don't get one from ford they're going to go with GM, Toyota, Nissan, etc. The bottom line, FUCK ALL ENVIROS.
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small-wee-wee 9:23AM (3/27/2006)
HJ and Mooseman - Speak only to which you have a clue.
The Sierra Club, a very large and active environmental group is trying to help Ford market their hybrid mariner.
http://www.sierraclub.org/mercurymariner/
P.S. Without the environmental movement encouraging business to do the right thing the planet would be in much worse shape than it already is.
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Derby 9:27AM (3/27/2006)
The enviros always have something to nag about. And this time it was Ford that was easy to attack. Daimler-Chrysler with there new M-class, Lexus with the new GS 460, Audi with the Q7, all larger bigger engines, but I guess American company are easy bait.
Although I have to admit that the most manufacturers don't even try to produce more enviromental friendly cars.
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aas 9:32AM (3/27/2006)
anti-american socialistic...better green than dead!
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Michael G 11:02AM (3/27/2006)
Green freaks will never be happy until cars run on clean water, hugs, and smiles.
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Chris 11:12AM (3/27/2006)
Better off green than dead? Some of these psycho "green" groups would prefer if we all rode bikes and hemp clothing. Look at ELF (Earth Liberation Front) which encourages the torching of SUV's, the dealerships that sell them, and the when they can find them the homes of the dealers or salespeople. Whats really funny about that is by burning the SUV it releases more crap in the air than 50 SUV's running the road for their entire useful life!! Enivromentalists are as bad as the people they object to because they ony tell there side of a story and use selective facts that only benefit them.
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Gardiner Westbound 11:19AM (3/27/2006)
Henry Ford II would have told them to strap a rocket to their ass and ride it to hell. Bill Ford Jr. tries too hard to make everybody happy. Pleasing the family lobby made the homosexual lobby angry. Then he sucked up to the homosexual lobby again. Now both are sore at him and vow never to buy Ford products. Then the tree-huggers got their shorts in a knot. He can’t win.
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Stephen Chiang 11:36AM (3/27/2006)
HJ and Mooseman, you guys aren't making any sense. How does demanding clean air, clean water, less dependence on hydrocarbon fuels equate to being "anti-populist" and "anti-american socialistic in nature"?
Being "socialistic" is an economic point of view whereas having concerns with ones surroundings and energy policy of the country (being an environmentalist) is a politcal point of view and are not mutually exclusive. Therefore it is possible for an environmentalist to also be a capitalist contrary to HJ's opinion.
American companies aren't the only ones being protested- a Google search on corpoate protests will show that. But it would make sense that American environmental groups would protest American companies more often since American companies are likely to affect our (America's) environment more often due to their locality.
Contrary to the beliefs of some commenters, using ones first amendment right to protest and critisize those who directly affect ones standard of living does not make them "anti-populist", "socialist" or "anti-American".
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Scott Eaton 11:50AM (3/27/2006)
#9: Applause.
Nobody tosses around the word "socialism" as much as those who cannot define it correctly.
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Mike 11:57AM (3/27/2006)
If God hadn't forced Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, the Sierra Club would have.
Hybrids are not the end all be all of fuel consuption savings. A hybrid is a band aid that has been marketed as a miracle.
Ford needs to run it's business like a figgin business. They have been in the press WAY too much lately for pandering to special interests (Gays, anti-gays, enviros, etc..)
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J 12:13PM (3/27/2006)
another case of the cart before the horse, or in this case: marketing before engineering.
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PJ 1:56PM (3/27/2006)
Sigh... "gray areas" are a difficult concept for some people, aren't they?
Comparing all environmentally conscious people to the ELF is like equating all political conservatives with Hitler. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this, but it's immature in the extreme.
Of course automotive execs should be concerned with creating cleaner and more efficient vehicles. They're breathing the same air as the rest of us, and it doesn't take an extremist viewpoint to see that the world is slowly getting dirtier and more crowded. But no one wants to be the first company with a smaller, slower, pricier lineup of cars, because, when it comes to big purchases, most consumers (including myself) are primarily selfish, and sales would suffer as a result.
In my opinion, then, it's good that third-party groups like the Sierra Club are lighting a flame under automakers' asses. The need for more resource-efficient cars is an inevitable one, and a little conflict of interest keeps things moving in that irreversible direction. The average consumer would wait far longer before they'd begin to apply the same pressures via buying decisions, but complains just as loudly about once a fuel shortage affects his or her own pocketbook.
Incidentally, part of the reason environmental activists target American automakers is probably that American automakers flaunt their "big and bad"-ness more than other brands (think Dodge and Hummer commercials, and the general pitching of size and indimitating looks as a selling point). Missing the bigger picture, yes--and another part of it is likely American self-hatred. But then, I can understand the sentiment that, since America is the world's superpower, the country with the most wealth and resources, we should be at the forefront of efficiency innovation, instead of getting pushed from behind by European and Japanese companies.
Hybrids, meanwhile, suffer from a similar polarization of viewpoints. No, they're not a "miracle," and yes, they're only a temporary solution. But isn't a step in the right direction better than no step at all, as long as you understand it as such?
