GM Vice Chair Still a Climate Change Denialist
Satyam Khanna observes that General Motors Vice Chair Bob Lutz is sticking to his guns and still arguing that global warming is a “total crock of shit”:
A few observations. You don’t expect a car company executive to be eager to embrace climate reality. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to invest any money in a firm actually led by delusional individuals. That this sort of person can rise to such a high level may tell us something about the quality of the management at the big domestic automakers. Second, if I were an elected official contemplating signing on to a politically motivated bailout of the domestic auto industry, at a minimum I would make it an implicit requirement of my support that the bailed-out executives stop trying to obstruct other kinds of needed policy change. Beyond that, what Joe Romm said.
24 Responses to “GM Vice Chair Still a Climate Change Denialist”
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October 6th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I dunno, if I had staked the entire future of my automobile company on the new electric-hybrid Volt vehicle and its related models, I might g** d*** figure out how to be a global warming acceptor, if for no other reason than to try to get people to, you know, buy my company’s f***ing electric car.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Well, Bob Lutz is the expert on complete crocks of shit.
It’s too damn bad the workings tiffs and retirees will get it in the neck when they go Chapter 7 (too late for Chapter 11, I think) because otherwise it would be most enjoyable.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
“It’s hard to get a man to understand something if his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.” Will Rogers
A larger point to be made out of this is that the people in charge of big companies and in other high offices can be complete dolts and get away with speaking nonsense because their constituency is largely incapable of recognizing it as such.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
It’s this kind of thinking that has contributed to the great success of the Big Three automakers over the past 30 years.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I saw Lutz the Putz on Colbert or Stewart a month ago. At first I thought “cool” about the Volt and the new direction of the compnay. And then he denied anthropogenic climate change and I thought, “Fuck you, your company deserves to be dying.” What an ass.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
“I saw Lutz the Putz on Colbert or Stewart a month ago. At first I thought “cool” about the Volt and the new direction of the compnay. And then he denied anthropogenic climate change and I thought, “Fuck you, your company deserves to be dying.” What an ass.”
I saw that too, and honestly, he seemed less than enthusiastic about promoting the Volt.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Just an incredibly irresponsible position to take, both as a prominent citizen whose opinion might influence a lot of people, and as a fiduciary for a company that might like to be in the transportation business 50-100 years from now.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
GM needs to be run either by non-Americans, or by Americans who have spent their careers in GM’s foreign markets. What’s continually fascinating about Ford and GM is that they’re not perceived as American manufacturers outside the US, because American cars are generally considered… total crocks of shit.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Global warming aside, he’s also a fool for not preparing GM for the inevitable rise in fuel prices 7 years ago. Between turmoil in the MidEast and the rise of China and India, the rise in oil was widely forseeable and widely predicted. GM has staff economists for crying out loud!
October 6th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
GM wants America to loan it a sum several times its cap size. I think that if GM wants to get into our wallets for that amount that rational Americans have a right to tell them to ditch that guy and all of the management who share his views.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
This is the kind of leadership which resulted in Saturn running ads a couple years ago mocking environmentalists while simultaneously talking up their forthcoming hybrids.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I suppose GM could also try building quality cars? Nah!
October 6th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Well, remember, GM isn’t actually in the car business. The cars are a place for DuPont to sell paint and plastic, and people borrow money from GM Financial to buy cars. See Alfred Sloan’s My Years With General Motors.
When they think the time is right to make some money, GM will buy foreign cars, slap a label on them, and sell them.
It’s the American Way.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Interestingly, Bob Lutz’s whole deal at GM right now is putting out the Volt, a plug-in electric/gas secondary hybrid. So maybe he’s not so awful?
October 6th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
GM stock is off 77% since Oct. 26, 2004, the worst loss of any company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/live-blogging-amid-panic/
In other words, Lutz has managed to lose GM a gazillion bucks in that time.
So yes, he’s not that smart and certainly not that successful at running his business, yet he has 2 helicopters and 2 planes. He bet huge on SUVs and then couldn’t give them away.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
For the sake of accuracy, it should be stressed that Lutz denies anthropogenic global warming, meaning he (currently) believes that warming is a result of human activity, not that it exists at all (which both the headline and quote context strongly imply). No doubt he once denied its existence completely, and once denying human contribution becomes politically untenable he’ll move on to denying there’s anything we can do about it. But it is what it is.
October 6th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
That should be “meaning he (currently) denies that warming is a result of human activity”, obviously.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
You know what bad management, constant bellyaching, and backwards thinking gets you…
A govt bailout and a fat salary. God Bless America!
October 7th, 2008 at 9:01 am
First of all, Lutz doesn’t run GM. He runs GM’s product development. He has done an incredible amount of good for the company in that role, though he would be the first to admit that much remains to be done. Just about anything good in any current GM vehicle (and yes, Prius fans, there are quite a few good GM vehicles right now) is directly or indirectly due to Lutz.
Second of all, he wasn’t there 7 years ago. He was brought in as part of the solution. So far he has done very well in the role he was hired to fill, which was roughly akin to being asked to start turning the Titanic when it was close enough to the iceberg that you could feel the chill.
Third, I haven’t a clue what he actually believes on AGW. Lutz is often used by GM PR as a “red meat” guy, someone who can talk to GM’s core customers (who tend to be red state types) and sustain their enthusiasm for GM brands.
It’s a dumb thing to say in a larger context, for sure. But I’d want more information on where he said it and to whom and why before just writing him off as an idiot, because in other contexts he’s not at all an idiot.
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