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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
and the american people are totally out of touch with reality!!!!
Their greed is destroying them.
Vale americans!
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.
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.
:-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's funny I never hear anyone talk about "unsustainable" executive bonus packages. They always seem to find the money for those.
Too bad they weren't paying attention before. All seemed to have missed the previous bankruptcy.
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.