Big Three's Greenhouse Gas Emissions

According to Environmental Defense, the cars and light trucks on the road from General Motors, Daimler Chrysler and Ford emitted 230 million tons of greenhouse gases. This totalled approximately three-fourths of all carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks in 2004. What the report from Reuters does not say, however, is what percentage of cars and light trucks on the road were from the Big Three.

What's interesting to me about the report is that these greenhouse gas emissions represent an amount that exceeds, by far, the emissions from the largest U.S. electric utility.

In fairness to the Big Three, I want to mention again that the three-fourths figure doesn't mean much without knowing if that is in line with the total percentage of all cars and light trucks on the road. What the report does show is that there seems to be a focus on electric utilities in terms of being the largest polluters. Of course, they are huge emitters of greenhouse gases and deserve that attention and scrutiny. But more people need to realize the impact that cars make to global warming.

The Big Three doesn't have the same focus on alternative ways to produce their cars that Toyota and Honda seem to have. While hybrids represent a small portion of sales for Toyota and Honda, these sales are rising. There is no doubt that hybrid sales have spurred the performance for Toyota and Honda. And though hybrids won't be the final answer to the problem, I don't understand why the Big Three doesn't invest more in hybrids (for small vehicles over SUVs) or other alternative technologies (or at least in producing gas-only engines that get more miles per gallon). The Big Three has been struggling for awhile now and yesterday GM announced big discounts due to their continued struggles. Just another example showing that social responsibility does pay.