Nissan LEAF ad sends a message; Deutsche Bank report sends a warning
The Nissan LEAF ad above is quite clever, and keeping in mind that it’s just an advertisement and that electric cars are not going to save the world from climate change, I think it does a good job of stirring the emotions and sending a message without so much as uttering a single word. Curious to know what you think about it.
BTW: Here is a link to an important report from DB Climate Change Advisors, part of the Deutsche Bank Group, which thoroughly rips apart the arguments often used by skeptics and deniers to slow down or halt any efforts to seriously reduce the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions we’re dumping into the atmosphere. The bank says that navigating the scientific debate is “vitally important” for investors in the space, and that its goal is to provide “a balanced, expert, and detailed assessment of the scientific case for climate change that will help investors navigate these extremely complex issues.” It’s a must read and something that should be spread virally. I should emphasize that Deutsche Bank, frustrated with America’s inability to pass climate legislation, is the investment giant that said in August that it was taking its alternative energy investments out of the U.S. and focusing its efforts on Western Europe and China. Kevin Parker, who heads up an asset division at the bank that oversees $700 billion (U.S.) in funds — $7 billion related to climate change investments — said the U.S. (and Canada by association) is “asleep at the wheel on climate change, asleep at the wheel on job growth, asleep at the wheel on this industrial revolution taking place in the energy industry.”
Good on Deutsche Bank for giving a credible voice to this issue from the financial sector.
Tags: climate change, Deutsche Bank, Nissan LEAF
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
September 11th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
The ad was okay- elicited a small smile from me at the end of it- but I think the Lance Armstrong commercials were better. And I think most potential buyers will relate more to having to breathe the exhaust fumes of others rather than to a melting polar ice cap. On the other hand, should the Polar Bear win even ONE Tour de France…
September 13th, 2010 at 9:39 am
What “investments”? Do they mean the extent to which public money is poured in to subsidize private investments?
Isn’t the US now the world’s #1 producer of wind energy, with China at #2? This doesn’t really prove anything about the overall strategy, but you can’t really call them “asleep at the wheel”.
As for the LEAF, I just hope they aren’t setting the whole industry up for failure. When people have high expectations of this thing and then find out that it’ll have half the range in the winter as in the spring because of battery performance at different temperatures (and the cost of heating/AC), I wonder if they’ll be willing to make the tradeoffs.
If these electric cars overpromise and severely under-deliver, they’ll be written off for another generation unless there is no other choice but to use them.