I got a subscription to Time magazine (oh, “Hi” again – yeah, it’s been a while, I know), and generally it becomes part of my bathroom reading pile. One day I noticed the back of a recent issue had this advertisement from Ford about E-85 ethanol “flex-fuel” cars. It was very self-praising, announcing their lineup of flex-fuel vehicles as almost a gift to their concerned consumers.

This hit me funny immediately. I’ve never driven past an E-85 station before. So where the hell are they?! What’s so great about a marginally improved form of fuel (that still uses gasoline) if you can’t find it?!

The reason I can’t find it is simple: there’s three gas stations in Georgia that have it. Three. For the rest of the US, you’re looking at around 1,200 stations that serve E-85 (most in the corn-growing states). Using figures from the 2002 Census as a benchmark, that means that about 1 out of every 100 gas stations serves this wonderful, earth-saving, economy-healing wonder fuel.

Thanks Ford. Thanks for everything you’re doing. Keep showing us big green pastures of corn, like it’s the holy Mecca of dodging OPEC. You may tickle a few folks with this psuedo-green talk, especially the ones who are still enamored with all that Hollywood’s also doing for the environment, but you’re not winning love here. If you or GM really care about the environment and cutting ties with the Saudis, why don’t you try making a car that can get 35 mpg without requiring an 80 degree decline. Or better yet, offer an electric car. We saw the film, we know it can be done – so do it.

Until then, I hope your stock keeps falling like dead weight. If American automakers like innovation so much, try innovating cars worth a damn that we can afford to fuel up, and save their money on the E-85 ad campaigns.

Thanks a whole bunch, Al Gore

I haven’t seen “An Inconvenient Truth”. I got as far as renting the DVD and holding it in my hand. Then it hit me: do I really want to listen to a wealthy actor or politician tell me that our lifestyles are leading to a bad environment? You think Al Gore uses a bus, or keeps a compost pile? You think Leo DiCaprio carpools? You think he uses a water-efficient shower head and toilet?

Bullspit. Al Gore drives a personal bus wherever he goes, and Leo DiCaprio has 30 toilets in his mansion that could flush Elvis’ corpse if they had to.

And thanks to this movie that I’ll likely never watch, now every day this summer someone hears how hot the day’s going to be, the next words out of their mouth are “global warming“. It’s like the “El Nino” for the new millennium. No body quite understands it, but everyone references it.

I know the intention was to alarm a nation about the ill-effects of our decadent lifestyles and irresponsible CO2 emissions, but if you’re going to fight a futile crusade against consumption, you think you might want to keep yours in check first?

The morale of this story…

…we may choose paper over plastic, recycle beer cans or wear T-shirts made from hemp, but at the end of the day, we’re the planet’s biggest suckers for big honkin’, fuel guzzling, water-wasting, energy-craving toys. Actors can pretend they’re different, car makers can pretend they’re making a change for the better, but in the end, even though we may think Hummers are dumb and clunky, we still get a thrill from taking up two lanes with one vehicle – even if it means a few polar bears die and our grandchildren grow up with black lung.