7 Depressing Environmental Stories

If our recent article - 7 Environmental Problems That Are Worse Than We Thought - didn’t get you down enough, here’s a whole new set of 7 from The Daily Green that are almost just as scary. Much as we wish that we could report on cool eco gadgets, sunshine and rainbows all the time, the fact is that there is a lot of crappy stuff happening in the world right now. The good news is, learning about them might actually give us all the motivation to do something about it.

From The Daily Green:

1. Detroit May Kill The Electric Car (Again)
Facing the prospect of financial ruin, the Big Three American automakers, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, may abandon fledgling efforts to create electric cars, according to Reuters. It’s a speculative article, but when one considers that tackling global warming or freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil will almost certainly require electrifying the vehicle fleet, it’s a depressing setback.

2. The Largest Forest Infestation in North American History
The infestation of mountain pine beetles is growing “exponentially,” according to the New York Times, with tens of millions of acres of Rocky Mountain forests from New Mexico through Canada succumbing. It’s called the largest infestation in the known history of North America. Drought, global warming and fire suppression all play a role in the outbreak, and the death of trees will make the region susceptible to more violent wildfires, among other ills.

3. Highly Polluting School Buses May Not be Upgraded
The economic crisis will likely prevent many school districts, states and even the federal government from continuing to pay for the upgrading and replacement of old, dirty diesel school buses, according to Environmental Health News. These pollution nightmares pump out 90% more pollution than their cleaner counterparts, including fine particulates and cancerous chemicals that tend to build up inside the bus, where children are sitting.

Check out the rest – which include Bush opening land to shale development, Desert Storm vets with Gulf War Syndrome, dying soil and half the world going without clean water over at The Daily Green.

And, don’t just collapse crying into your bowl of Cheerios. You may not be able to personally address any of these problems, but you can use that energy to start doing whatever you can to help out on a local level. Contact your local Sierra Club chapter or other environmental organization to find out how you can assist with environmental activism in your area.

Link [The Daily Green] + [The Sierra Club]
Photo credit: MIT

How the Chevy Volt Could Get 100mpg

GM vice chairman Bob Lutz boldly proclaimed at the 2007 Detroit auto show that the new Chevy Volt would get up to 150mpg based on a variety of driving conditions. Now that the model is headed for production, Lutz’s claim will have to stand up to government-approved ratings. The process of deciding exactly how to rate a new generation of hybrid-powered cars is still being worked out.

From The New York Times:

Often criticized as the killer of kilowatt cars, G.M. is now the champion of their revival. The Volt, which the company plans to begin selling in November 2010, should easily double the fuel economy rating of today’s mileage hero, the Toyota Prius. The Prius, which carries a 46 m.p.g. rating in combined city and highway driving, is a conventional hybrid that uses modest amounts of electricity to minimize the fuel consumed by its gasoline engine.

The Volt takes the opposite approach, relying mainly on electric power, with its gasoline engine running only when needed to stretch the driving range. The 100 m.p.g. automobile, which once seemed an impossible dream, will become an official E.P.A.-rated reality with the Volt’s arrival.

G.M. calls the car an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. For the first 40 miles after leaving home with a fully charged battery, the Volt will consume no gas at all, according to G.M.; when the gas engine does fire up, it will only drive a generator — the engine is not connected to the wheels. Owners will recharge the battery overnight from a wall socket, which brings the Volt into the category of plug-in hybrids.

Since the Volt does consume gas on trips longer than 40 miles, it’ll have to have a guide to gas consumption on the window sticker. But it will be hard to determine a meaningful mileage rating on a car capable of going through the government test cycle without using any gas at all. The New York Times called the EPA’s task of helping automakers determine these mileage figures as “a job only slightly less daunting than weather forecasting.”

The way the EPA calculates these numbers has changed a bit lately to reflect compensating factors. A good example is the Tesla Roadster, which never consumes petroleum while driving. Its EPA-required window sticker lists the energy consumed in kilowatt-hours of electricity, which are 32kwh per 100 miles in town and 33 on the highway. Translated to the more familiar miles per gallon using a textbook conversion factor, you get 105 mpg city and 102 highway. But use the adjustment factor devised by the Energy Department, which takes factors like scarcity of fuel and production and distribution efficiency into account, and you get a staggering 256mpg city and 249 highway.