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motorman 3:20PM (3/27/2006)
if every greeney in the country bought a hybrid the problem would be solved BUT the problem is they want everyone else to buy the hybrid not them.
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iQuack 5:16PM (3/27/2006)
A few observations:
1. No matter how much is offered to ANY advocacy group, it's NEVER enough. They're like spoiled children who want everything their way and NOW. An advocacy group simply cannot be satisfied.
2. With respect to Ford, their car offerings in the U.S. have been slim. Even with Ford's new Fusion/Milan/Zephyr cars, those are really only one car in different drag. Better to ignore those Fords and buy a Mazda 6 instead.
3. Pandering is no substitue for product. Ford's lip service to hybrids, etc. means nothing. Ford is still a truck maker in a time when trucks are costly to gas up. Maybe housewives should have thought about the possibility of high gas prices before buying a 5000 pound vehicle to drive to Walmart.
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Phil 12:14AM (3/30/2006)
The Fox article is correct: TOTAL greenhouse gas output traceable to all forms of human presence amounts to less than 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere. And much of THAT 4% is natural, i.e. a consequence of mere human existence. Driving is but a tiny fraction. Also, not all greenhouse gases are equal insulators. Methane is many times more heat-retaining than is C02. Driving is a tiny fraction of the volume of guilty gases.
The two top sources of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere are termite and bovine flatulence. Truth is, cessation of meat-eating and cultivation of cattle for consumption would have more effect than stopping all the internal combustion engine driving in the entire U.S.
I'm Democrat and environmentally conscious. However, liberal environmentalists have global warming wrong. Groups wage campaigns against greenhouse gas emissions, but individual scientists, in my experience, privately back away from the alarm. The global ecosystem is on average warming. But it's not because anyone makes or drives an SUV. There are many precedents for cyclic spikes in ocean and atmospheric temperatures. The collective memory of conditions throughout the 20th century is retaining sensations from an unusually temperate climate time. It doesn't take much Googling to find the folly and agendas behind the alarm over mal-identified causes.
If it were true that a change in human activity could alter the cycle we're experiencing, then individuals should have the freedom to find their own responsible mix. I drive, and I drive cars that are neither profligate burners of fuel, nor sippers. But I don't use my furnace in my home very much, and my A/C use is modest in the summer. I live in a smaller house than I can afford because I don't need more. I'd guess my existence emits less greenhouse gas than many enviromentalists driving a Prius. Not because I'm keeping count, but because I keep my lifestyle a few ticks below my income.
A tall, brick-like, 4700 lb. Ford F150 gets about double the mileage today that a 3500+ lb. carbeuretted V8 sedan got in 1970. I know, I've had both. And in terms of real pollutants, it is 99% cleaner. GM, still using thoroughly-updated pushrod engines does even better. Customers, however, have demanded more size, more weight, more luxury features, more power and therefor less efficiency.
The hypocrisy of the environmental left amazes me. They'll burn wood at home (as damaging a fuel as you can find) and drive ill-maintained Volvo needing ring jobs and spewing smoke, but their bumper stickers dis nuclear power and brand them "green." They'll torch a car lot full of Hummers, letting loose a huge plume of toxic pollutants from burning paint, insulation, PCBs, petrochemical materials, rubber, plastic and PVC, not to mention the additional pollution released and energy consumed to manufacture replacements for those destroyed vehicles.
And where are these same people protesting Hummers, Expeditions, Excursions and Suburbans when Porsche introduces 10mpg turbo porky SUVs? When Mercedes builds a surplus quarter ton of extra ballast in vehicles across their range, relative to the class each is in? When Audi promotes friction-inducing and weight-increasing all wheel drive to people who don't need it? When Toyota and Nissan launch attacks on the least fuel-efficient segments of our market? Why aren't they helping to publicize the fact that American producers' fleet efficiency has steadily increased since 1980 while the Japanese and Europeans have steadily decreased as they have gone after our dreadnaught classes of vehicles?
Bill Ford should get the key enviro leaders in a room and knock some heads. Tell them if they don't get on board to reciprocate his large investments to create a green vector for the company, he will abandon all support for them and return to his CEO responsibilities to his shareholders. Environmentalists have for the most part made poor business partners, and they generally refuse to understand why. Their nannyism is clogging up the political apparatus and wasting scarce capital in ruthlessly competitive world. They should have more confidence in the market's ability to find appropriate equilibrium.
Where were enviros when Caltrans excluded the Ford Escape Hybrid from carpool privileges? Caltrans said it didn't meet the mileage minimum, but they missed the key point, which is that it's the DELTA that's important, not the absolute. You're not going to get an SUV buyer into a Prius, but if you can get an Explorer driver to downsize and go to an Escape Hybrid, the delta in consumption is significant, especially in a traffic-choked city.
I stopped financially supporting all environmental organizations because of this kind of persistent uncritical thinking and their blind anti-Americanism. If you're not an enviro hypocrite and want my support, then pressure your cohorts to behave accordingly. It's nothing more than what we in the West are asking mainstream Muslims to do vis-a-vis radicals in their ranks.
If you want to curb greenhouse gases, stop eating meat and drinking milk, and kill all the termites you can. You'll get a sense of proportion on the greenhouse question.
Phil
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