Today in Detroit and Washington, DC, national student leaders representing the Road to Detroit tour and Jumpstart Ford campaign will deliver "Keys to the Future" to US automakers and lawmakers. The oversized engraved keys represent tens of thousands of green car purchase-pledges collected by student organizers on a 10,000-mile bio-diesel bus tour across America and online signatures gathered by the Jumpstart Ford campaign’s Declaration of Independence from Oil at FreedomFromOil.com.
Beneath banners reading "Green cars not gas guzzlers" and "Oil is over, drive the future," a Ford Rouge River plant representative from the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 600 will accept one of the keys during a rush-hour rally at the factory that first mass-produced the original Model-T, a car that got better gas mileage 80-years ago than any Big Three fleet gets on average today. A second key will be delivered to the US vice president Dick Cheney’s office, a driving force behind the new US energy policy that gives automakers a free ride on fuel efficiency.
The delivery is to demonstrate to Detroit the growing consumer demand for super fuel efficient, low emissions cars, trucks and SUVs that can help break America’s oil addiction, a leading cause of auto industry job losses, the asthma epidemic, the war in Iraq, global warming pollution, and economic strain due to high gas prices. The rush hour rally is the final stop of the Road to Detroit tour and follows a 4-day awareness-raising event series during the Woodward Dream Cruise, the Motor City’s annual mecca to celebrate America’s car culture.
On May 1, 2001, USA Today quoted from a speech by current US vice president and former Halliburton chief executive Dick Cheney in which he said, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."
On September 2, 2004, Niel Golightly, director of environmental strategies for Ford Motor Company, told USA Today, "Clearly, the entire industry could build nothing but zero emissions cars today if it wanted to."
According to 2004 findings by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Investing in technology to improve the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks to 40 mpg by 2015 would create 161,000 new green jobs in the United States."
For more information visit RoadToDetroit.org and
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