8 ways to green your Hummer
- Kaid Benfield
- Director, Smart Growth Program, Washington, DC
- Blog | About
- Posted July 28, 2008 in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Courtesy of the Sunday Source staff of yesterday’s Washington Post:
“Gas prices are high, and there's no relief in sight. You've stopped driving your Hummer and can't get anyone to buy it from you, either. But that doesn't mean your pricy, hulking driveway filler has to go to waste. Turn it into something useful. Here are eight ways to reinvent your gas guzzler in a cheap and eco-friendly manner.”
My personal favorite? Use it as a garage for your Smart Car.
Read them all here.
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Comments
Steven Mann — Jul 28 2008 11:07 AM
Dear Sir,
I have enjoyed reading your perspectives on the dynamic exchanges between development, community and the environment. In particular, I would like to learn more about how you feel Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) fits into the confluence of these issues. We know CSR can promote efficiency throughout industry, creates sustainable development practices for the future, and forges another, almost intangible link between proprietor and consumer. Can you just hit on some of your thoughts on CSR and development issues (locally and globally)? Also, Europe's Cap & Trade System and how we can get these policies to the United States? And GE's wind and alternative energy divisions...is it enough to bring the stock back?
Thanks for your time and insight...keep fighting the good fight.
Steven M. Mann
Greenville, NC
Kaid @ NRDC — Jul 28 2008 02:55 PM
Steven, thanks for the kind words. You raise a very interesting point.
I have very little professional experience with CSR, though I invest personally in mutual funds that use SR screening. I've been disappointed that some of those funds invest in, say, Wal-Mart, the poster child for sprawl (and other things). Whatever screens we have for responsible companies should downgrade them for sprawl and upgrade them for things like inner-city reinvestment with affordable housing.
I would also say that any internal CSR audit that a company might undertake would be incomplete without including land use in its analysis.
The only other thing I might offer is that developers increasingly do enter into "community benefits agreements" in order to win support for their proposals. That can include things like adding park space to a neighborhood short of it or even employing local labor. While I'm sure there are good and bad examples, that sort of thing does create opportunities to press for responsibility. Maybe more citizens will make use of them over time.
John Liffee — Jul 29 2008 03:07 PM
Yknow, I'm all for the gentle poking of fun this article represents, and in general for a less polarizing rhetoric from those concerned about the environment. But still, I admit to experiencing some schadenfreude at the expense of Hummer owners -- I can't imagine anyone bought one of those beasts not knowing that they signify a gigantic upraised finger to everyone else on the road, and to any notion of shared responsibility for the care of our planet.
And so, to you Hummer owners, enjoy your comeuppance. I'm not entirely ready to forgive you.
— a Hummer hater, and patron such websites as fuH2 and IHYH. often hilarious websites. (To those with delicate ears: foul language ahead.)