Even the US' largest corporations are beginning to tire of the incompetence, neglect, saber-rattling and arrogance of the White House.
If Wal-Mart allows Al Gore to walk in the front door and show his movie, and GM and Toyota representatives sharply criticize the administration about both its health care and energy policy (or lack thereof), there may be hope yet for the country. Quotes below...
H Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart, welcomed Al Gore to Bentonville, Ark. to show
An Inconvenient Truth to emphasize Wal-Marts pledge last October to reduce their CO2 emissions footprint on the Earth. After the movie, Al and Tipper received a standing ovation from teary-eyed Wal-Mart exeutives, managers, suppliers and partners.
"That's a larger round of applause than we gave for Wayne Newton!" joked Scott while introducing Gore, who, in turn, showered the audience with reciprocal cheer: "Doesn't it feel good to have this kind of [environmental] commitment? Don't you feel proud?"
"Scott's grand goal, as he explained it in an interview this spring, is to "democratize sustainability." To wit: He wants to use Wal-Mart's unparalleled economies of scale to put everything from organic T-shirts to compact fluorescent light bulbs to pesticide-free foods within reach of the masses."
The proof is in the [$1.29] pudding, but the fact that chairman Rob Walton Jr. is also on the board of Conservation International. [Is there some reason I can't link to this?]
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Let's move on to another Fortune 5 company that's a little closer to fossil fuel. General Motors, which delivered hybrid buses to their 39th city this month. At the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars this week in Traverse City, Michigan, both corporate execs and legislators had , well, less than positive things to say about our current (mal)administration, which has postponed high-level meetings with the Big Three twice already this year:
"They've just taken a complete pass on doing something about the health care situation," Wagoner said Thursday. "It's driving jobs out of the country."
Just like they "took a pass" on picking up Bin Laden when they knew where he was, the "took a pass" on moving proactively about the threat of Katrina (as well as dealing with the aftermath), and they "took a pass" on attempting diplomacy with Iran and North Korea. They'll just "pass" everything on down to the next guys in line. And while we're on the subject of "taking a pass":
"Energy policy is another good example: By simply taking a pass and say buy whatever's cheap, we have what we have today," Wagoner said. "If we want to have a policy which doesn't rely exclusively on imported oil, we're going to have do something other than every day toss up the ball and say, 'OK, go for the cheapest stuff.' There's got to be a more thoughtful policy than that."
Shame on him , for asking our leaders to be "thinkers" as well as "doers".
Toyota's President of Manufacturing, Gary Convis, knows who Bushie and the Do-Nothing Congress II are "passing" to:
"A good energy policy is very important to the future of our kids," he said. "The government has to take a very proactive long-term role in that. There's a limited amount of resources and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that we have to do something different."
Wow. This is an auto-industry person saying that it doesn't take a rocket scientist, or a geologist to tell us about shhhh... <whisper>"Peak Oil"</whisper> or... <whisper>"Global Warming"</whisper>.
No one asked for our President to be a brain surgeon, just smart enough to know when the gun is pointed at his foot. Especially when that foot is already in his mouth.