So, it will be interesting to see just how far over 100mpg the Chevy Volt actually ends up getting. GM hopes to separate the Volt from ordinary hybrids, defining its mileage in a new way. We’ll find out when it debuts next year!

Link [The New York Times]

How Do We Get There: Gore’s 100% in 10 years

When Al Gore challenged America to shift to 100% renewable energy within a decade, the question on most people’s minds was, “Is he nuts?” After all, such a goal is more than a little ambitious – particularly for a country that is still wedded to the oil and coal industries. When it comes to energy, America is practically as dirty as they come. The past 8 years of Bush leadership has done nothing to change that; rather, Bush did everything he could to further the interests of dirty energy.

As Gore sees it, there are five steps to achieving this goal. First, he wants Obama and the new Congress to offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of solar thermal plants in the Southwestern desert, wind farms in the corridor from Texas to the Dakotas and plants in geothermal hot spots. Second, he believes we should be building a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural areas where it’s generated to the cities where the majority of it is used.

Third, he wants to help America’s automobile industry make the shift to plug-in hybrids that can run on renewable energy. Fourth, he suggests embarking on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation, energy-efficient windows and lighting. Finally, Gore believes the U.S. should put a price on carbon here at home and lead the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty with a more effective treaty that would cap global carbon dioxide emissions and encourage nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming as quickly as possible.

Gore’s plan may seem at first blush like pie-in-the-sky, never-gonna-happen kind of extreme wishful thinking. But, it’s not impossible. It would take swift action, strong leadership and plenty of funding – but 100% renewable energy in a decade is not out of reach.

There are literally cheap, abundant sources of energy all around us. It’s really kind of absurd when you think about it that we put so much effort into drawing fossil fuels out from underneath the surface of the earth when all the power we need is right here, and we don’t have to destroy the environment to use it. Furthermore, these budding renewable energy industries are already teeming with players eager to research, plan and carry out new energy infrastructure. They just need funding.

Solar, wind and geothermal companies already abound in the U.S., and recent economic woes are the only reason they haven’t continued their explosive growth. There are a lot of green businesspeople out there just waiting to jump in to this new industry and help it expand, and plenty of people out there ready to fill the jobs that it will create.  As billionaire oilman and renewable energy proponent T. Boone Pickens pointed out in a recent CNN interview, building the wind corridor from Texas to North Dakota would create 168,000 jobs in the first year – up to 3 and a half million jobs in the course of a decade.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have already learned the hard way that the way they’ve been doing business isn’t sustainable. They’ve made far too many a business decision based upon the idea that Americans would always want – and be able to afford – huge gas-guzzling SUVs. After the credit crisis caused auto loans to dry up and auto sales to drop dramatically, automakers like GM find themselves in need of a government handout.

This is where Gore’s goal to help automakers switch to plug-in hybrids could really pick up steam. Though automakers, when profitable, used to fight tooth and nail all government attempts to green up their industry via higher fuel efficiency standards and reduced emissions, now they’re at the government’s mercy.  The government may make a bargain with the industry, offering financial help – and in exchange, automakers must focus on producing high-mpg cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars.

The number one concern most people have voiced about Gore’s plan is the cost. No doubt, it would be staggering. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record – since we have brought up Van Jones and Green for All again and again here at EarthFirst – the key is turning this switch to renewable energy into a massive jobs and economic revitalization program. Van Jones covers this concept extensively in his new book, The Green Collar Economy.

The current state of the economy certainly makes it much, much harder to achieve Gore’s goal. Our government is giving hundreds of billions of dollars to failing corporations when that money could be put to much better use in the form of a ‘green bailout’. But all isn’t lost: the Center for American Progress has prepared a $100 billion, two-year recovery plan that could put renewable energy on the fast track. The proposal, entitled ‘Green Recovery: A Program to Create Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy’ (PDF), outlines exactly what we need to do climb out of this economic hole and make the switch to renewable energy at the same time.

It also addresses the fourth part of Gore’s plan: retrofitting buildings with high-performance windows, improved insulation and energy-efficient appliances. Weatherization assistance could be fully funded to the level authorized by the Energy Independence and Security Act, and the energy-efficiency retrofit program in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program should be expanded. The federal government should also match state public funds and other locally based programs that support energy efficiency and green building retrofits to both public and private buildings. Strong financial incentives, including tax credits and loan guarantees, should also be used to encourage private property owners to participate.

