Sierra Club: Is Selling Ford Selling Out?

Submitted by John Stauber on

Readers of the Sierra Club's magazine know it runs glossy full-page ads from car companies selling hybrids. Now the Sierra Club is also mobilizing its members and launching a marketing campaign to help Ford peddle its latest SUV the Mercury Mariner, which has a reported fuel efficiency of 33 city, 29 highway miles per gallon. Has the Sierra Club's love of hybrids devolved to greenwashing Ford? The Club's Dan Becker says, "If we can work with Ford to make their Mercury Hybrid a hit, Ford will be convinced that you can make money and make a vehicle that's clean." But Rainforest Action Network (RAN) director Michael Brune counters in the New York Times, "It's a nice gesture, but we think it's more PR than progress." With the PR firm Fenton Communications, RAN and Global Exchange are cranking up their Jump Start Ford campaign, shaming Ford for having the worst fuel efficiency of any major car company.

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Comments

Jennifer Krill replied on

"What Would John Muir Drive? Maybe This SUV 'For years, we've pressured Ford to make more fuel-efficient cars and trucks,' says the Sierra Club's Dan Becker, 'Now they have begun to, and we want to help them succeed.'" So reads the post to the 300,000-strong Sierra Club email list, overtly promoting a Ford SUV. To be fair, any vehicle that gets better gas mileage is good news. However, a closer look reveals that Ford will only produce 2,000 of these vehicles in the 2006 model year. This represents three one-hundredths of one percent of Ford’s estimated 2005 sales of nearly 7 million vehicles. And still, Ford is in last place in fuel efficiency among the world’s major automakers. The fact is that America can no longer afford to support Ford's oil addiction. If you agree, go to www.FreedomFromOil.org and sign the Declaration of Independence from Oil. Meanwhile, the campaign to Jumpstart Ford continues with a full page ad in today's New York Times. Q: What do Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Dick Cheney, and Bill Ford Jr. have in common? A: They all love gas guzzlers.

Marc Geller replied on

The Sierra Club's ringing endorsement of a mere 2000 Mercury Mariner Hybrid vehicles (29/33 mpg) is emblematic of the sad state of both the automotive industry and the environmental movement. While Dan Becker and Neil Golightly were meeting to come to such an insignificant nationwide result, in California alone an equal number of zero-emission, zero-gasoline electric cars have been taken from satisfied customers and destroyed. 1000 GM EV1s sit crushed in the Arizona desert, and an untold number of Toyota RAV4 EVs, Ford RangerEVs, Ford Th!nk City EVs, and Honda EV+s have similarly been "recycled," as they like to put it. Ford, at least it can be said, is acting in its perceived bottom-line interest in refusing to offer proven non-petroleum options, and touting as significant a 29/33 mpg vehicle merely because it sports the label "hybrid." What interest our oldest environmental organization has in giving Ford and the auto industry cover for denying us meaningful choices remains a mystery to me. www.dontcrush.com

EnviroUnity replied on

I think it's appropriate for environmentalists to debate the Sierra Club's choice to assist Ford in promoting the Mariner Hybrid SUV. I want to emphasize the importance of maintaining unity when looking at the big picture: climate change, Iraq, oil addiction, etc. When the Wall Street Journal comes calling, our internal discussion should take a back seat to our external, public criticism of the Bush Administration's inaction on climate change, Exxon Mobil's junk science, Cheney and Rumsfeld's oil-motivated militarism, etc. The media always like controversy. We can use their interest to further our cause. The bad guy here isn't the Sierra Club, or even Ford. It is the obstructionists who prevent us from engaging a national Apollo Project for renewable energy and sustainable transportation. If we can keep the media focused there, then the American people will eventually come around. Ford's short term greenwashing is only acceptable if they make continual progress by making more hybrids. 2,000 cars is a very small step. At this point, Toyota will sell more Priuses in one month than Ford expects to in a year. That's not leadership, yet. Sierra Club may have given pre-emptive flattery, but if Ford responds, then maybe they were just a little ahead of the curve.