The Problem with the GM Gamble
The problem with the GM Gamble is not that the government is involved. There is every indication that government involvement is not that bad. Medicare and the notion of public guarantees of medical care are not noxious. And the President has, in the case of GM, said he will leave the nuts and bolts up to those who know about business.
I know that is a weak assurance but it shows that in the Obama world, government involvement is not going to be the problem.
The problem is the car.
There are times when I think Obama is playing a game which is utterly necessary, given the obtuseness of our media and the knee-jerk capacity of the populace to take umbrage if an idol comes close to toppling.
The game is not the change Obama will bring. It is the change that is coming willy nilly that no one wants to see.
Take the current "recession" which is really a readjustment and a signal to the market. What few want to see is that the readjustment is in the direction of the public over the private, the reclamation of public space over private space, the creation of public options over private ones.
We are being thrown together whether we like it or not.
What Obama cannot say, though he has in fact talked all around it, is that we will no longer be a privatized commuter society where driving a private car and living in a detached house is the norm.
What Obama cannot say, though it is implicit, is that the design of our schools, of our hospitals, of our human settlements is a problem, because it is all predicated on the car and cars are going to be less and less the norm.
What will become the norm is seamless transit within communities and new modes of transit between them.
Michael Moore has a good piece from which I will draw the salient statements with which I profoundly agree:
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
Read the whole Michael Moore GM piece
The car was and remains the central chip in the game. Cheney and Company cannot see beyond a world where Oil and The Car are objects of worship and cause for war. The American people are not ready yet to be told that the private car is the idol that needs to be shattered. Obama is left with the need to temporize. And I suppose the real question is whether he sees the new road beyond the spaghetti bowl world of today.
I believe the answer has to be yes, because it remains true that we are at the beginning of a new stage where the world is creating a new option for living. The nation that understands that will prosper. The nation that believes the answer lies in selling enough private cars to turn a profit is whistling in the wind.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Huffpost, June 10, 2009,
Stephen C. Rose
The Problem with the GM gamble...
"... we are at the beginning of a new stage where the world is creating a new option for living."
Who's the world?
Not the world, but nature creates new options -- like 200 million years ago when reptiles evolved into birds with their resine-clad bodies providing the material for the feathers.
That was new then. The only novelty today would be to get the millions of people travelling through the airsapace in winged tubes (which I call the cattle carriers) individually airborne.
Yet this time the new option will have to be created by man, and history tells us that it is probably going to be a break-through invention made by an outsider.
In fact, I made this invention in 1982 -- and may I draw the experts' attention to the fact that there is no known aircraft concept eligible as a personal aircraft to date.
"The nation that understands that will prosper."
... i.e. the nation that understands that individual mobility (vs public transport) -- and for that matter the personal aircraft -- are the only sustainable options, and that also understands why the key specifications for such an aircraft are not met by any known concept... and hence that the time has come to mass-produce my invention.
I don't understand why crossing the country stuck in a tube for seventeen hours (high speed rail) is better than crossing the country stuck in a tube for only six hours (ordinary passenger jet service). Are these train junkies afraid of flying, or just quaint?
Rail travel is not necessarily a panacea.
Amtrak reported in 2005 that their fuel efficiency averaged 39 mpg per passenger!
My old VW bus does better than that with me and one passenger.
High speed rail rail in Japan is more efficient. The East Japan Railway reported in 2004 that their electric trains required about 0.35 MJ/km per passenger. Which for a engine driven train would be about 82 mpg per passenger.
This isn't that great.
We would be better of with plug in hybrids getting +100 mpg. No need to change our infrastructure.
Future cars will need no fuel and can become power plants when parked.
Breakthroughs include the MagGen. These magnetic generators will initially make it possible to cut the cord on a plug-in hybrid so it no longer needs to plug-in. Later, they can replace the batteries in an electric car. Then, the MagGen can run when the car is parked and sell power to the utility. Prototypes are under development.
Next is a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine - SPICE, which can power a hybrid. It will need no fuel and is another path to ending the need to plug-in. The engine can run when parked. Both systems can wirelessly transmit and sell power to the local utility.
