GM
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Nothing will drive the suburbs away
Photo: FrankMaurer FlickrThe news that GM will cease production of Hummers revived the brewing argument that suburbia is in fatal decline. Hummers are the perfect corollary to McMansions, symbols of excess, leftovers from the roaring aughts that now seem outlandish, indulgent and environmentally offensive. No buyers for Hummers plus no buyers for homes in far […]
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Obama's broken promises, disappointing and dangerous to farmers, consumers
“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.” President-elect Barack Obama, December 17 2008, Chicago, Illinois. The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected […]
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General Motors to start repaying government loans
The NY Times story has one of the true glass-is-half-full headlines of our times: G.M., Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion But these days, you take good news where you can find it, and the rest of the story is certainly a pleasant surprise: General Motors, whose very survival was in doubt this […]
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Obama talks green to GM workers
President Barack Obama put a green spin on Tuesday’s address to autoworkers at the GM assembly plant in Warren, Ohio. The president sounded confident that the rescued, retooled, reinvented, more or less government-owned GM would be “good for American workers, good for American manufacturing, and good for America’s economy.” And it may just be a […]
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What does it mean for a car to get 230 miles per gallon?
GM has created a bit of buzz around its claim that the Chevy Volt gets 230 miles to the gallon in city driving. From the internet a great chorus has replied: “This number doesn’t make any sense!†And it doesn’t.
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The Climate Post: Grid, for lack of a better word, is good
First Things First: Cars, trucks, planes, and other things that go add more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than any other sector where end-users burn their own fuel. And transportation added more energy-and-climate headlines this week than any other sector, driven by an emergency congressional payout to continue the “cash-for-clunkers” program and General Motors’ promotional […]
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The eternal durability of greenwash
Not too long ago I was on a panel with GM’s VP of Environment, and I was reminded of how very old school most big corporations are when it comes to discussing their environmental programs. In GM’s case, listening to this VP, it was as if GM was God’s great gift to the environment, and […]
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Ford, Toyota, GM all to help meet Obama’s goal of 1 million plug-ins by 2015
Major car companies are starting to vote on their choice for the “car and fuel of the future” with big bets on manufacturing capacity. The winner, no surprise, is going to be highly efficient plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles (see, for instance, “Everything you could want to know about plug-in and EV […]
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GM sells Hummer to China — the second mistake by those clueless new owners?
China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company has agreed to buy the Hummer brand from GM for less than $500 million, according to a source familiar with the transaction -- well off its peak value of a decade ago.