Reply #120: You don't believe that the automotive industry has been ecologically damaging? [View All]

[GliderGuider]

The oil used to fuel automobiles has been responsible for almost half of the excess CO2 that's driving the melting the world's glaciers and ice caps, changing rainfall patterns and thereby threatening food production in many areas of the world.

Automobiles and related transportation has enabled the spread of human civilization into and over the habitat of tens of thousands of species that are currently going extinct. The transportation industry has driven the globalization of trade that has destroyed the ecologies of prairies, rain forests and oceans alike.

I'm not about to weep for the demise of the automobile industry. It was a short-term aberration in human history, and even though it has been massively destructive, its chapter will soon be closed. No amount of union-supporting can change what that industry is or where it's headed. Nothing is permanent in this world, and no enterprise is too big to fail.

My background is strongly socialist. I'm the third generation in my family to support the Canadian New Democratic Party, Canada's only solidly pro-union political party. Over time, though I've learned to think for myself on some issues. The UAW (or their Canadian counterpart the CAW) can't confer sanctity on a devastatingly wrong-headed industry.