Carl Pope Speaks Out

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As executive director of the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization, Carl Pope has become a figurehead in the environmental movement. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1967, he embarked on his long journey of environmental leadership by addressing the impacts of overpopulation in Barhi Barhi, India, as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. Since then, Pope has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including the California League of Conservation Voters and the National Clean Air Coalition; co-authored California Proposition 65, known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic initiative; and has written three books. Pope took the helm of the Sierra Club in 1992, and in the process has helped protect nearly 10 million acres of wilderness and maintain environmental and regulatory pressure on lawmakers.

Green Car Journal: Over the past several years, you have advocated the need for the auto industry to be faster in adopting new environmentally sound technologies. Do you believe the industry is continuing to move too slowly today?

Carl Pope: “The reality is there’s a whole panoply of technology available to the auto industry being used in certain models, by certain companies, which would dramatically reduce the negative environmental consequences of driving around in a car, a truck, or an SUV. And all of these vehicles can be made much less damaging by using better technology and by designing them differently. What’s very sad is, although the auto industry has demonstrated that it knows how to make fabulous cars that dramatically lessen environmental damage, it’s not willing to do that across the board. It’s not willing to give consumers real choices. Right now, in many American cities, the waiting list to get a hybrid vehicle is longer than the waiting list to get an organ transplant.”

GCJ: So now automakers are seeing the success of these small hybrids and consumers are choosing them. What do you think about the idea of consumers having more vehicle choices – now with several hybrid cars and even the first hybrid SUV?

CP: “What we’re seeing is that if you give American consumers cars that meet their needs and are environmentally sound, they will get in line to get them. What we’re seeing is that consumers want cars that have modern technology. But the American auto industry is giving consumers a limited number of vehicles that are produced on outmoded platforms using outmoded technology that in fact are more dangerous. The latest report from the Highway Traffic Safety Administration is that if you drive an SUV you are more likely be killed in an automobile accident than if you drive a sedan. They also showed there are SUVs out there that are modern, well-designed, and safe…and those SUVs also get better fuel economy. It’s all about making sure that every car in the showroom is actually a 21st century car. And the fact is, most of the cars in the showrooms today are not.”

GCJ: Why do you think the U.S. auto industry may be resistant to embracing the concepts you advocate?

CP: “First, I want to acknowledge the fact that Ford Motor Company has now produced a modern SUV, the first modern SUV to come from an American manufacturer – the new hybrid Escape. And I want to commend William Clay Ford for doing that. The challenge is going to be the marketing and the manufacturing of that car so it can really become a major part of Ford sales, and we hope he does that.

“I actually think that the American auto manufacturers are defeatist about their ability to compete with import foreign technology. For some reason, I don’t know why, they have developed a defeatist attitude that we can’t compete with the Japanese.”

GCJ: Have you heard that in any statements?

CP: “They have said to us, ‘We don’t want to raise the bar for all cars because if you make all cars technologically better, the Japanese will clean our clocks.’ They are defeatist about their abilities. The workers are not defeatist and there’s absolutely no evidence at all that American workers can’t produce better cars than anybody in the world. Their engineers aren’t defeatist. I’ve talked to engineers with Ford and they just say if we would be turned loose, they could produce a better hybrid.”

GCJ: Does this strike you as a boardroom and stockholder issue?

CP: “It is a finance room and boardroom issue. It is the finance people and the board people who are defeatist. They don’t think they can win a real race with the Japanese and we keep saying to them, ‘there is no other race in the long term.’ If you don’t make quality cars, you’re not going to be in business. You have no choice.”

GCJ: If the auto industry were here to speak collectively on this topic, they might come back and say, “All right, we can build them, but we don’t know if the public is aware enough about the value of this technology to really embrace it, and in fact pay for it.”

CP: “They don’t say that, actually. They all say, ‘If we build small cars the public may not buy them.’ But the (BMW) Mini Cooper suggests that may not be true if you design a good small car. What they tell me is this, quite explicitly, ‘We don’t believe that we can compete technologically and in quality with the Japanese. We all compete for power and size because we think that’s where we have the competitive edge’.”

GCJ: It would seem that your Sierra Club membership is more focused on the environment than the average auto buyer. What feedback do you have on the decision-making process that makes a Sierra Club member buy differently than an average car buyer?

CP: “The difference between our membership and the public is our members are more optimistic. They actually believe that what they buy can make a difference in the world, so they link their buying decisions more closely with the kind of world they want to see. The general public is a little more cynical and disillusioned…they don’t think they can make a difference.”

GCJ: What are your imperatives regarding transportation for tomorrow?

CP: “Our imperative is progress, and progress comes in a whole bunch of different ways. I mean, you can start out just by making modest changes in a vehicle. You can go to a hybrid vehicle and in a few years go beyond the hybrid. But the main thing is you’ve got to modernize, you’ve got to invest in quality, and you’ve got to invest in technology.”

GCJ: What do you think about the advertising messages that come from the automakers regarding what consumers should buy?

CP: “I think it obviously contributes to the problem. They advertise that these things are safe when in fact they know they’re not safe. And when I talk to people in the United Auto Workers, they tell me they know these are not the best vehicles to make but they’re the vehicles which make Detroit the biggest profit margin.”

GCJ: What about marketing and advertising specifically directed toward educating the public on buying hybrids or other environmentally positive automobiles?

CP: “The hybrids, in a certain way, marketed themselves. Toyota is not spending that much on marketing, and when you’ve got a two year waiting list, it doesn’t make sense to put a whole lot into an advertising budget, frankly. The hybrid successes have outpaced the capacities of the assembly lines.”

GCJ: How would you describe the progress of the auto industry versus other manufacturing and commercial industries today?

CP: “Well, the auto industry has done more to embrace new technology than the coal industry. But on the other hand, the auto industry has done more to increase our dependence on oil, so they have a larger moral responsibility.”

GCJ: Do you have any recommendations to car buyers that would reflect the Sierra Club agenda?

CP: “I think for your family, you want safety. For your children, you want fuel economy…because you don’t want to mess up the planet. And then every car buyer has a different set of needs, so it may be that for some people the Insight is the right vehicle, for some people it’s the Prius, for some people it’s the Ford Escape. I would urge people to look at those three things.”