It must have been a rude awakening for the corporate titans from Detroit to find out that a majority of Americans, who wouldn’t be directly affected by their demise, signaled that their long love affair with the car was finally over. People have been had so many times by bad quality, broken promises of technology to come, lies about the impossibility of meeting government mandates for safety, emissions and mileage that they just said, “a pox on all your houses.”
These passions were unleashed as the executives of the Detroit 3 automakers faced intense grilling at the hands of combative Congressional inquisitors, focusing the world’s attention on the car industry in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of Henry Ford.
It was high drama as mayors and governors, social service agencies, and millions of people whose fates are tied to the industry waited to see whether Congress would throw them a lifeline. Ironically, Southern Republicans, who’d received generous campaign contributions from these same automakers, blocked a bailout in both the House and the Senate. A last minute deal brokered with the help of the White House and the Treasury gave GM and Chrysler a few billion dollars in order to tide them over long enough for the next Administration to tackle the prickly questions wrapped up in the fate of these industrial giants.
The Chinese believe that chaos also brings opportunity and this is where “brilliant dreams are born.” I believe we must embrace this view and find a way for Detroit to become the “Engine of Change” as it once was the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
On the eve of World War Two, Walter Reuther (the head of the UAW at the time) and others convinced Roosevelt that Detroit’s factories could build armaments and be transformed into the “Arsenal of Democracy.” It was this industrial might that defeated the Axis. Initially, the auto companies didn’t want to give up making cars but when they were forced to put people to work building airplanes, guns, tanks and jeeps they found they could make enormous profits. This is the money they used to expand and grow after the War, giving birth to an increasingly prosperous middle class.
We’re in a better position today to tap the industrial might of the automakers to help us fight different foes — global climate change and the perilous national security nightmares caused by our dependence on oil.
Although continued auto production is necessary in the short- and long-term, we can seize this moment to rethink our manufacturing priorities. Instead of supporting a simple bailout, we’ll be searching for ways to retool America's auto and auto-parts factories to produce goods that we need, and can sell to the world, in the 21st century. Choose your own products and industries—sustainable means of transport, including mass transit and high-speed trains; solar, hydrogen, or other green-power infrastructure and consumer goods; next-generation telecommunications hardware, etc.
But it’s not just the automakers who need a plan, Congress, the United Nations and countries around the world need a plan shaped by vigorous input from the public.
Our film will tackle these issues, discover the people who are leading the charge for change, uncover the reasons we haven’t moved sooner, and acknowledge the enormous difficulties inherent in the necessary transformation as we set out a clear path for creating a sustainable future.
This new vision must go beyond the immediate moment to imagine where we need to be 30 to 50 years hence. We can collaborate again, retool as if we were on a wartime footing and timetable, and lay the groundwork for the return of American prosperity.
If the U.S. auto industry can be steered in a new direction, it will provide jobs for people entering the workforce and for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost their jobs, thus revitalizing industrially ravaged communities and restoring hope to people now in despair. New technology and new opportunities can mean thousands of green jobs in a reinvigorated industrial sector built on an auto industry that can become the engine of change.
To develop our roadmap for the future we’ll turn the clock back to the 1939 World's Fair and GM’s legendary Futurama exhibition. Here, on display, was a vision of America's postwar future – millions of cars and trucks on sleek, high-speed highways carrying people and goods from coast to coast. Futurama's vision – with a good bit of auto-industry lobbying – became Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, the great "infrastructure" precedent we all love to talk about.
Rather than hanging on to this retro vision of America's future, we’ll fire up the American imagination again and create an equally visionary "Futurama" – a technological, industrial, and social conception of the United States for the next generation.
The clock is ticking and if China and India catch up to U.S. standards of consumption, which experts predict will occur by 2030, the concern over global climate change and the scarcity of every natural resource on the planet will make the tribulations about an auto bailout look quaint. Unlike the financial crisis, which hopefully will come to an end in a foreseeable future, concerns about the environment and our addiction to oil will not end soon.
This is hardly a piece of cake, whether in policy, economic, technological, or human terms. The details of transformation will require careful, multifaceted thinking and enormous resources; and, of course, we all know who lurks in the details. The auto industry shouldn't be allowed to die now; in fact, it is unlikely to disappear even in 50 years, but the transition can and should begin now. Worker and production dislocations could be minimized, as during World War II, by the strong support of government and a genuine partnership among government, industry, finance, and workers.
Our film will help Congress, the incoming Obama Administration and the public get serious about forging farsighted industrial, energy, and transportation policies that address the potential impact of unlimited growth of auto sales globally, our dependence on oil, environmental needs, and the need for a strong new industrial base. We’ll show that it is possible to provide good jobs and social benefits to the widest number of Americans possible. The U.S. government may have told the automakers to come back with a plan by March, but it’s actually time for us to create a roadmap to the future.
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