Your tweedier auto writers used to like to sit around bemoaning the idiocy of Wall Street and its single-minded focus on short-term results, to hell with the publicly-held car companies' long-term prospects -- as expressed, for instance, in quaint matters like a firm's commitment to engineering and manufacturing excellence or,...

Students of industry will know that carmakers have been famously reluctant to concede the existence of any form of pollution that they might have something to do with, no matter the evidence. But it is the topic of greenhouse gas emissions -- and the whole global warming brouhaha these last...