Pitch it now, kill it later.

It's become so repulsively trendy lately for companies to appear as though they're "going green." Ford Escape Hybrid commercials feature digitized cornfields applauding a massive suburban that gets a measley 34 miles per gallon (and, notably, still requires our depleting/damaging natural resources and producing pollutants in the process of manufacturing both the auto body and its various types of fuel). Meanwhile, BP commercials obsessively push a "biofuels" campaign that is a half-truth at best, lauding corn ethanol as a sustainable, earth friendly fuel resource despite the fact that corn requires heavy water resources and fertilizers (which are full of heavy metals and other gnarly toxins).
These companies aren't really green and, by the very nature of the products they sell, they never will be. After all, automobiles and oil aren't synonymous with environmental health; industrialization is more like it. If this was a true exercise in corporate environmental altruism, these companies would face (and publicize!) the facts instead of pushing products that will only appease people who haven't done their research.

Furthermore, by so strongly attempting to popularize and commericalize this (so-called) "earth friendliness," companies like Ford and Shell are consciously making environmental awareness nothing more than a short-lived marketing trend. Just watch. All marketing approaches eventually die when corporations realize that consumers have been burned out... in another two years, when being green is no longer a popular marketing pitch (its truth or falsity aside), will people still care about making progress to keep the planet healthy?
Doubt it.
Bet they'll go straight back to driving F350s and guzzling gas.

In my opinion cars aren't the central concern anyway (even though I would like to see those electric GMC cars back on the road; like that'll ever happen). Statistically, producing electricity is a much bigger blow to environmental health than automotive emissions. We really should start implementing wind power up and down our coasts and throughout the Midwest (which is flat and windy, the best place for it imaginable). The output of windpower is comparable to that of coal power plants, but there's been very little action taken with it thus far. Don't know what the hell is wrong with people.

Gripe, grunt, grimace.