Car bosses and the green debate
Hooray for that old warhorse Bob Lutz, a car boss prepared to speak his mind. Just before the Geneva motor show, Lutz – General Motors’ head of product and the most entertaining figure in the car industry – said publicly what he’d been telling many journalists privately for years. Man-made global warming, he reckoned, was ‘a crock of shit’.
GM’s PR machine, carefully nurturing the image of a loving, ecologically friendly General – never mind the horrible Hummers, vast fuel consumptive pick-ups and a century-old reputation for energy profligacy and anti-environmental lobbying – swung into action to remind us this was Bob’s ‘personal view’ and did not represent corporate policy. When recent press conferences have been devoted to ‘green tomorrow’ (but when?) hybrid electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, you don’t want your big car boss to come out and question the whole raison d’être of this new enviro-focused thrust.
Car industry bosses - the public face
Lutz’s views are, of course, privately shared by many car bosses. They just don’t say it publicly. Better to toe the company’s ‘thin green line’ – never mind how insincerely – than say what you think. Car bosses become ever more like politicians, dictated by spin rather than sincerity. If the people want you to believe in man-made global warming, thou shall (at least in public). Disbelief is no longer a politically correct option. It’s almost sacrilegious.
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