GreenBiz.com® |
ClimateBiz |
GreenerBuildings |
GreenerComputing |
GreenerDesign |
Greener World Media
Recent Posts by Marc Gunther
-
I’m writing this post on my Apple PowerBook G4, which ordinarily does very well what I need it to do—except that right now it is sitting on my lap and giving off enough heat to keep me warm on a cool day. That might be welcome if today were a February day in Denver. But it’s August. I’m in the mile-high city where the sun always seems to shine to moderate a discussion on sustainability for Coca Cola Enterprises, the big bottling company; to attend a bunch of events on the environment and energy; and to soak up the atmosphere as the Democrats and thousands of hangers-on here to nominate Barack Obama. The Coke discussion went well, I thought—participants included the major of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who talked about the drought and water conservation, Majority Leader Steny
-
The other day, John McCain visited an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to call for more offshore drilling. The massive Chevron rig produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, I just filled up my new Honda Fit with gas for the first time. After driving 282 miles, I bought 9.47 gallons at $3.62 a gallon. So I’m getting 29.6 mpg, mostly in the city. What’s the connection? The actions of millions of Americans like me—as we trade big cars for smaller ones, drive less, or do both—are going to have a whole lot more impact on oil prices, more quickly, than drilling for more oil. In fact, they already are. Gas prices have been falling by more than a penny per day and the price of oil has dropped from about $147 a barrel to about $115 a barrel in the last couple of months for one
-
Not only is the world flat, it is amazingly interconnected. Who would have thought that Oreos or Cheez-Its could contribute to deforestation and global warming? Today’s Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com looks at palm oil, the commodity that connects hundreds of products on supermarket shelves to the disappearing tropical forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. Enviros who take a confrontational approach (Rainforest Action Network) as well as those who prefer to consult or collaborate (Conservation International, WWF) are attacking the palm oil problem. So are big agribusiness companies like ADM, Bunge and Cargill, although they’re not moving fast enough or far enough to satisfy the activists at RAN. Interestingly, the palm oil story appears to be following a script
-
The Environmental Working Group looked at nearly 1,000 sunscreen products and found that “4 out of 5 contain chemicals that may pose health hazards or don’t adequately protect skin from the sun’s damaging rays. The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed household air fresheners and found that “most contain chemicals that may affect hormones and reproductive development, particularly in babies. The EPA was so concerned about keeping rodenticides—rat and mouse poisons—out of the hands of children that the agency ruled this spring that four of the most most hazardous types of pesticides will no longer be sold for personal use These days, it seems like you can’t open the newspaper or, worse, search the Internet without hearing about the dangers of ordinary household
-
While carbon offsets are controversial and always will be, they have enormous potential to promote an elusive goal: sustainable development. At their best, carbon offsets are a low-cost way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transfer clean technology to poor countries and help people out of poverty. Which brings us to JPMorgan Chase and cook stoves. The global Wall Street investment bank has begun subsidizing the production and distribution of efficient cooking stoves in Africa, an effort that could expand to India and southeast Asia as well. The project is the topic of today’s Sustainability column on fortune.com and cnnmoney.com. Here’s how it begins: By any measure, it is a long way from the Park Avenue headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, the global investment bank that
Sponsored Links
My New (Green?) Car
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Stumble Upon
One of the great things about the environmental movement is that it provides cover for those of us who are, shall we say, prudent about spending money. You can probably guess where I’m going here. Now, when I tell my wife that, no, we don’t really need to turn on the AC even though it’s 78 degrees outside, or when I urge my daughter to spend just a little less time in the shower, or when I cringe at the way we waste food in our home, I am no longer a skinflint or cheapskate. Seizing the moral high ground, I am now the guardian of our family’s carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, there are times when my intention to be “green” and to be frugal come into conflict–which brings us to my new car.
I’m not into cars, to say the least. I have been perfectly happy with my 1994 Volvo 850, bought used, now with a speedometer reading of about 146,000 miles. The last new car I bought was a Toyota Camry back in the mid-1980s. If everyone were like me, Detroit would have gone down the tubes years ago.
