Kevin's Blog

This past weekend a nationally syndicated AP article reported on "Blue," Ford Motor Company's effort to design an array of small, fuel-efficient vehicles to compete in the global market. Never heard of it? I am guessing that you already know the reason why!

It was the year 2000. A time when the automaker was awash in profits by selling large trucks and SUVs. As the article stated, "times were good and gas was cheap."

"Blue" never took a breath. Now the U.S. auto industry is on the brink of bankruptcy, and both House and Senate leaders have asked Treasury Secretary Paulson to consider expanding the financial bailout package to include the auto companies. More billions of your dollars down the toilet because great ideas were squelched by greed.

What do the woes of the U.S. auto industry have to do with the atmosphere? We'll get to that in a moment. Permit me a relevant detour.

In 1987, Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway chaired the United Nations Commission that wrote "Our Common Future", a paper that outlined environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000. The opening passage of this report states the following:

"...each community, each country, strives for survival and prosperity with little regard for its impact on others. Some consume the Earth's resources at a rate that would leave little for future generations. Others, many more in number, consume far too little and live with the prospect of hunger, squalor, disease, and early death."

Sound familiar? I characterize the Brundtland Report as the "green" version of Ford Motor Company's "Blue" project. The Report calls for all of us to be more vigilant regarding how we interact with our earth, atmosphere and oceans. Ironically, the Report also stated the following:

"Human progress has always depended on our technical ingenuity and a capacity for cooperative action. These qualities have often been used constructively to achieve development and environmental progress."

The bottom line is that "Blue" was a great idea. It was a project that embodied technical ingenuity and cooperative action. It failed because auto industry leaders put profits first and now we will all pay the cost.

The next time you want to read a compelling document, download Our Common Future. You will not look at the world around you in the same way ever again. As you read the report keep in mind this sobering thought...

"Societies have faced such pressures in the past and, as many desolate ruins remind us, sometimes succumbed to them."

Can you think of areas where we are putting profits ahead of sustainability? Share them here and we can discuss them!