Has anybody seen this Terrapass website?

Well, it roughly calculated how much pollution your Ford vehicle puts out and how much you should donate to Terrapass to offset the pollution. You also get a small decal that says you're offsetting your own pollution.

Well, I decided to put in a Ford GT. Guess how much I have to pay to offset my pollution for 12,000 miles. $80 is all it takes and I can get a Terrapass badge on the rear of my GT. I don't think people can see such a small badge if I blow past them doing 0-60 in zero seconds, at least it'll be very hard. Not if they're superman though, then they'll be able to see it with his supervision or fly next to it and read it... But then Batman would jump on and whoop up in Superman because he's so cool. Speaking of fiction...

 

big corporations do this, but they make giant donations to schools and other stuff so that the EPA doesn't get all aggro on them. It is sort of a way to cheat the system.

 

Wow... you mean that's not a joke?

 

ford is a bunch of liars.

 

Doesn't the GT get like 8 mpg (or was that gpm ; )

 

Emissions trading has been show to be an effective way to lower overall emissions. It's a market based system, that allows for those that can't afford to clean up to buy credits from those that can.

Also, this really sells you a "feel good" sticker to go make a donation to alternative energy source research. You could do it on your own, but you don't get the bitchen' sticker....

And the list of what to do to improve gas efficiency at the bottom isn't full of lies.

Just think, if every car generated $40 in revenue to the R&D efforts, (or was just used to buy up emissions credits that were never used), that would be a lot of money!

Matt

 

That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking that there was no way that a Ford GT would only need $80 to offset the harm is causes to the environment.

 

'course nobody uses their Ford GT as a daily driver, only a weekend toy or track star. Won't be putting too many miles on the GT per year.

 

Crunched the numbers for my wife's 2005 Mustang GT and came up w/ 79.95 a year.......

 

I put in 12000 miles though.

 

it's the equivalent cost of purchasing the CO2 emissions credit only. Not all emissions. It's a start.....

Matt

 

4, and there is a person in Jax. who uses one as daily driver, wonder if they have there feel good sticker?

 

Way I read this is that people originally misread the website. Isn't the world a better place if people send their money into the R&D and CO2 offsets than if they dont?

I still don't see why this is a bad thing....

Matt

 

I don't think it is people are saying that money toward research is a bad thing but that the fact when you calcutalte it all out it should be more money and that it w ould be better if something like this was included in the cost of their new cars it would be ok. To me this the equivalent of having a new years resolution to loose weight then only dieting one day a week, yes its a feather in your cap and yes it is something, but if real change is going to happen its gonna take some more work, not just a feather in Fords cap, hence the "Fords is liars title."

 

In the European CO2 emissions market, the price for a permit to emit one metric ton of CO2 is somewhere between $15 and $35. So $80 bucks would buy the permits for three tonnes, plus or minus, at about $25/tonne.

Cars emit a bit less than 1 lb per mile (and yes, this number varies a lot). At the lower trading rate of ~$15/Metric tonne, you'd get around 12,000 miles worth of CO2 credit....

If you want to caluclate the numbers for CO2 more accurately, it's a bit less than 20 lbs of CO2 per gallon of gas. 20 MPG = 1 Lb per mile.

For the "cost" of CO2 emissions, I just found what CO2 permits cost in the EU emissions trading scheme. I'm sure there are other ways to figure out what it should cost.

Sure the web sites CO2 cost calculator is pretty simple. Better than none!

There are a lot of reasons to bash Ford, but this isn't one of them.

Matt

 

I agree with Dr. Obnxs here besides the last line. I actaully like Ford. Sure they've made a few mistakes, even a few major ones. But in general I think they're getting on the right track, working things out and do a lot of good things not only for the earth(at least making some effort), but also for the US and our economy in general. Bill Ford is heading in the right direction as far as I can see. He's a good guy.