As you read this, remember that the melting of the ice caps that anchor the planet's climate is accelerating. Desertification is advancing, part of a warming action that threatens the next generation with grave shortages of water and arable land. Those conditions, not just economic problems and transportation issues, go to make up the context in which the business of bailing out the auto industry has to be discussed.
Now consider that an issue still undecided among the myriad annoying questions attending that bailout has been whether the government, as a condition of giving the motormeisters billions in taxpayer money, should require them to abandon their suits against California, Vermont and Rhode Island for setting emissions standards that are stricter than federal standards (Massachusetts and 10 other states have also set emission standards similar to California's).
Should these companies be allowed to use taxpayer money to continue to fight states that want them to curb tailpipe emissions? To fight them for the right to go on polluting?
Is this question a question at all? For whom is it a question? When these captains of industry have proved over and over again by their failures to stay viable that their gas-slurping products don't sell, why should the taxpayers pay the expenses they've racked up not just for one day in court, but by going round after round? They've lost their suits in California, Vermont and Rhode Island, but they haven't seen the light; they're appealing.
Swirling around all the bailout questions—bailouts for banks and financial services, bailouts for the Big Three—are false as well as genuine complexities. What the economy needs going forward is sense and sustainability. The ice caps are melting. Should taxpayers who can barely hang onto their own homes pay for lawyer time for Detroit to fight states that want to curb greenhouse gas emissions? The ice caps are melting. Any entity that gets federal money has to meet federally imposed conditions. What sense is there in bailing out Detroit if Detroit doesn't retool for clean transportation? The ice caps are melting.