But as the costs of repairing the aging Volvo rose, and the dirt in those hard-to-get-to places was, well, hard to get to, I reluctantly decided that the time had come to replace it. But what to buy? I didn’t want to put a lot of time into car shopping, but I wanted to buy a car that I could feel good about owning and driving. I decided to treat myself to a new car, even though I’m pretty sure that it would be preferable from an economic and environmental standpoint to go with another used car.
So I did a little research and quickly narrowed the field to a handful of models—the Honda Civic (hybrid and conventional), the Honda Fit, the Toyota Prius, the Toyota Corolla and the Ford Focus. I don’t need a lot of car (obviously), which was another reason to let go of the Volvo. I work at home, drive less than 6,000 miles a year, and rarely go farther than the local airports. I’m driving less than ever these days because I recently bought a saddlebag for my bicycle, which I’m now using for the short trips (3 miles each way) to our local coffee shop, bakery, even the supermarket to pick up a few things. (Our kids are grown and my wife has a small Acura sedan we take on the occasional family trip.) So I was looking for a safe, reliable, cheap, environmentally-friendly car.
I signed up for Consumer Reports online, looked over its ratings and crossed the Ford Focus off my list. All things being equal, I would have liked to buy an American car but Consumer Reports says the Focus (a nice looking car, imho) has “handling that is less crisp than before,” is “still noisy,” and the “interior quality is lackluster.” I also gave up on the Toyotas—the Prius because they are ubiquitous and I didn’t want to drive what everyone else seems to be driving (it seems as if all the new cars at Adat Shalom, my synagogue, are Priuses) and the Corolla because, well, there was just nothing about the car that appealed to me. (I don’t claim that this is a rational process.) I also noticed that Toyota also slipped to third, behind Honda and Subaru, last year in Consumer Reports’ annual car reliability survey.
That left the Honda Fit, the Honda Civic and the Civic Hybrid—the car that I really wanted to buy. I test drove all three at a local dealer, liked them all, and then went home to do some math and see whether it made economic sense for me to buy a hybrid.
The numbers surprised me. For purposes of comparison, I looked at the Honda Civix LX 2dr coupe with an MSRP of $16,760 (includes AC, full power accessories, keyless entry, cruise control) and the four-door Hybrid with an MSRP of $22,600 (which includes all of the above features, as best I can tell.) I did a bunch of calculations on my own to see whether it was worth spending $5,840 more for the hybrid engine, and then discovered that Honda is kind enough to put a “savings calculator” on its website. EPA rates the standard Civic at 36 mpg highway/25 mpg city, the Hybrid Civic at 45 mpg highway/40 mpg city. I assumed that I would drive 20 miles a day (which is more than I do) and pay $5 a gallon for gas (which may sound high but I’m looking into the future here).
Honda says my fuel savings would be $1,013 in five years, or $202 a year. That means it would take, oh, about 28.9 years to pay back the extra cost of the hybrid. Yikes! You can quarrel with my calculation—I didn’t take the present-value of money into account, obviously—but not my conclusion.
I couldn’t see spending the extra money for the hybrid. Does this make me less of an environmentalist and more of a cheapskate? I’m afraid it does, but so be it.
I ended up buying the Honda Fit. MSRP is $13,950. EPA mileage is 28 city/ 35 hiway. Consumer Reports gave it a good score and talked about its “impressive interior room and versatility.” Car and Driver put the Fit on its 10 best list. (The Prius and Civic didn’t make it.) Edmunds called the Fit “a triumph of creativity, and proof that desirable cars don’t have to be expensive.”
Besides all that, I really like the way the seats on the car flip up, down and around—it’ll be really easy for me to take my bike places, without messing about with the rack. That cinched the deal.
So why am I sharing this experience with you?
