Jon Coifman's Blog
GM's Lutz is in a Ditch. Again.
February 13, 2008
Posted by Jon Coifman in Green Enterprise , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment
In a closed door session recently, General Motors product development chief and granddaddy of Detroit automotive management Bob Lutz announced to a group of reporters in Dallas that global warming is “a crock of sh*t”.
Yes, this is the very same Bob Lutz who spent the last year or so pitching GM’s deathbed conversion to environmentalism, promoting an assortment of mild hybrid products and touting the Volt, a spectral concept electric car that might or might not appear on American roads somewhere in our future.
(Those who recall the massive hype around GM’s hydrogen-powered Hywire concept car back in 2002 will be familiar with the foaming coverage devoted to these just-out-of-reach by the automotive press. They will also be forgiven for their cynicism.)
Now comes the news this week that GM has officially posted the largest annual loss in American corporate history, a stunning $38.7 million billion in 2007. That comes atop several years of cash hemorrhage already.
General Motors and other leaders in Detroit management bet the farm on a gas guzzler-based business model, and went so far as to double down with a new crop of full sized trucks and SUVs in 2005 and 2006 at the very time pump prices were exploding.
Now tens of thousands of white- and blue collar workers and the communities where they live have paid for their bosses’ gross misjudgment with their jobs, and one of America’s last bastions of manufacturing might – an industry that for all its faults has considerable high-tech prowess – is on the ropes.
So much for seeing the light.
Political side note by way of our friends at GRIST:
Barack Obama delivered a speech today at GM truck plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. Hillary was at a GM plant in Baltimore on Monday, singing the praises of hybrids. http://www.grist.org/news/2008/02/13/election/index.html
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Comments
LT Schultz — Feb 13 2008 08:31 PM
Stunning? I bet $38.7 million in change falls out of Lutz's pockets every night.
I think you mean $38.7 billion.
Philippe Boucher — Feb 13 2008 10:20 PM
So many people forget GM killed its own electric car that was working perfectly well... years ago.
I wish NRDC could bring back a regular radio program like EcoTalk on a mainstream radio channel and of course on line.
Could not you partner with other groups (and corporations) to produce such a program?
Jon Coifman — Feb 13 2008 10:34 PM
LT is correct all around. Thanks for the catch.
Philippe, thanks for the point about the EV1. If folks haven't seen Who Killed the Electric Car, by all means check it out at Netflix or your local video joint.
As for radio...
We're continuing to produce a growing variety of audio and video material for our main site, as well as ItsYourNature.org and some of our subsidiary sites. In the future, we may indeed explore getting back to the airwaves, too.
Jim Bullis — Feb 14 2008 03:00 PM
Global atmosphere imbalance and oil trade imbalance are the problems. These need to be solved without ruining our way of life. Fixing things will require some readjustments. If we are clever about it such adjustments might not be too difficult. I am concerned that chasing solutions that are not well thought out can foul the playing field. There is much talk of electric cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, solar panels, wind turbines, ethanol from sugar, corn and cellulose, and so on. None of these are quite what people think. However, they are potential tools that could be effectively utilized in a long term plan. But to converge to an appropriately strong solution, I shudder at the prospect of government, public clamour, and corporate interests sorting out the right answer. The real problem is that there is nothing on the generally known table that comes close to the magnitude of change needed.
We should not depend on corporations. I think Bob Lutz, when he says, “global warming is a crock--,” may be representing a reaction of the corporate world to a lot of pressure to implement solutions that have questionable technical merit, unacceptable financial consequences, and even doubtful public benefits. A resource that GM probably has, is a staff of technical analysts that can clearly see the technical effects of any given course of action. They can accurately calculate the quantity of carbon dioxide that will result from any technical approach. It might not be well understood, but analysts are usually not very creative; they can be excellent critics, but rarely do they propose significant changes. GM also has marketing analysts that will shoot down any vehicle change that will risk market share. Their opinions will be validated by surveys; surveys rarely show public reactions that embrace really different new concepts. GM also has a powerful management heirarchy that hates nothing more than uncertainty that will impact planning. The finance department solidifies that management attitude. Stockholders can legally force corporations to be as here described. This combination of corporate forces is deadly to real innovation. A thin veneer of pretense is then put forward to calm the NRDC types. Then Lutz accidentally bumps through that veneer with the real corporate attitude. Notwithstanding previous comments, there is still a formidable force in corporate industrial capacity that should be utilized.