Perhaps most important of all is the need for a new smart grid. Our current outmoded, decaying power grid simply can’t do the job of transporting green power from rural areas where it’s produced to the rest of the country. Gore estimates the cost of a new green energy grid at around $400 billion over the next decade. Obama has already said that a smart grid is an absolute necessity, telling Rachel Maddow of MSNBC,

“One of, I think, the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid. Because if we’re going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago. And we’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated from those car batteries, back into the grid. That can create 5 million new jobs, just in new energy.”

There’s also a growing chorus of voices saying that there’s no reason why renewable energy can’t be produced locally. Many people believe that huge, remote renewable energy plants and farms aren’t green at all, and that creating energy on a local level with technology like micro-wind, for example, is a better choice. That would lessen the need for a huge, expensive new power grid and would spread jobs out across the country. Perhaps their ideas will be heard, too, in the months to come as the Obama administration seeks the best way to tackle this challenge.

There are still plenty of obstacles that will have to be overcome. Of course, we’ve got to keep in mind the fact that the dirty energy industries aren’t going to go down quietly. They’ve enjoyed the unique privilege of having a good buddy in the White House for nearly a decade, who has helped them make record profits and gain even more power. The oil and coal industries in particular would tell you that greenhouse gas emissions, mountaintop removal and other environmental catastrophes are the price we must pay for affordable energy, but of course that’s not true. They’re desperately clinging to their status and they aren’t going to merely step aside.

Big Oil in particular has unleashed a squirming army of lobbyists on Washington in the past few decades, and they’re fighting renewable energy and environmental hurdles with all their might. The Bush Administration has been very accommodating to their demands, and there are certainly still many members of Congress in the pockets of oil companies. But Obama is already in the midst of an unprecedented crackdown on lobbyists, so they shouldn’t expect to continue receiving the kinds of perks they’ve enjoyed under previous presidents.

With Obama in office, Gore’s plan will certainly get more traction than it would have if John McCain – or any other Republican – had won the election. Indeed, Obama has already voiced support for a shift to renewable energy sooner rather than later. In a taped message to the Bi-Partisan Governor’s Global Climate Summit earlier this week, President elect Obama left no doubt that his administration is committed to making serious investments in a clean energy future. He also addressed the final part of Gore’s plan: the need for real government commitment to the fight against global warming.

In the address, Obama stated,

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.

That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.

Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

This investment will not only help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, making the United States more secure. And it will not only help us bring about a clean energy future, saving our planet. It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating five million new green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

I promise you this. When I am President, any governor who is willing to promote green energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that is willing to invest in green energy will have an ally in Washington.  And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.

After all of this, you might be thinking, why ten years? Isn’t that kind of crazy, considering the state of things? The thing is, long deadlines that are decades away don’t exactly spur immediate, passionate action. A sense of urgency is just what we need to make this happen. Plus, a 10-year deadline comes with the benefit of being 80% Obama administration.

None of this would be easy, but what would be even harder is trying to survive on an increasingly inhospitable planet where extreme weather dramatically affects the world food supply.  The very existence of the human race on this planet is at stake, and that’s what makes all of this worth fighting for. And, it would be far better to take on this challenge and fail than not to try at all. We’d still be much further along than we are now.

But let’s not forget the power of this country to make something happen. Despite this country’s history of racial inequality – and lingering tension – we elected a black man to be our leader in a time of crisis because he is the best man for the job. We rose above our past so that we can have a better future, and we’re going to do it again.

As Gore said himself,

In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The average age of the systems engineers cheering on Apollo 11 from the Houston control room that day was 26, which means that their average age when President Kennedy announced the challenge was 18.

This year similarly saw the rise of young Americans, whose enthusiasm electrified Barack Obama’s campaign. There is little doubt that this same group of energized youth will play an essential role in this project to secure our national future, once again turning seemingly impossible goals into inspiring success.

Sam’s Club Selling $100K Electric Cars

If you’re in the market for a new, high end, six-figure electric car, where’s the first place you think to shop? If you said Sam’s Club, the warehouse store where you can pick up 5-gallon barrels of pickled eggs and a 30-pack of underwear for $5, you’re – um – correct.

