An open letter to Erich Marx, Director of Marketing and Media for Nissan Motors

Dear Mr. Marx,

I would like to offer a suggestion for a new marketing program to help promote the upcoming Nissan Leaf electric vehicle this winter.  For each Nissan Leaf sold, offer to donate a percentage of the purchase price to the Gulf Oil Spill relief effort.  Give the purchaser the choice of either directing the donation to the cleanup effort or to the relief effort for the many people affected by this environmental catastrophe.  This program will not just promote a great new vehicle, it will give Leaf owners the opportunity to help those affected by our addiction to petroleum.

Just as we have done in catastrophes such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti Earthquake, Americans want to help.  It’s called the “American Spirit.”  One of the best things we can do to help prevent future problems like this is to help Americans take steps toward freedom from an addiction to petroleum.  Buying a Nissan Leaf and demanding that local and state governments provide charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is an important step forward.

I hope you will take my suggestions to heart and offer this program when you launch the Nissan Leaf this year.

Best Wishes,

Powell
NotPetroleum.com

Seagull Coated in Gulf Oil - Louisiana

As the toxic slur of oil and dispersants drift ashore across the American Gulf Coast, I wonder if this will be enough to make us change our ways?  Over the past hundred years, we’ve accomplished a lot.  We made the internal combustion engine the mainstream choice for transportation.  We’ve built roads and super-highways that link every state together in the United States.  We have a fueling infrastructure that has very few areas where you don’t have at least three or four choices of fuel stations.  We’ve developed advanced fertilizers and pesticides from petroleum that allows us to feed hundreds of millions of people.  We synthesize oil into olefins for making advanced polymers and plastics that allow us to carry disposable plastic water bottles wherever we go.

However, our voracious appetite for oil is polluting our environment and putting billions of dollars into the pockets of nations that undermine freedom, fund terrorism and have been linked to planting IEDs that kill our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Is it all worth it?

How many wars and Gulf oil spills will it take before we realize that we need to demand better alternatives?  Henry Ford mass-produced the first automobiles without any roads or fuel stations across the nation.  Americans fell in love with the automobile, purchased them and demanded roads and fuel stations.  We can do this again and it will be alot easier.

The Nissan Leaf electric vehicle will begin shipping in December of 2010.  They can be driven on the same roads and highways.  Electricity is available along every major road and highway in our nation.  If you believe we are a nation that can innovate and make the world a better place, trade in one of your cars for a Nissan Leaf and demand charging stations throughout your city or town.  Our grandparents did it and now it’s our turn.

When thinking of ways to help kick our petroleum addiction, it’s hard not to be thinking of the Middle East and their grip on the World’s energy supply.  Sheiks pump oil, we pay for it,  sheiks get rich and powerful.  Some sheiks use the funds to bolster Taliban-ese societies that oppress their people and help spew anti-American rhetoric throughout the world.  Some of our dollars make it back to terrorists that kill our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Some of our gas dollars probably funded the flight training and logistics terrorists used to kill thousands of civilians at the WTC in 2001.

While reducing our dependence on foreign oil is by far the most effective method of diffusing this vicious cycle, I can’t help but ponder how the current wave of democratization of the Middle East will affect this?  Thomas Friedman posted a very informative opinion article on the NY Times Wednesday that describes a wave of change happening throughout the Middle East.  If anyone has their pulse on the Middle East, it is Friedman.  From his firsthand knowledge of the political environment (through living and reporting there  for years as a journalist and correspondent)  and through his Pulitzer Prize winning book on Middle East politics and social environment, From Beirut to Jerusalem,  Friedman is most qualified to report on this topic.

Unlike the elections of the 80s and 90s in the Middle East where most autocratic leaders that allowed elections always received 99% or more of the vote, covering elections today has more uncertainty and is a more interesting story.  A story that keeps voters up at night awaiting election results.  In the case where there is concern of fraud, it is no longer the status quo.  Today, you will find voters protesting the injustice in the streets using technology such as Twitter, IM, Facebook and other social media tools to organize.

There is a wave of change moving through the Middle East fueled by the taste of Democracy and the enablement of technology that gives people the social media tools to organize like no other time in history.