The Cost of Not Adapting

This is what happens when you ignore the EPA, efficiency standards and Paul Krugman (from Mark Gimein, of MSNBC):

Everyone now sees that what's in question now isn't the survival of Pontiac but the survival of GM — which at best will exist only in a substantially diminished form. There is no room anymore for three American automakers each building a full line of cars and trucks. And while the hopeful talk is about GM re-engineering for a new bright future of fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles, the numbers tell a different story, with GM's total hybrid sales in one month running at a pathetic 1,087 cars and trucks, about one-seventh of Toyota's Prius sales. Sales for the new hybrid Sierra and Silverado hybrid models? Seven.

While the SUV was experiencing a boom/bust revival earlier this decade, Toyota had the foresight to build a new plant locally, while promoting the Prius nationally. Now, they are one of many Japanese automakers that will be supplying the U.S. with vehicles that meet both their economic and environmental needs. That is, unless you're one of the autoworkers lost in the all of this "restructuring":

What does the Obama plan hold for them? Only the most amorphous of promises. In his speech today, Obama announced the appointment of a new "director of recovery for auto community and workers" — a title as long as the demands of its holder are vague. His job will be to direct a "comprehensive effort that will help lift up the hardest hit areas by using the unprecedented levels of funding available ... to create new manufacturing jobs and new businesses where they are needed most." Comprehensive, unprecedented, jobs: the words are there, but the plan is not.

My hope is that the President is going to come through and help these people, but how much can we blame him if he can't? The Titanic comparisons fit in multiple ways: one being that the automakers have tasked the President with saving the sinking ship, not with steering clear of the iceberg.