Sam’s Club is currently offering a “Once-in-a-Lifetime Electric Super Car Package” which includes Hybrid Technologies’ new electric sports car with a top speed of 150 mph.  It also goes from zero to sixty in 5 seconds, has a charge range of 200 miles and comes with an invite to a race track in LA (including first-class airfare and accommodations).

Seriously, who buys $100k electric cars from Sam’s Club? Could you even fit a gallon jug of mayo in its trunk?

Link [Gizmodo]

Tesla Roadster Crashes at 100mph During Demo

Evidently there’s something about Tesla Roadsters that makes people want to take dumb risks, because there have been quite a few high-profile crashes lately. Sure, the electric sports car is pretty sexy and lends itself to some showing off for passengers and onlookers. But, taking a wet corner at 100mph seems like a sure way to end up in the hospital.

Luckily for the guy – and his passenger, to whom he was giving a demo – they escaped the crash without injuries despite the passenger getting thrown out of the car. There are only 50 of these cars and now 3 of them have been virtually destroyed – one rear-ended a truck and another rammed another car at a stoplight.

No doubt it’s exciting to drive, but it’s not the Batmobile. Take a little more care, Tesla Roadster owners!

Link [CrunchGear]

New Volage Electric Car Capable of Reaching 160mph

If you thought the Tesla Roadster was cool, get a load of the newly-unveiled ‘Venturi Volage Roadster’, a fully electric roadster capable of reaching 160 mph.  The Volage, which debuted at the Paris Motor Show, boasts 295 horsepower and 171 pound-feet of torque, enabling it to go from 0 to 60 in less than 5 seconds.  One of its most notable innovations is its revolutionary suspension/propulsion system that fits two electric motors within each of its wheels.

From Inhabitat:

Michelin has outfitted the Venturi Volage with a new breed of in-wheel tech that it calls Active Wheel Technology. The idea is to fit as much as possible within the wheel envelope - in this case the entire active suspension, electric motor and brakes . This frees up enough space for a slim and lightweight carbon-fiber chassis that weighs in at 2,369 pounds. It also means that each wheel will be independently powered, which provides for a significant amount of additional control over the vehicle.

Of course, that is not the only impressive thing about the Volage. It is, after all, a fully electric roadster with a top speed of nearly 160mph and a range of 200 miles. And it is very cool looking. The Venturi Volage is currently planned for production in 2012.

Now that is one sexy electric car! Check out the rest of the details at the Venturi Volage website.

Link [Inhabitat] + [Venturi Volage] via [EcoGeek]

Tesla Electric Car Factory Planned for Silicon Valley

Tesla Motors will be building a brand spankin’ new car factory in San Jose, California, but it won’t be any old car factory.  The $250 million facility will churn out electric vehicles expected to be on the streets by 2010. Silicon Valley has long been renowned as the epicenter of high-tech innovation in America, and now it looks like it’ll be an important setting for clean, green tech as well.

From Reuters:

Tesla Chief Executive Ze’ev Drori in a separate interview said he expects manufacturing of the five-passenger, $60,000 Model S sedan to hit a rate of over 15,000 a year by the last quarter of 2011. Tesla will build the factory on its own.

“We have enough money,” Drori said, adding that Tesla is a couple of months away from closing up to $100 million in private equity financing, and that the U.S. Department of Energy has approved $150 million in loan guarantees. The state of California also has offered significant tax breaks.

Speculation on where the factory would be located has been buzzing for months, with Californians eagerly awaiting the news that would bring hundreds of green jobs to one lucky town. Other cities on the short list were San Francisco and Vacaville.  San Jose looks set to become a boomtown for green technology, as solar companies continue to set up factories there.

Can’t wait to see the undoubtedly sporty, sexy electric cars Tesla rolls out over the next couple of years!

Link [Reuters] + [Earth2Tech]
Photo credit: Steve Puma

GM Gives Close-Up Look at New Chevy Volt Electric Car

GM CEO Rick Wagoner debuted the new Chevrolet Volt electric car to an audience of thousands on Tuesday, giving the world its first look at the vehicle set to go on sale in 2010.  The Volt is powered by electricity stored in a large T-shaped lithium-ion battery pack that runs the length of the car.  It takes a few hours to charge, costs less than 2 cents per mile to drive on electricity and runs for 40 miles per charge.  The price hasn’t been announced yet.

