First some flavor:
Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from “stonecutter” Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for Google today.
As you can imagine, Tom’s seen a lot happen in the energy and auto industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact, without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he’s getting these emails. He never dreamed that he’d need to be calling his congressmen to save the company to which he’s always been loyal, and upon which he and his family’s livelihood has depended. I can speak with such certainty about Tom’s past because I’ve known him for 27 of the 34 years he’s been with General Motors, and we’re very close.
Tom is my dad.
Go read it all — GM Goes Grassroots. A Son is Torn.
Seriously. Go read it.
That is a wonderful article. Superbly written, and I believe it represents the feelings of many Americans. At least it’s pretty much the way I feel about it.
That’s an excellent post.
However, I don’t think the choice is between old-fashioned “suck-bang-blow” cars, to use a term from the post, and modern hybrid or long-range electric vehicles.
Instead, the choice is between continuing the delusion that we’re basically okay and we just need to build greener cars or instead admitting that there are indeed limits to growth and we’re way, way past them and greener cars are the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
We’ve hit peak oil, global warming is real, rising CO2 and ocean acidification is scary as hell, population growth continues, the reduction of arable acreage worldwide continues, destruction of the rain forests and reefs and coastal sanctuaries continues, species extinction is accelerating, etc.
Sorry to keep channeling Kunstler (and Malthus and the Club of Rome), but we’ve hit the iceberg and we’re worrying about the environmental impact of our lifejackets.