It should absolutely infuriate you that we aren’t making cars like this one here in this country. It should infuriate you even more that it is an AMERICAN car company that is producing it in Europe.

Who is it we have to thank for this? Two groups, actually. The first group is the American car companies who wanted to continue to push those SUVS due to the profit margins, but we have the environment-hating Rushpubliscums to thank even more. Remember that every time someone tries to raise fuel standards, the Rushpubliscums cry like a bunch of whipped cats.

Yeah, those patriotic Rushpubliscums really put country first, don’t they? If something like this was mass-produced here, (1.) our dependence on the fountain of Wahhabism would be greatly diminished, (2.) our enormous trade deficits would suddenly see a sharp drop, and (3.)…. most aggravating to Rushpubliscums… their owners in big oil wouldn’t be making those stratospheric profits every time someone in Riyadh lets a loud fart.

We couldn’t have the country be more secure, the air be cleaner, and the people have more pocket money now, could we?

In the US, Ford is still behind the 5 major foreign auto makers in fuel efficiency, surpassing only GM and Chrysler. Yet Ford of Europe already achieves dazzling mileage that we Americans can only dream of.

Imagine a gas-fueled car that gets 62 miles to the gallon: “With start-stop, regenerative brakes and an Eco Mode system, the new Focus gets 62 MPG (U.S.) on the European scale and emits just 99 grams of CO2 per kilometer” Available in Europe next Spring.

What is even more startling about this achievement by European Ford is that this mileage is achieved with just good old-fashioned tweaks on the traditional ICE gas car. There is no major technological breakthrough.

Why doesn’t Ford make cars like that here?

It’s partly to do with differences in regulations making it hard to build those engines to meet US specs, but a large part of it has to do with differences in attitudes towards the climate change crisis we are facing.

The European political landscape has largely signed on to global warming as fact. European laws force European auto makers to adhere to strict low-emissions standards. Low carbon emissions and better mileage are co-related.

Europe has already passed legislation limiting carbon emissions. Engineers swiftly revamped the auto industry over there and achieved the new carbon emissions and mileage standards for their fleets.

So European consumers who want better green choices benefit. Voters over there are presumably similar to us in terms of the average understanding of the environmental issues facing the world, yet they elected politicians who have acted to reduce the environmental impact of living.

As long ago as 2006, polls of Americans showed that we realize that we don’t get what the Europeans do, and wanted an average fuel economy of 40 MPG legislated. Yet we keep supporting those who encourage us to heap contempt on Europe for signing Kyoto and passing climate and energy legislation.

We CAN do it. There is no doubt, and no excuse for us to go on doing what we’ve been doing. Gas guzzlers are no more a “personal choice” matter than food or water are. Energy policy is a national security matter, and it is past time we made ourselves more secure in this arena.

We won’t, of course, because we have a CONgress chock full of corporatists, and we have a corporatist Executive on top of it all. We won’t change until way after it’s too late. We never do.

Tags: energy policy, europe, ford

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Conservation, Jolly Roger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.