The above is not intended to discourage change for the better; but it represents the reality that must be recognized if change is to happen. So how do we go about it? We start with realistic expectations of corporate behaviour. Then we look at the innovation process, and how it sometimes works. Finally, an example is given of a present effort that seems to have real promise.
Some have said that the great surge in number of patents in recent years, vast numbers being awarded to corporations, demonstrates a great increase in American corporate creativity. The truth is that patent activities have become a legal realm of tactical maneuvering by corporations. This is a complicated subject, but so many things patented are really very obvious. The patent office presumes individuals to be the inventors, but few such individuals survive the nearly forced agreements and assignment requirements of corporate employment. The result is that most inventions are an outcome of the normal course of planned employment activities.
I will skip a complete discussion of the “small business innovative research (SBIR)” program and venture capital. Suffice it to say that these brutal processes have sometimes yielded innovation, though usually such innovation is constrained to easily planned work that avoids uncertainties of significant innovation.
A current activity known as the Automotive X PRIZE seems to be a way to get the kind of results needed. They appear to be trying hard to keep from dictating pre-conceived solutions. Their goal to get a car capable of 100 MPG and low carbon dioxide effects that would be produced in the near future seems to be the right target. Although their main category tends to favor conventional approaches, they have an alternative category that keeps opportunities open for real innovation.
This X PRIZE organization may achieve a result that could then be taken over by the automobile industry. If that industrial capacity were put to work making a very new kind of product, there would be real hope for the kind of changes we critically need, and they could even happen fast enough.
(I hope to enter a new kind of car in the X Prize competition.)
Dr. Hal Hyman — Feb 16 2008 02:26 PM
Global warming is a crock of dreck.
Less than 3% of CO2 is man-made. Over 97% is from nature. Decaying leaves provide more Co2 than all of the cars on the planet. NRDC should be open and support peer-reviewed research. Einstein never said the debate on relativity is over. No, true scientist debate, experiment, speak but never cut off debate, they welcome it. I believe NRDC is more a political action committee than a group looking for the truth. Will you post this?
Thanks,
Dr. Hal Hyman
Jon Coifman — Feb 16 2008 05:40 PM
This subject has been addressed at considerable length in many other places, so I will respond only briefly here.
The salient concern is the *balance* of carbon, and the carbon level in the atmosphere. Since the industrial revolution, the balance set by the earth’s natural carbon cycle has been radically disrupted by the addition of millions upon millions of tons of carbon that had been stored underground in the form of oil, coal and natural gas (all of which do ultimately come from those decaying leaves and organisms that you mention).
Just as important is the *rate* at which this disruption of the natural balance is occurring, which is utterly unprecedented.
I also find it noteworthy that you call NRDC an interest group, but don’t seem to have the same concern about General Motors – whose economic interest vastly exceeds NRDC’s wildest, craziest dreams.
Bob Lutz is not a scientist. And if the last several years of financial performance are any indication, he’s not much of a businessman these days either.
Whether you or he believe in global warming, it is irrefutably clear that management at GM and the rest of the US makers threw away the futures of thousands of their employees by actively denying the effect that soaring oil prices would have on their companies.
You can’t lobby your way out of the path of economic history.
Dr. Hal Hyman — Feb 16 2008 07:32 PM
Thank you for allowing me to post.