The SPICE will be powered by hydrinos - which let a barrel of water equal hundreds of barrels of oil.
Scientists and engineers will doubt these technologies are possible until they have been validated by Independent Laboratories. That is an important step on the agenda.
Until now, car ownership has been an expense. Payments to car owners driving a hybrid with a SPICE, or powered by MagGen, are likely to be substantial.
The cost of many vehicles might be paid for by utilities, as they purchase power. Parked cars each become decentralized power plants - a rapid, cost-effective path to a rebirth of the automobile industry and the world economy.
"Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. " Japan may have dozens of shinkansen (bullet) trains, but it doesn't have dozens of train lines for them. Aside from what is essentially one line that goes along the coastal area on the eastern side of Japan, the only other line that actually travels at "bullet train" speeds is the line from Tokyo to Niigata. Anyone who doesn't live along either of those two lines has to use the older, slower, regular train lines. Also, aside from those who live in the highly populated large cities, many Japanese also commute, run errands, etc., by automobile, just as in the US.
As for using the GM workforce to build solar panels, good luck. I assume the GM workers are highly skilled at what they do, but building cars and building solar panels are entirely different kinds of work.
"totally out of touch with the desires of the American people"
and the american people are totally out of touch with reality!!!!
Their greed is destroying them.
Vale americans!
I think this post is totally out of touch with the desires of the American people. The American people are simply not going to give up the convenience of having their own car and being able to go where they want to go when they want to go. And they like not having to stand in the wind and the cold waiting for busses or streetcars to come along. In the future they will be driving electric powered cars and computers are increasingly going to assist drivers and preventing them from making mistakes that cause collisions, and eventually the computers are going to drive the cars. But the primary source of most transportations is still going to be cars.
Yes, we do need to improve our public transportation system. There will be times when using it is more convenient and efficient and greater use is going to be made of it. But even a greatly improved public transportation system will only be a secondary back up to the primary method of transportation, private cars.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt!
If we can run cars on electricity and get the electricity from renewables why in the world would we want/need a train system? Ever tried getting around LA with mass transit? It's not pretty to say the least.
This isn't Japan, we're not a tiny country made up of islands where half the population is centered in one city.
The key is not at all switching to a mass transit only system, the key is making cars more efficient going forward and providing clean energy to run those cars.
LA is a particularly poor example of a city for any purposes. It's not a good public transportation city. It's not a good car city. It's not a good place to live unless you have tons of money. It's like New York... just without the public transportation.
:-)
Both M. Moore and you are terribly wrong. Citing Japan and their use of bullet trains as something our country should aspire to is down right silly. Of course mass transit needs to be invested in, of course trains are a vital portion. The biggest problem that these types of posts miss is SIZE! Our country is massive compared to tiny Japan. Japan is much like California, or Florida in shpae. It is a long narrow country. Cars will always be needed for personal transportation. They are easy to operate, the run on YOUR schedule, they go where YOU want to go. Trains do not. They might get you fairly close, but thats it. They might get you there around the time needed, but thats it. If the train doesn't run...you don't go.
The truth is that half of our population lives in cities along the coasts. And the other half does not have to move that much if it does not want to.
You can make settlements of any size car free. The smaller ones are the easiest. Increase the density enough to get away with walking, bikes and a single circular bus line running a 6-15 minute schedule. The latter is key. If people have to wait longer for the bus than 15 minutes, they get antsy.
If your settlement has twice the size, add a second bus line. Ten times the size, you are in for a streetcar. Hundred times the size, now you can afford a subway. Thousand times the size and you get to build a high speed rail line or two. As long as you have the density, any and all of this works.
But if you don't have the density, cars become a necessity. Ten times the size, cars are a convenience. Hundred times the size and cars become a nuisance. Where mass transit scales distances, cars do not because they can not scale in speed beyond 60mph but trains can go 240mph and faster.
If I have to wait more than three minutes, I get "antsy." At fifteen minutes, I'd be enraged - except that, after seven, I've already left and gone back home to get my car anyway.
