The issue of bailing out the Detroit automakers is front and center. And a good case can be made that environmental issues play a significant role in the matter.

 

The Wall Street Journal made that argument last week. Essentially, the paper argues, Congress doesn't want to give Ford, General Motors and Chrysler bailout money that they can use any way they want to get back on their feet. Congress wants the bailout money tied to taking real steps to become more environmentally friendly. The WSJ concludes that such an approach is pie-in-the-sky and that a better tack would be to let the automakers file for bankruptcy and evolve into stronger, and probably smaller, companies.

 

It's really the same debate that many of us are having in a broad sense about the Detroit automakers. We're all deeply worried about the economy and how it's going to affect all of us -- about how bad it's going to get and for how long. Many of us grew up with the maxim that when General Motors sneezes, the American economy catches a cold. We know how important the auto industry is to our general economic health.

 

And yet we see automakers who have behaved badly for a long, long time. I remember the 1970s and that decade's energy crisis, when a new little car called the Honda Civic took the market by storm. Thirty years later, many of us conclude, not only did the Detroit automakers not get it, they actually got worse, left farther behind technologically and environmentally.

 

It's critical, at least for the short term, that the Detroit automakers survive. Not because they deserve to, maybe, but because our economy needs them too much right now. But those billions of bailout dollars should come with some strings, to make sure those companies come out not only more responsible financially, but environmentally as well. They've made strides, but their track record shows they won't do it fully on their own. And shouldn't billions of our tax dollars come with some caveats?

 

We need to strike a balance between short-term needs -- which should take precedence -- and long-term benefits. We can't ignore those or we'll likely be back here again.

 

Allan Gerlat is editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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