I will contend that there is no scientific evidence that CO2 levels are causing "Global Warming" Climate prediction is complex and the natural phases of the Sun, Earth orbit, cloud formation and much more must be taken into effect. There has been many cycles of ice ages and in time this will occur again. Remember C02 levels were 7-8 times higher when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
I am not sure who Bob Lutz is. I would refer to Dr. Dan Lashof, a senior scientist at the NRDC who believes the debate on "Global Warming" is over. (or in so many words)
My concern over this debate is to allow the science to guide the truth. The NRDC is a political lobbying litigation group which makes it difficult for it to provide peer-reviewed science. Remember that the Alaska pipeline was going to kill the Caribou population. It has since increased 4x.
As for GM I am not sure what to say. If NRDC was an advocate for oil exploration, costs of oil may be lower. GM provides products which consumers willingly pay for. GM employs people and helps make their lives better.
Maybe this is more a conversation on democracy and free markets than scientific proof and peer-reviewed studies.
Thanks,
Hal
Jon Coifman — Feb 16 2008 07:54 PM
As long as your comments are neither gratuitous nor offensive, this is an open forum (although I'm not always able or inclined to answer every post).
Lutz, as the post says in the first line, is head of product design at GM, where he has also held various other posts through the years.
He is, in other words, Mr. Detroit.
The problem that GM has is precisely that the DON'T hasn't been making products that people are willing to pay for -- at least without massive, profit-eating rebates or dumping them into rental fleets. The result is disappearing marketshare and tens of thousands of good jobs out the window.
Labor is not to blame for this. They don't make the call on product choices.
The exception - one that proves the point - as been the new Malibu, which is built on a whole new car platform, looks great, and gets decent mileage. Whether better market savvy is enough to save what's left of a great American company remains to be seen.
Oil prices, meanwhile, are set in an international marketplace. There isn't enough oil in the US, Alaska included, to substantially move the needle on price.
And, incidentally, there have been numerous reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere concerning major oil companies' lack of investment in new exploration or capacity. With prices high and profits at record levels, they don't have a hell of a lot of incentive. (ExxonMobil has recently disputed this point.)
As long as there are growing economies and political instability in the world, oil prices are going to remain both volatile and high. Tempting as it may be to blame that one on us, we don't control the laws of global supply and demand.
And even if we did, Detroit management *still* missed the boat. Instead of putting their engineers to work, the called in the lobbyists. That game only works as long as your customers don't have a reason to care. OPEC gave them one, and they responded as rational people will.
LT Schultz — Feb 19 2008 02:09 AM
To reinforce Jon Coifman's reply to Hal Hyman--We definitely know that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. That is a fairly easy measurement to make; the records go back decades. Scientists have also measured increases in CO2 in the oceans (the oceans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere)which is turning them more acidic. The biosphere may emit (and take up) much more CO2 than human burning of fossil fuels, but, and Jon explains it very well, but the additional ( very significant additional)CO2 put in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning as well as the reduction in the biosphere's ability to take up CO2 through conversion of savannas and forests to agriculture and conversion of open space to city, has changed and is increasingly changing the balance.
No doubt we are changing the atmosphere. No doubt we are changing the chemistry of the oceans. And, relative to other changes in the earth's geologic history, these changes seem to be happening at an unprecedented rate.
I agree with Hal, we really don't understand it all or know for sure what the consequences of these changes will be. And that may be the most troubling thing of all.
David Mcfadden — Feb 19 2008 10:01 PM
I am interested in knowing if anyone has ever considered geothermal heat as a cause of melting ice sheets. This makes much more sense, to me, than a 1 degree change in the atmosphere. For instance, if the average temperature is a -20 degrees in a polar region how could ice melt so dramatically if the average temperature rises to -19 degrees?
In our northern communities (U.S.) many homes and businesses have electrical wires in the driveways and walkways that warms the ground to melt ice. Warming the ground in this manner quickly removes the ice and snow.
Geothermal activity would explain the spotty and unexplainable melting of glaciers in some regions and not others.
Science should be science and not a political football. I want the air to be clean and breathable as much as anyone. I appreciate the work that has been accomplished in the last 30 years. But I don’t appreciate that true science has been seemingly high-jacked for personal gain or to advance a particular agenda.
I truly would like to hear of research that has exhausted every possibility of geothermal activity being a source that is contributing to melting ice and changing habitats.