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Writing in Counterpunch, Harvey Wasserman discussed what he called a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. "Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense," says Wasserman, editor of NukeFree.org. "Franklin Roosevelt took GM over in 1943-5 to make the hardware to beat the Nazis. Barack Obama should now do the same to beat climate chaos. Make streetcars, not passenger cars."
Wasserman's point, perhaps once considered well beyond the pale, is now a feasible concept. The auto industry so many seem to desperately want to bailout and revive is and has been one the primary causes for our planet’s environmental and social degradation.
"We need to dig up roads, not build more," Wasserman adds. "We need rails and coaches, bio-diesel buses and self-propelled trolleys, Solartopian super-trains, and in-town people movers, not to mention windmills, solar panels, wave generators, and geothermal piping. In America's corporate-conceived 'love affair with the automobile,' our first spouse—mass transit—was murdered. Now the unsustainable obsolescence of the private passenger car is collapsing a global financial system built on the illusion of its constant growth."
Here's the equation: A viable auto industry = a non-viable global eco-system. Cast your vote equation for auto-extinction.
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