“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.
