Eideard

When production of the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano kicks off this fall, 40 percent of the energy that powers General Motors’ Orion Assembly Plant will come from methane captured from a nearby landfill site. This use of the landfill gas will reduce GM’s energy costs by $1.1 million a year and cut the amount of greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere.

Use of landfill gas is one of several methods GM is using to lessen the Orion Assembly Plant’s environmental impact. Others include: lighting system upgrades that will save an estimated 5,944 megawatts of electricity per year while also slashing CO2 emissions by 3,676 metric tons and an upgraded paint shop that’s heated by natural and landfill gas and uses approximately half of the energy (per vehicle) of the outdated paint shop that it replaced.

Maureen Midgley, GM’s executive director of global manufacturing engineering, says that these modifications will enable the Orion Assembly Plant to “reduce greenhouse gas production by about 80,000 metric tons at a full three-shift capacity.” That’s roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions from 14,000 vehicles.

Hey, every little bit helps. Don’t discount GM’s “radical” conversion to energy [and cost] savings. There is no doubt that the loans to GM that brought them back from near-extinction included a lot of ear-bending and arm-twisting about entering the 21st Century.

Good sense and economics often isn’t sufficient to modernize politicians or capitalists.

Soldier who thinks these kids admire something more than his hardware
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Pentagon announced $178 billion in cost savings over five years but softened the blow by recycling much of the money into other programs and helping pay down the budget deficit by trimming its bureaucracy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon would achieve the savings partially by taking the extraordinary step of reducing U.S. troop levels. He also announced cuts or cancellations of poorly performing weapons programs, including a $13-billion Marine Corps landing craft, designed by General Dynamics Corp.

The budget proposal is already raising hackles in some quarters of Congress, which ultimately controls the Defense Department’s budget…

Hackles belonging to members of Congress beholden to the military-industrial complex. Fools whose understanding of economics are grounded in [1] 19th Century imperial economics and politics – and [2] personal gain.

Gates said the military services had come up with $100 billion in savings over five years that would be redirected within other military programs. He said an additional $78 billion would go toward deficit reduction, made up primarily of $54 billion in Pentagon-wide savings, changes to economic assumptions, and cutting troop strength beginning in 2015.

The plan calls for cancellation of a ground-launched missile built by Raytheon Co, and the second overhaul in a year of the Pentagon’s largest weapons program: Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Under the proposal, the Pentagon would trim its force levels by up to 47,000 U.S. troops starting in 2015. That is long after U.S. troops are due to leave Iraq at the end of this year. It is also the year when U.S. war planners hope to hand over responsibility for Afghan security to local forces.

Someday – just maybe, someday – we may elect a Congress which will turn the dollars dedicated to death and destruction, imperial power and greed, to ends productive for our whole nation.