For better or worse, I think my car-buying demonstrates that even “conscious consumers” can’t be counted on to put environmental or social issues at the top of list when buying stuff. I’m ordinarily quite careful about what I buy and from whom, in an effort to support companies that I admire. I wear Timberland boots, sit in a Herman Miller chair, brush my teeth with Tom’s of Maine, run in Nike shorts, drink Starbucks, stay at Marriotts, etc. But my support for better companies and my desire to have a lighter environmental footprint wasn’t enough to get me to spend thousands of dollars more than I need to for a cleaner, greener hybrid car.
Given that I’m more careful about my consumer choices than most Americans, I don’t think we can wait for consumers to drive us closer to a sustainable economy. Companies are likely to lead the way. And (we can hope) governments. What’s needed are companies that offer more good choices (and fewer bad ones), in cars and everything else, and government rules that incent them to do so, with higher CAFÉ standards, greenhouse gas regulation, research to promote alternative fuels and the like.
Here’s the Fit, by the way:
Post a Comment »Comments (4)
Tue, 07/22/2008 - 13:06 — Anonymous
Why not Ford
Why not the Focus? Because it's made by Ford, known for poor quality and incessant whining & moaning over any attempts to increase MPG. GM is no better (and sadly, Toyota has jumped on that bandwagon now that its lineup is riddled with massive SUVs). Vote with your wallet, boycott irresponsible companies.
Sun, 07/27/2008 - 05:38 — Anonymous
Huh?
Well personally I have to agree you are a cheapskate. I needed to buy a new car a couple of years ago and really wanted to buy something that got better mileage. I ended up buying the Honda Civic Hybrid. I didn't have to shell out the full sticker price that you were looking at because it had $8k on it from a previous owner, but paid close to $19k. Anyway, I concluded that if people like myself who consider themselves environmentalists won't shell out the money to go green, who will?? I go to the gas station once every 3 weeks for a fill-up and that feeling of freedom from the pump alone makes it worth the extra moolah. My other concern is that people never mention the reduced emissions one gets from driving a hybrid. It's not just about the economics you can see right in front of you. Finally I think your conclusion that the consumer doesn't drive the market and what is offered is just plain wrong as evidenced in GM and Ford's finally changing the make-up of their line of cars to smaller, more gas efficient cars.
Mon, 07/28/2008 - 22:40 — Anonymous
Dollars better spent elsewhere?
I've been looking to replace my 1997 Honda Civic with a much cleaner car (i.e., one of the ultra-clean post 2004, like the ULEV, SULEV, and PZEV models) and it hurts my brain to weigh all of the trade-offs for the new purchase. Fortunately, since I don't want to backslide too much on mileage, my pool of cars is pretty small, basically the Civic, hybrids, the Jetta diesel, and smaller cars.
I agree that voting with your wallet is important, and that by buying a hybrid car one can help support innovation. But I've also considered the idea of getting a used non-hybrids and then donating a portion of the several thousand dollars that I save to a group like Bill McKibben's 350ppm.org group, the Union of Concerned Scientists or another climate action group that will work for improved MPG regulations, better auto technology, and other wide-reaching climate legislation. Or the savings could go to purchase more organic food, buy a more efficient refrigerator or replace the windows in my home with more energy efficient ones. And some of the savings can also go into the bank to help pay for the plug-in hybrid, clean diesel, or ultra-advanced gasoline engine that comes out in the future.
Charter Sponsor
Integrated Facilities Management Sponsor
Design Sponsor
Document Management Sponsor
Work Environment Sponsor
Innovation Sponsor
Environmental Services Sponsor
Technology Sponsor
Energy Management Sponsor
Climate Sponsor
See ClimateBiz.com
Public Relations Sponsor
Legal Sponsor
Greener World Media offsets its carbon footprint provided by Green Mountain Energy Company.
Why not test drive the cars? Why rely on Consumer Reports?
I am always surprised how much weight people give to Consumer Reports. Instead of relying on what Consumer Reports says about how the Ford Focus handles, why not drive it yourself? I've found that Consumer Reports is a pretty blunt tool to evaluate something like a car, and you'll find lots of sources to say that the Focus is and has been a good handling car.