There is no way to make public transportation cool or desirable. It's second or third class travel, and everybody knows it. Almost everyone who can afford to buy his way out, does.
I lived in a city where the goal was to have public transport no farther away than 50 yards from your doorstep, and never take more than 30 minutes to get to your destination. It was one of the easiest places I have ever lived. I borrowed a car when I had to move--otherwise I rode the bus, train, or tram everywhere and it was cheap. The streets were quiet at night because the only noise was from a bus every fifteen minutes--no cars rushing past all night. Neighbourhoods were filled with local businesses and everything could be found within a few blocks, or you could ride the tram to the major stores. (And other transport riders helped each other load and unload packages and strollers.) And the streets were safe because the only people in your neighbourhood were your neighbours or their guests.
You made me curious, which city is that?
The biggest obstacle is the sprawling, suburban "lifestyle" of most "Murkans." Rural travelers, commuters (unlike some in Europe) will NEVER accept the ISOLATION(??) of not owning a car: It's a silly manifestation of psychological independence......
You say its silly but try affording a condo in downtown San Diego much less a house. If you are forced out to the perimeter by unaffordable real estate prices try getting to work in downtown San Diego without a car, its not easy and VERY time consuming.
Cut it out with that stupid big city elitism, as if everyone can afford a nice apartment downtown for their family. There are many practical reasons to live in a suburb, and we can provide clean energy cars to make those lives sustainable.
You are only forced out of affordable real estate because of zoning rules. Cities and counties tried to maximize their property tax by pushing for ever more expensive developments. That's an artifact of the nonsensical US tax system where we ship most of the money to Washington to be spent on precision bombs while we leave nothing but breadcrumbs for the local authorities that keep the country running.
Actually... I went to suburbs and I can's see any reason why I wanted to live there. Not one. A friend of ours moved there. She has a huge McMansion, three times the size of our current house. It's empty because she can't afford furniture. It's five miles away from the next mall in a small town. The best restaurant there is a so-so Chinese place. If they want really good food or want to go see a movie, they have to drive ten miles further. They have a kid. The kid has nowhere to go because it's at least a one mile walk long along the highway just to get to the next homes besides their complex. So what's their upside over an equally expensive small apartment where we live? An empty living room the size of a tennis court.
I pass.
Have any survey done on why major Japanese car makers although also suffering with the down turn are doing much better than those in the US?
They make better cars. And they don't have unsustainable employee benefits.
They have national health care so they don't need "unsustainable" employee benefits.
It's funny I never hear anyone talk about "unsustainable" executive bonus packages. They always seem to find the money for those.
And they have very very strict laws about maintaining your car, that's why it would be very very hard to find a junker in Japan. I've heard cars have to be inspected yearly and that the inspection involves something so small as torn seats and broken window cranks, so no wonder car makers there have to build cars that are reliable, not to mention in many parts of Japan (Tokyo in particular) I've heard you must have an off street parking space before you even buy a car, Americans would whine no end if they had to put up with that kinda stuff (yep 'mericans' are wimps)
GM was engaged in a conspiracy to destroy public transportation systems so that it could get people hooked on cars. Robert Moses destroyed entire NYC neighborhoods because he, despite not being able to drive himself, though that the car was the future. Well, the future is now and GM is bankrupt and now everyone knows it.
Too bad they weren't paying attention before. All seemed to have missed the previous bankruptcy.
I totally agree. Mass transit is the future, and it just makes sense. Imagine if all the people who were angry about drunk driving actually put their energy into creating an efficient mass transit system. We would solve that and many other problems very quickly.
Maybe your future is mass transit, I'd still rather be able to go where I want when I want at any hour, and for that I need my car.
I will argue with Moor's point #6 parantherical.
We can't just move some machines around and pulls some switches to retool.
Modern cars are complex. Essential parts for electric cars are not being made by suppliers in the amounts we would need. There is a difference between we can make a car work and drive, and we can make something to sell out the door: performance, safety, climate, life cycle issues.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