From CNN:

To charge the batteries, drivers will plug a cord into one of the ports just ahead of each of the side mirrors. The cord can then be attached to an ordinary home electrical outlet.

As the battery begins to run down as the car is in use, a small gasoline engine will turn on and generate enough electricity to drive the car about 300 miles.

The Volt’s battery pack goes where the “transmission tunnel” would be in a conventional rear-wheel-drive car. That means the batteries don’t take up cargo space as they do in some hybrid cars. Unlike its smoothly rounded front, the back end of the car has a sharp, angular shape. In the rear, where air flows together as it trails off from the vehicle, sharp angles help smooth air flow.

Some people are disappointed that the production version of the Chevy is far less sporty looking than the original concept vehicle, but the question that most have is, how green is it? The most environmentally friendly aspects of any electric car are lower emissions and the fact that they’re not consuming as much petroleum, but it still has to be charged with electricity, much of which currently comes from coal-fired power plants.   And, beyond the 40-mile charge, when the gasoline engine kicks in, the MPG decreases rapidly – from an estimated 100 miles per gallon in all-electric mode to 50 miles per gallon on a 100-mile trip or 35 miles per gallon on a 200-mile trip (stats via CNET).

Of course, once the day arrives that we can charge cars like this on solar or wind power and use non-food-sourced ethanol, the green score will go through the roof!

Link [CNN]
Photo credit: General Motors

McCain Proposes $300 Million Prize for Alternative Auto Battery

If John McCain has his way, coming up with a new sustainable energy solution will be one big game show. McCain has proposed a $300 million prize to anyone who can develop an automobile battery that best surpasses existing technology.

From CNN:

McCain said the new automobile battery should have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

“In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” McCain said. “From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.”

Obama’s response, per the Detroit News:

“When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn’t put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win — he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people,” the Illinois senator said in a speech in Las Vegas. “That’s the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do.”

McCain’s battery proposal is no doubt an attempt to get back in the favor of some moderate environmentalists who disagree with his views on offshore drilling. If he were really serious about improving battery technology, he’d pledge to invest money in research grants and other incentives. Even with the possibility of $300 million at the end of the road, individuals and small companies would be unlikely to afford the research that would be necessary to create such a battery – more likely, the prize would end up in the hands of some huge corporation. Hardly a way to encourage American innovation. McCain might as well just ready himself for the reaming he’s gonna take in November.

Link [CNN] + [Detroit News]
Photo credit: Flickr user aflcio2008

Bumper Cars as an Alternative to Electric Cars?

Imagine taking a really stupid idea, multiplying it by a few million and setting it loose on the streets of America. No, I’m not talking about hybrid SUVs (this time). A website called Low-Tech has decided that, instead of focusing on increasing the battery life of electric cars, we should just get rid of the batteries all together. How? By re-introducing the ‘bumper car’ cable system.

Treehugger has it:

“Batteries are the flaw of electric cars, and not only when considering the environment. Electric cars are not yet a reality because of the limited mileage of their ‘fuel tanks.’ At best, an electric car can drive 100 or 200 miles. After that, the car has to be plugged in for hours.” Their suggested alternative: bumper car technology, where electricity is fed to the vehicle directly from the grid.

Kris De Decker reminds us that in many countries, there are networks of trolley cars and vehicles that use overhead wires for power yet drive on the road like a conventional vehicle. ” Like electric cars, the environmental score of a trolleybus depends on the way the electricity was generated. However, a trolleybus (just like a tram or an electric train) does not face the problem of energy storage. Therefore, the problem with the electric car is not that it’s electric, but that it’s wireless.”

What a mess that would be. Aside from the obvious problems of requiring massive, expensive overhauls of our road system and being unable to pass each other on the highway, a Treehugger commenter named Ross sums up our sentiments on the issue nicely:

So they’re proposing something like one of those newfangled train machines?

