That’s a little like saying nicotine is a little out of Philip Morris’s hands.

They are all hipocrites, and so are we for buying cars. Unless you live in the woods clad in a loin cloth you’re probably destroying the earth just like the rest of us.

The difference is, most of us don’t pretend to be doing more than the minimum necessary. Honda and other’s definitely are trying to blind us with their token efforts. For every FCX they put on the road they have 100,000 “new” ATVs rolling out that have basically a ride on loawn mower engine from 1960. And make no mistake, cars like the Prius are like everything else, a profit generation device. Toyota took a bit of a gamble on that car in the begining which is why they probably get some extra undeserved credit for sticking with it, but they saw the way the market was swinging and now it’s a pretty safe bet to sell to the green crowd. It’s the new heathy high mark-up market segment to replace SUVs.

I heard somewhere that the Prius hybrid is actually more wasteful than a Yaris or Corolla because of all the in-efficiencies in it’s production. Something silly like many components of the car are shipped all over the world multiple times, making the overall carbon footprint of the car worse than just a regular car.
Could TTAC do some digging into this story? It would be interesting to find the truth behind the Prius’s ‘Green-ness’

All of these, and an infinite number of other ideas, will be efficiently pursued by the masses if we simply pass a federal CO2 tax.

If we raise CAFE the ONLY effect would be that somewhere around 10 years from now the vehicle fleet will be more efficient; so we would force more efficient vehicles on the public by limiting choice. The way this will be accomplished will be by raising the price of cars and trucks to cover the more efficient designs. This in essence will also be a tax, only a much, much less effective one because all of these other options will not be encouraged by CAFE.

We have a big problem on our hands, why would anyone propose anything less than the most efficient means of tweaking the maketplace to solve it; a CO2 tax!

FYI: Toyota does the exact same thing as well.

Seems like all the automakers these days are desperately jumping on the environment bandwagon. Toyota was the first automaker to embrace this market on a large scale with it’s hybrids. Mostly it was simply the Prius. The Prius seems to have given Toyota big image boost in being environmently friendly and all other automakers are desperately trying to do the same.

As for dust, wind and rainfall errosion on rocks cause many times more dust than tires and brakes…And what specific chemicals are harmful?

Energy produced by hydrocarbon oxidation yields CO2 and water…Plant Food. The “Green” image is just marketing to those who are bad at chemistry. A Hummer H1 is more “Green” than a Prius…Chemically speaking.

The founder of Honda followed a philosophy of do more with less. Reasons why Honda automobiles often had much smaller displacement than their competition – and when turbos were young and had terrible emissions – Honda went with variable valve timing (beating out even Ferrari / Porsche / BMW, etc.).

Any form of racing is negative to the environment at least in the short run. It’s the new principles and discoveries they make finding out how to make a gas guzzing race engine burn a little less fuel but go as fast and produce as much power. Those applications Honda then takes to their consumer products. Honda does a fun thing of rotating their production engineers / designers into their motosports programs (being an engineer at Honda is one of the most coveted positions an engineer can attain).

Taken to the fact that many new plants by Honda are now using cooling lakes in order to cut HVAC bills by 70-80% and using different processes in order to decrease the painting process.

Where your typical Ford / GM speak about how much they care – they talk the talk – yet hardly walk the walk (usually just with one off dream concepts). Honda normally speaks softly and carries that big stick. What else do you get with a company whose entire BODs were all engineers by trade at one point in their career.

In today’s world, the two biggest angles on getting people to part with their money is safety and the environment.

It works too – a lot of people want to allow others to limit their freedoms or choices so they can feel “safe” or “environmental”.

There are practical limitations to this, of course.

Unless people live relatively close to each other, a carpool fails to avoid anything but congestion.

As for mass transit, even in some urban areas, population density is too low to take everyone everywhere that they would wish to go at a time approximately when they would wish to arrive. By car, I have a 25 minute drive to work here in Chicago. If I took public transit, I would be bound by someone else’s schedule (not good if I didn’t hear my alarm for 20 minutes one morning) and my commute would at least double, as I would have to wait for late trains and transfer to another line.

While many jobs could shift to telecommuting, the vast majority cannot — unless you want your children taught via computer screen and your neighborhood policed by video camera. Beyond that, there’s a social aspect that would be lost if we all spent our workday in our home office. What would be the point of living if, to lower our carbon footprint, we never saw another living person in our day-to-day lives?

