What to do About Detroit
Bradley | Misc., Green | Friday, November 21st, 2008 @ in the early morningThere has been a lot of talk about this and while we try to keep politics out of our blog, occasionally we do drift into political issues. I’m not in favor of the government bailing out the auto industry primarily because I don’t think it is their business to do so. What the government could do in this case is order an entire new fleet of government vehicles that are either hybrid or 100% electric. This order would need to be filled within the next four years and instead of just giving them billion, the government would in essence pay to have Detroit re-tooled to produce the cars of the future
Think about what this would do. A) It would create jobs and lots of them. B) It would make the necessary conversion that would position the hybrid or electric car as the default type of vehicle and therefore automatically lessen the US’ dependence on foreign oil. C) It would massively curb carbon emissions which is very important and D) it would put in place the necessary reasons to build infrastructure to support the change to electric vehicles.
It’s a win/win proposition - jobs are created, we protect the environment and we decrease our oil consumption. What do you think?
PS. Seth Godin commented on this issue today with another idea.