Greenpeace & its hypocritical advert

[casebro]

You have 8,000 pound SUVs?

Ford's discontinued Excursion. Used primarily by soccer moms to take the kiddies 2 urban miles to school.

 

[varwoche]

The hypocricy is Greenpeace giving big advertisers a hard time for manipulating consumers

Evidence?

Misguided

How is it misguided to promote fuel efficiency? (add: it is misguided though to promote some of the behaviors shown in the ad, in case that's what you mean)

factually dubious

No facts were presented.

maybe just plain stupid

No argument. Amusing though.

 

[JamesDillon]

Greenpeace have campaigned to ban chlorine, the 11th most abundant element in the earths crust. They ceased to be a scientifically based environmental organisation sometime in the 1980s. This advert doesn't suprise me in the slightest.

I know very little about Greenpeace, but did they campaign to ban chlorine, or to ban certain uses of chlorine? The latter sounds a lot more likely.

 

[RyanRoberts]

They want to ban all chlorine chemistry. Their first target was PVC, but they want to ban the manufacture of chlorine containing compounds.

Horses mouth

Chlorine is the common link in many of the world's most
notorious environmental poisons: dioxin, DDT, Agent Orange,
PCBs, and the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all
based on chlorine. These and other chlorine-containing
substances dominate government lists of "priority pollutants"
that threaten health and the environment. But thousands of other
chlorinated poisons that cause similar harm are not regulated or
even monitored.

The global threat posed by the toxic "chlorine soup" now
present in the ecosystem is too complex to be solved by
addressing these chemicals one at a time. If we wish to preserve
the life-sustaining capacity of the planet, the root of the
problem -- the production and use of chlorine -- must be phased
out.

 

[Ziggurat]

putting the same engine in the 4 ton SUV and the 2 ton salon

Why would you put an engine in your salon? I guess it might make a nice conversation starter, but it's a pretty odd place for it.

 

[BPSCG]

Why would you put an engine in your salon? I guess it might make a nice conversation starter, but it's a pretty odd place for it.

I believe that's the British term for what we call a sedan.

 

[Darat]

p-off the pair of you!

 

[ponderingturtle]

They want to ban all chlorine chemistry. Their first target was PVC, but they want to ban the manufacture of chlorine containing compounds.

Horses mouth

Never, they can take my salt from my cold dead hands! Cold Dead Hands I tell you.

 

[Luke T.]

Evidence?

Greenpeace UK has just released a new video ad about SUVs in urban areas. "Using the language, style and production values of traditional car adverts, the film challenges the image portrayed by the advertising industry of 4x4 drivers escaping their urban environment for the freedom of the open road. Greenpeace took advice from advertising industry insiders before producing the film." Some might find the video a bit over the top, but considering that the auto industry spends more on marketing (especially for SUVs) than almost all other industries combined and that their adverts are often just as over the top in the opposite direction, we think it's only fair.

Article about Greenpeace press release

Same article repeated on treehugger site.

Another quote from the press release:

The film urges car buyers to think about the consequences of their choices and not be suckered by car industry advertising.

 

[BPSCG]

Article about Greenpeace press release

From that link:...

many of the SUVs on Britain’s roads:

• Consume around 300% more fuel than an efficient family car

This is demonstrably a lie.

Question: If an efficient family car takes ten gallons of fuel to go 250 miles, how much fuel does an SUV that consumes 300% more need to travel the same distance?
Answer: Forty gallons.

Question: How many miles per gallon does that translate to?
Answer: 250/40 = 6.25.

Question: Anyone know an SUV that gets only 6.25 miles per gallon?
Answer:

 

[Psi Baba]

Another quote from the press release:

The film urges car buyers to think about the consequences of their choices and not be suckered by car industry advertising.

Damn, I was beginning to be sold by all the advertising for hybrid vehicles. That settles it, no way am I going to be suckered by car industry advertising. They just want me to buy their hybrids so I can't haul anything home back from The Home Depot and have to pay for some huge-ass truck to bring that lumber to my door. Yeah, that'll save the planet!