Moving closer to work is only an option until everyone moves closer to work. If our cities were built such that office buildings were spread out throughout a metropolitan area, rather than concentrated downtown, this would be a definite possibility. But it’s far too late to reverse that trend and most people can’t afford to buy a 500k 1 bedroom condo downtown. And, regardless of how much good it might do, I would never want to even if I could afford it.

Good theoretical ideas, but as always the practical situation is hampered by feasibility.

This is a logical outgrowth of ‘free-market capitalism’ where corporate entities are considered to have no responsibilities except ‘maximizing shareholder value’.

If they can do that by selling sticks dipped in sewage, they will.

OTOH, I remember a former co-worker who in 2001 decided his ‘patriotic’ response to 9/11 would be to buy a GMC Suburban.

This is ooooooouuuuurrrrrrrr Kun Tray….

Sounds good, but in the end, such policies are mere wishful thinking.

On #1, it’s easy to say, “make it so,” much harder to actually make it so. Everybody points to the Prius as an example (while forgetting that the cars that Honda and Suzuki made 20 years ago were just as fuel efficient), but even hybrid technologies will eventually reach their plateau. What then? Do we continue to penalize the automakers for failing to alter the laws of physics to satisfy our legislation?

On #2, I don’t believe there will ever be a fuel that is ‘carbon neutral’. Even if the fuel itself generates no excess CO2 emissions when burned, the production of this fuel will do just as much damage. Consider the amount of deforestation that would have to be done to satisfy the ethanol demands necessary to replace petroleum (and consider that your fuel economy is lower when driving with ethanol). Any biologically derived fuel product is going to have a serious impact, even if you don’t see it coming out of your tailpipe.

Fixin’ the motive energy challenge and the environment by the same logic is a cinch.

http://www.russianplanet.ru/filolog/dore/munchausen/munch07-290.jpg

Since they are near the back off the grid with the making up the numbers teams, it fits in with the marketing plan of reducing Honda’s carbon footprint by going slower than McLaren or Ferrari or BMW or Renault or Williams or Toyota (even with Ralf Schumacher) or even Red Bull and its wired Italian sister team Toro Rosso, were quicker.

The only teams that were slower were Super Aguri, (made from bits of old Honda F1 cars) and Jordan/Midland/Spyker/a team named after an insanely wealthy and politically connected(aren’t they all?) Indian businessman.

#1 forces action by the auto industry; #2 forces action by the oil companies.

This does NOT prevent manufacturers from selling large vehicles. However, they do need to be fuel efficient.

It shouldn’t cost much either: money spent on more efficient vehicles would save money on fuel.
In fact, it’s a revenue opportunity for the auto industry (just look at the Prius: Toyota gets to charge more for the car, while the purchaser still has a low cost of ownership).

I know you’re being sarcastic, but if I were to humour you, I’d ask:

What about the water used in production, the chemicals in the paint, the dust from tires, the energy it takes to extract and shape the raw materials that become a car, the engine oil that gets cycled every few months, brake dust, etc., etc. ?

Wrong. CO2 generators are excellent for the environment.

http://www.johnsongas.com/industrial/CO2Gen.asp

You obviously don’t live in a northern state or Canada. Try a scooter for a few miles at 20 below and you’ll change your tune. Just not a feasible solution.

Good piece this. Got me thinking a bit differently on the whole subject…

How many marriages are rational, and would you want them to be?

The whole carbon credits industry angers me more than does the automaker’s noise. What a joke that the Al Gore’s of this world live in 10,000 sq. ft. plus mansions, jet around the world on private planes and then claim to have done no harm because they paid somebody to plant some trees. The facility with which a human being can make up rationalizations is mind boggling.

I’ld love to commute everyday on my motorcycle, but the way people drive around here, I wouldn’t feel safe in a full sized pick up truck!!! And the laws offer little protection for motorcyclists.

Honda did an excellent job of collecting money to put a microscopic name on the F1 car, they did an abysmal job of following up with the folks that did give money, and did believe that they would follow up because they are Honda. One would hope that the money went for a good cause, and not to fund their miserable F1 team.

Cliff,

The scooter is problematic unless you segregate them. Also, many places just need protection from the elements.

Still, if we were to get a bit radical about saving fuel, we could convert a lot of roads to use by only ultra light cars with vastly reduced lane widths. Then you could get 100 mph or use an electric or even pedal where the road is flat.

Then the only problem is increased deaths due to accidents.