Mangled Thoughts

A reader has furnished some illuminating comments,in response to a post by Tim Blair , in which Emmerich reveals his leftoid beliefs:

Here is the German original, the translation of the excerpt is mine. Do you think he would say this to American audiences?

Q: Will the anti-Bush mood outside of America be conducive to the success of the film?

A: I had no idea that Bush would get up to all the things he did eventually. During the last election campaign I was already writing the script. I hope America comes to its senses. They have been so lied to by the government. For us Europeans this is crystal clear, but also for a few Americans. However there are still 50% of Americans who want to vote for Bush ? this is absolutely inconceivable for me.

Q: The American people do not have the best reputation with regard to ecology. How environmentally conscious are the Americans really?

A: Totally, just not their government. Of course I can only speak for my friends. This may perhaps sound a bit elitist, but most of them drive an electric car. The Americans would approve if those on top would do more for the environment. But they never had a green party in the government which could have had some influence ? in contrast to Germany. There is a great gap: Americans want to recycle. 78% of all people there are worried about the environment. But the government doesn?t see it that way. In the last election, the environmental candidate Al Gore had the consent of the regular voters, and only the electoral college finally changed it. I still think it was a family affair in Florda. There was something fishy about it.

And in a recent interview with the German Spiegel newsmagazine:

“We must not destroy our planet. The United States are the most powerful country, and there sits George W. Bush, a president who cares about nothing but oil. How different would the world be if the Democratic environmentalist politician Al Gore would have come to power? All this is hard to bear for me as a German. I never want to be an American.”

Then he claims his next car will be a hybrid fuel/electric one, but asks: “Why does the industry build the ugliest bodies for hybrid cars? There is method behind it. They want to keep selling their expensive fuel models…”

Another newspaper writes that currently he still drives his “old” BMW.

Posted by: werner at May 28, 2004 at 07:32 AM

As a footnote, it is worth noting, `hybrid cars’ are not only ugly clunking heaps on the outside but also the inside, as Greenie Watch explains:

HYBRID OR MONSTER?

Rude awakening for hybrid dreamers: “Hybrid-electric cars are the flavor of the moment for environmental campaigners. Activists like Arianna Huffington, Larry David and Leonardo DiCaprio urge us all to “break the chain” and drive them. Al Gore, meanwhile, used the previews last week of the scientifically implausible disaster film The Day After Tomorrow to commend them, saying, “I think the new fuel-efficient vehicles represent ethical choices.” Yet there are a few problems with this dream of a hybrid tomorrow. Surveys show that people are highly resistant to them; their owners are starting to realize that they aren’t quite as fuel-efficient as advertised….

Yet even those who already own hybrid electric vehicles are beginning to turn restive. It seems, for instance, that the owners are simply not getting the fuel efficiency they thought they were buying. John DiPietro, a road test editor of the automotive website Edmunds.com, explained in a recent article on wired.com (”Hybrid Mileage Comes Up Short”, May 11, 2004) that hybrid drivers hardly ever experience the actual miles per gallon advertised by the EPA (Brock Yates alerted TCS readers to this issue back in 2002). Most automobiles would have actual miles per gallon performance of approximately 75 to 87 percent of the EPA’s rating. However, data from Consumer Reports’ extensive road tests suggest that the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius averaged well under 60 percent of the EPA’s reported miles per gallon when operating on city streets. The Civic Hybrid was getting only 26 mpg in the city.

Pete Blackshaw was particularly passionate about hybrid technology and greater fuel efficiency when he bought his Honda Civic Hybrid, so much so that he started a blog on the subject. Yet his experiences did not turn out the way he expected, as he encountered the problem of lower-than-expected fuel efficiency coupled with inadequate customer support from Honda. After his blog was publicized on Wired and Slashdot, he was deluged with a wave of advice on how to drive his car:

“Don’t drive fast. Check the tires. Careful on hills. Don’t drive fast. No quick starts. No short trips. Turn off air conditioner. Use cruise control. Don’t drive fast. Don’t use the stereo. Ignore the meter, focus on the actual tank! Read the manual! Wait for 5,000 miles. No speeding. Wait for 10,000 miles. No, 15,000 miles. .

Oz federal govt should take note: `alternative fuel’ is not only uneconomic, it can issue into unemployment, as the article John Ray has lionked explains, with a host of other reasons why it is bad, including: any scheme boosted by Hollywood leftoid hams, Al Gore, and Emmerich, is guaranteed to be rubbish, a fraud, and a great failure, as the hybrid car project has already proven to be.

One further observation to add:

The cost must be greater than that shown by the figure of 75% to 87% of EPA rating, in view of the conversion costs entailed in
turning raw materials into electricity plus the electricity expended
required to charge and recharge batteries? Addtional expenditures, more batteries, other parts, than needed for standard petrol fuel cars. This is someting global warmers and greenies and govts. ignore, like the belief banning plastic bags for shopping is `enviro-friendly’ which dissembles the upshot, increased cost in producing substitutes.

Further, the dessembling points up: greenies, look at the front end only and totallyignore what might be involved in arriving at that. It is deliberate, the greenies are about trying to overthrow free market economies and commerial production and the impostion of their pol potian vision.

The Herald Sun has lauded the Spring St. commie Spivs ten cent palstic shopping bag tax. It is theft , it does nothing but economic damage, just another nasty lying excuse used by liars to steal money.