With our ignorant and corrupt government, we have no chance of making investments that will lead us in this direction, but south of the border, there is (the tag-lined) Hope.
Aside from the fact that GM is looking at filing for bankruptcy, the Obama administration is making huge investments in high speed rail. This is great news for the environment (and the economy). This map is very exciting (from Climate Progress, but very similar to one in this week's The Economist):
From the standpoint of a Canadian, it's nice to see Montreal an Vancouver connected. There is also talk of connecting Detroit to Toronto, which would be nice. I also like how the partitions of this network are shown to be so easily connected. If GM were to fail, and their ex-workers were to work on a national high speed train system, things would start to look a lot better for the environment.
2 comments:
The failure of a single automobile manufacturer, or even several of them, might not have much of an impact on motoring habits of the general public. People will just buy their cars from someone else, and keep driving...
But you're right... money spent on bailing out failed businesses could be better spent on more progressive projects like rail, public transportation, and better planning in general.
I was interested to hear that cars are being sold below the replacement rate now. I can't find a link to prove it, but I heard this from someone who works in a car parts factory. More old cars are being scrapped than new cars are being bought. More good news.
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