GM and the Heartland Institute?

Greg Dalton asks a question relayed from the Commonwealth Club's Facebook page: "Please ask Mr. Akerson why GM funds The Heartland Institute, a group that has tried to push misinformation about climate change into our public schools. Is this funding consistent with their company's message and marketing of the Chevy Volt?"

Speakers:

Dan Akerson, CEO, General Motors
Greg Dalton, Founder, Climate One

http://www.climate-one.org
http://www.commonwealthclub.org

Recorded: March 7, 2012

• Category

  Nonprofits & Activism

[Bob Judd]

He certainly did a great job of totally avoiding the question. He didn't even come CLOSE to answering it, just beat around it.

[sidvidkid]

60% more efficient cars!!! pffft, only coz gm's have been inefficient gas guzzling 1960s technology, clunkers, half a century behind asian manufacturers.

[BifMcAwesome]

This is what crony capitalism looks like. GM is getting the special favors through the government (as is GE, Goldman Sachs, Solyndra and a host of others) instead of competing in the free market making their money producing the products the markets wants. Benito would be proud of the corporatism we have today. The market will kill of the electric cars of today, just like it did the electric cars of the '90's, because it doesn't deliver a useable product people will buy freely for their needs.

[lumajs]

GM may avoid payment to the Heartland Insitute. Instead, it may compete in absurd ad hod disciplines such as "CO2 reductions" that don't help anyone and don't make a good car. As the company continues to be increasingly uncompetitive, it may always rely on bailouts from the government which is a bigger friend of the company today than the consumers.

It's sad that GM can't compete by the world quality of its products so that it could also support pro-market institutes such as Heartland...

[Julian W. - Gwangju]

Good attempt at an answer, and yes it's nice about the efficient energy use of the factories, but it's still not anywhere good enough. GM was instrumental in killing off the electric car boom of the 90s and thereby delaying a hugely beneficial response to the obvious effects of global warming and climate change which are now becoming so deadly obvious in all the twisters and tornadoes killing people through the US and other weather events globally. Climate change denialism: absurdly disgusting.