GM Car Czar Bob Lutz: "The Planet is Going to Save Itself"
Speaking at The New York Auto Show, GM Car Czar Lutz defended his view that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a crock of shit [not paraphrasing]. When manicmommies.com blogger Kristen Brandt asked Maximum Bob why GM didn't make a vehicle for breeders who want to save the planet, Lutz launched into an anti-AGW tirade. Maximum Bob said the recent 2008 International Conference on Climate Change (see video: Global Warming Snow Job) supposedly signals a turning point in the scientific community's opinion of AGW. "Don't worry about saving the planet," Lutz tut-tutted. "Trust me: the planet is going to save itself." "I didn't want to sound like a tree-hugger," the all-expenses paid blogger demurred. "Then don't sound like one," a bellicose Lutz replied. In other news, Bob is still hopeful the tree-hugger's four-wheeled poster child– the Chevrolet Volt– will be ready by the end of 2010.
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Dean: you're right. The planet will recover. It did after the dinosaurs were gone... I think production vs consumption is the real problem. Technology makes it ever easier to harvest the world's resources and consume them ever faster. A few guys with picks and shovels in a coal mine is hugely different than scraping off mountain tops and enormous earth moving machines with rotating cutting wheels to scoop up dirt. http://www.allowe.com/Humor/WhereIsMyDozer.htm Yeah, we're polluting the earth but we are using up the earth in an ever faster pace b/c everyone wants to live like the Americans and the Americans can't imagine living any other way. I think it is time to begin making the changes to America (and the rest of the world) that enables us to continue with a good lifestyle while using a fraction of the resources. Wait 20 years and we'll see the Chinese, Indians, and some of the smaller players competing with the Europeans and Americans for massive amounts of non-renewable resources like oil and coal. I think denial of this amounts to putting one's head in the sand. There are certainly people in power (corporate and gov't) who benefit from business as usual when they know that they will be retired or dead before the agenda they force now reveals it's consequences. For the folks bitching about a cold winter... We've had yet another warm winter here in TN. Not only that we have been battling a drought for a few years as well. Our storms also seem to be getting more powerful if less frequent. I hear the arguments for a cooling trend but as a kid in the 1970s/1980s we had much colder and snowy winters then than we have had in the 1990s and the new century. Thw eather must be changing in different ways in different places.
Phil Ressler: FWIW, more and more new buildings are conforming with LEED standards, which are better than nothing, and the "Cradle to Cradle" book by William McDonough & Michael Braungart has energized some young architects to design even more efficient and sustainable buildings. But just as with cars, no amount of energy-conscious design will matter until clients buy in. They control the money.
bfg9k: I would argue that 30 degrees is not a "fluctuation". So, take your advice. See Donald Fagan's post. Oh, sick burn.
Well he's right. But we may not get to see it...