Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

So GM ran its annoying Live Green, Go Yellow commercial during NBC’s coverage of Live Earth. The company works hard to create the (false) impression they actually care about the environment. Yellow, of course, stands for corn ethanol, which is nobody’s idea of a particularly green product as far as global warming is concerned (except possibly as a transition fuel to cellulosic ethanol).

GM is not a company that is on the side of “green” cars. It has spent millions lobbying against tougher corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards (and it killed the electric car, whilepushing the not-in-your-lifetime hydrogen car instead).

So why do they tout ethanol flex fuel vehicles? Because for a small amount of money, it makes them look green, while actually allowing them to generate more pollution with their fleet of cars. They are exploiting a loophole in CAFE:

The dual-fuel loophole allows manufacturers to earn credits towards meeting federal fuel economy standards by producing vehicles that are able to run on both petroleum and an alternative fuel, even if they never actually use the alternative fuel. As a result, automakers can sell fleets of vehicles that fall short of federal fuel economy targets. In 2004, this loophole was already increasing U.S. oil dependence by 80,000 barrels per day.

Go Yellow, Live Greenwash.

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This entry was posted by Joe on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 11:18 am and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.