David Chock

Before my retirement last year, I spent 20 years as a scientist at Ford, doing research and working to understand issues like the impact of emissions on air quality. In the late 1990s, our team began looking into the science of climate change and its implications for auto emissions. We were also looking at sustainability issues, developing Ford CO₂ emission reduction targets from the perspective of energy resource availability and potential economic and environmental impacts.

When I joined Ford, the Company's sustainability strategy tended to be short term, as was typical of many large companies at that time. Five to 10 years down the road was generally considered a far-reaching outlook. But when we started addressing the issue of climate change, the Company's mindset began to change, and Ford took a much longer-term view of sustainability, with a much more global perspective.

I think Ford had some key enablers that allowed us to push ahead in our climate change work. The first enabler was Bill Ford, a very forward-looking environmentalist. He deserves a lot of credit for nurturing the sustainability mindset at the Company and for opening up direct channels of communication with corporate decision-makers. The second enabler was a company culture that encouraged discussions among employees – of any rank. Ford has a very open and collaborative atmosphere, which made it an exciting place to work.

By keeping abreast of the scientific literature and evaluating the scientific merit of different arguments, we came to the conclusion that the science of climate change is credible. This allows Ford to use science as a guide for future planning. One scary thing about climate change is that short-term climate noise may lull us into complacency even as the longer-term trend has become increasingly evident. There are also many practical issues on global CO₂ emission reduction that have not been adequately addressed and coordinated. But eventually, we, and especially our children and future generations, will have to face the consequences of our action or inaction.

In the process of developing the Company's CO₂ model and strategy, we found it very helpful to work with other interested partners, leveraging each other's expertise as necessary. For example, BP's knowledge and realistic projections of biofuel availability in different regions of the world provided critical input in our construction of meaningful fossil-CO₂ emission reduction requirements from vehicles.

Our approach assumed a climate stabilization target and took into consideration the economic growth of developing countries, proceeding logically from global CO₂ emission-reduction requirements down to regional responsibilities. We constructed many scenarios. Obviously, while we don't know which scenarios might be closer to reality in the future, at least we know what to anticipate in order to fulfill our corporate citizenship responsibility.

I believe it's very important for major corporations to consider science when making decisions about their products and their operations. Natural science guides us about how our actions will impact the environment. Equally important are the social sciences, especially economics and behavioral science, which can help direct us to define workable solutions that are beneficial to society at large, to the environment and to corporations themselves.

Companies must sell their products; if they can't get customers to purchase them, they'll go out of business. We need to build environmentally friendly products that people will buy. I'm proud that my work at Ford could help impact the Company's product development and sustainability strategy.