“It’s been said the only people who can change the world are those who want to. Well, we want to. That's why we are exploring more fuel-efficient options and technologies with our vehicles. But we want to do more.”

So says Chevy’s website.  Every day we contribute to the climate change - to the greenhouse emissions.  Each of us can make personal choices in our homes, our travel, what we discard as unusable, what we are eating.. I used the Carbon Footprint Calculator at nature.org and was amazed that my carbon footprint is nearly double the size of rest of the country’s. When I looked at it closely I realized that it was because I live here in Las Vegas and my home energy level was off the charts. Since I have done considerable work to reduce my “footprint”, and am still producing 44 tons per year, I am in awe that Chevrolet has such an altruistic goal – and they are accomplishing it!  Their goal is to reduce 8 million tons of CO2 by 2014.

“If we want to leave the world a better place, we need to change the way we do things,” said David Tulauskas, GM sustainability director and manager of the Chevrolet carbon-reduction initiative. “Climate change, population growth, urbanization and other issues require our industry to transform itself. We are going beyond our traditional scope of responsibility – building efficient vehicles – into these community-based carbon-reduction projects to help demonstrate our commitment.”

Chevy has come out with great “green” cars in the last few years, like the Volt, the new Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel and the Ecotec3 engine for the Silverado (just to name a few). It’s the significant investment that Chevy is making in the community at large that is going to make the big difference.

One of their ongoing projects right now is called IdleAir.  This project is to help truckers avoid idling during their rest stops.  It can help the truckers save a gallon of diesel fuel per hour while keeping the cab comfortable and the TV or laptop on. The truck is turned off after the driver installs a reusable plastic window adapter – no noise, vibration or exhaust fumes. It saves fuel, reduces emissions and keeps the power on to the trucks amenities. Wow!  What a concept!

Chevy is also working with the Nature Conservancy to manage approximately 20,000 acres of forest to produce a long term supply of timber, a wind farm in Oklahoma, managing an almost 14,000 acre tract of land in California to allow the trees to grow and it was the largest corporate buyer of voluntary carbon reduction credits in the United States in 2011. 

It’s a great start and I am proud to be a part of Chevrolet.