the air

Last week, Democratic hopeful Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech in Detroit in front of many US automakers’ executives, chiding them about their lack of investments into fuel efficient technologies and churning out gas guzzling SUV’s. Keith Naughton, over at MSNBC, felt that the tough talk by Obama backfired. From one perspective, I agree with Keith, however, from my own liberal point of view, I completely disagree with him. In addition, I feel that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are not the only ones to blame. In fact, I think the real culprit is the consumer.

The consumers, including myself, have purchased SUV’s and driven up profits for many manufacturers. What I don’t understand is that everyone now is talking about the environment and pushing hybrids when we could have done this just 10 years ago. At that time, fuel prices were low and we were all interested in buying large cars with big engines. Now look at those same people. They talk about saving the Earth, yet they still drive their SUV’s or their $50,000+ Mercedes that just loves fuel. The fact of the matter is that the consumer is the one to really blame. I think this talk about saving Earth is just a fad because energy prices have risen in the past few years. I’m willing to bet that if energy prices were the same as they were 10 years ago or even cheaper, energy conservation movements across this country would be much lower.

Barack Obama had a point when he blamed GM, Ford, and Chrysler for not investing heavily in fuel efficient technology. However, his mistake lies in that statement alone. GM has spent billions developing new technologies that make conventional gasoline obsolete. However, GM has not made any move towards making any of these technologies financially viable for consumers. I think the problem is not that Detroit has failed to keep up with Toyota or Honda. In fact, the problem is that the American manufacturers have not tried to make efficient technologies cheaper nor have they introduced them into production vehicles. So in a way, Obama should have blamed everyone since we are all at fault.

Source: MSNBC

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