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Flickr user brainware3000

Company Converts Gas Powered Cars to Electric

One question many people have had about the switch from gas powered vehicles to greener models is, what happens to the old cars? There is definitely a possibility for an awful lot of waste – not all of the materials from a vehicle can be recycled. Luckily, there are forward-thinking companies like Voitures électriques du Québec (Electric Cars of Quebec).

From the company’s website:

Electric Cars of Quebec is a company which is proud to offer electric cars to the public of Quebec. Since the company’s conception in 2007, the founder Mr. Loic Daigneault has been developing a line of products which offer a viable alternative to drivers who wish to save money and reduce their green house gas emissions. With safety as a priority all ECQ products meet the requirements of the SAAQ and have been designed to withstand the rigors of the Canadian climate.

While ECQ won’t turn the vehicle you already own into an electric car (they prefer to buy models that are already compatible with electric design to ensure quality and safety), purchasing a converted car from ECQ is an awesome way to go green AND recycle at the same time.

The cars have a range of 100 km (62.137 miles) with the option of traveling further via a gas generator, which essentially turns the car into a hybrid, making it able to charge its own battery. Without the gas generator, the car will take about 8-12 hours to recharge once spent. The battery doesn’t have memory, so you don’t have to wear it down completely before recharging. The battery lasts about 1200 recharges or 6 years.

Get more info at the Electric Cars of Quebec website!

Link [Electric Cars of Quebec]

Green Vaporwear, Hucksterism, and Electric Cars- Wired Magazine Unloads on Zap!

Holy crap did Wired Magazine just unload on electric car company Zap!. It sounds like the company is run by a couple of shady hucksters who have enriched themselves at the expense of their customers, employees, and franchisees while screwing things up for all the real green car companies with their constant over promising and under delivering.

Here’s an snip, head over and read the whole article which Wired was kind enough to post in full to their site.

Over the years, ZAP has taken millions from investors and dealers eager to see the company’s line of green cars hit the road. But that line has never materialized. Of nearly a dozen groundbreaking eco-vehicles ZAP has promised in public announcements and on its Web site, only the Xebra and its sibling, a truck version, have ever made it to market. As a result, fans of electric cars have grown disillusioned, while individuals like Youssef have been financially devastated. What’s more, investment firms around the country have become cautious about financing electric vehicles after being repeatedly misled by one of the industry’s most visible companies.

In spite of all this, the pair now running the company, Starr and CEO Steve Schneider, enjoy lucrative employment packages that have made them millions. Their compensation — and ZAP’s continued existence as a business — heavily depends on the continual issuance of new stock shares. And although ZAP has earned an annual profit only once in its 16 years of existence (even that was the result of a one-time debt conversion) and its stock has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and the Pacific Stock Exchange, Starr and Schneider have managed to keep ZAP shares from becoming worthless. They’ve achieved this almost entirely through a relentless flow of press releases in which ZAP describes itself as “a world leader in electric transportation” and constantly claims to be on the verge of innovations and business deals that will yield breakthroughs in green transportation — claims that consistently fall short.

None of this would be possible without the optimism and naïveté of those eager to put their faith in the electric car future. When it comes to green technology, some people just want to believe. It’s easy to see why: Electric cars, after all, don’t run on gas, so they produce virtually no emissions. They do consume some fossil fuels, since they charge their batteries from the grid, which mostly uses coal and natural gas to generate power. But because electric cars are more efficient than gas cars at turning energy into miles, their carbon footprint averages out to be 50 to 90 percent less than that of traditional vehicles. (And that figure drops to nearly zero if the car is plugged into a renewable energy source like a solar panel array.) Electric cars could decrease dependence on oil, reduce global carbon emissions, and save consumers money. But while Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, and General Motors all toyed with electric vehicles in the ’90s, these companies had effectively ended development by 2003, when California stopped requiring automakers to offer zero-emissions vehicles. Since then, electric car enthusiasts have been forced to pin their hopes on small independent companies — like ZAP.

“They tug at your heartstrings,” says Joseph Gottlieb, a ZAP dealer from the San Diego area who has filed an official complaint against ZAP with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “If ZAP was in any other business, the company would have been dead long ago. But they keep taking advantage of how much environmentalists — like me — want to see electric cars come to market.”

The lesson to be learned here: Greenies are easy to rip off if you tell them you’re trying to save the world.

Link [Wired] via [EcoGeek]