 

[EBU]

"Question: Anyone know an SUV that gets only 6.25 miles per gallon?"

Well, my efficient family car gets 35 mpg, so an SUV that uses 300% more fuel than that would get 8.75 mpg. Or perhaps they were thinking of an efficient family car that is a hybrid, getting, say, 50 mpg. Then an SUV that uses 300% more fuel would get 12.5 mpg? Is that more plausible?

Not that all this interesting play with numbers has anything to do with the hypocrisy/misguidedness/stupidity of the original ad.

 

[Terry]

BPSGC, I question whether 25 mpg counts as an efficient family car.

 

[Diamond]

Most American cars are much less fuel-efficient than their European or Japanese counterparts because they're heavier. The most recent car I hired in the UK got 45-50mpg.

Anyone know what the fuel efficiency of Rainbow Warrier is? I suspect it would be a lot worse than a Hummer.

 

[DaChew]

OK. The Hummer H1 Alpha (the civilian version) weighs in at 8114 lbs. So there's your 4 ton SUV though, the H1 is not your typical SUV.

The 6.6 L turbo diesel gets about 11 miles per gallon. It has two fuel tanks totalling 51.5 gallons and has cruising range of an estimated 570 miles.

 

[daredelvis]

From that link:...
This is demonstrably a lie.

Question: If an efficient family car takes ten gallons of fuel to go 250 miles, how much fuel does an SUV that consumes 300% more need to travel the same distance?
Answer: Forty gallons.

Question: How many miles per gallon does that translate to?
Answer: 250/40 = 6.25.

Question: Anyone know an SUV that gets only 6.25 miles per gallon?
Answer:

25mpg does not an efficient family car make (not even close). That being said, I also hate it when demonstrably inaccurate numbers like that are thrown around. %200 more sounds more like it. I could believe 11-13mpg vs. 33-39mpg.

 

[Luke T.]

From that link:...
This is demonstrably a lie.

Question: If an efficient family car takes ten gallons of fuel to go 250 miles, how much fuel does an SUV that consumes 300% more need to travel the same distance?
Answer: Forty gallons.

Question: How many miles per gallon does that translate to?
Answer: 250/40 = 6.25.

Question: Anyone know an SUV that gets only 6.25 miles per gallon?
Answer:

That's a good catch.

The press release devotes space to slamming the Land Rover.

According to this site, the Land Rover gets 13-14 MPG in the city, and 18-19 MPG on the highway. So an "efficient family car" would have to get 52 - 56 MPG in the city, and 72 - 78 MPG on the highway.

 

[Luke T.]

And...

The 300 percent claim is from an article on Greenpeace's site written by Dr Peter Wells of Cardiff University's Centre for Automotive Industry Research.

You can read Offroad Cars, Onroad Menace for yourself here.

It's all about the Land and Range Rovers.

It details how vehicles designed for offroad terrain consume 300% more fuel, emit 300% more pollution and, in an accident, are three times more likely to kill a pedestrian than an ordinary passenger car.

 

[Luke T.]

If an SUV is three times more likely to kill a pedestrian in an accident, are you three times more likely to survive hitting a tree?

Which happens more often? Cars hitting trees, bridges, and other hard objects, or cars hitting pedestrians?

 

[demon]

That's an incredibly silly advert - totally denuded of context, insight, politics etc. It's the very form of advertising that is the problem here: they want to disseminate their message of short, sexy clips that necessarily try to pander rather than challenge. In fact, the intention appears to be to encourage would-be environmentalists to feel smugly superior with the vain hope that they will sign up for or donate to an organisation that makes them feel like that.
It's a miserable debasement of the issues.

Change the last scene, he drives off into the sunset, and make the extras less attractive and hey presto you’ve got yourself an advert +for+ "off road vehicles".