That lead time was an opportunity to make changes. Some would have been painful and some merely sensible, but it would prevent huge numbers of honest Americans get caught with their pants down. Instead we blew it out the tailpipe of cars that average 15 MPG. Now, instead of a planned transition, we get to see what happens when stubborn denial meets inescapable change. It’s simply unsustainable to live in suburban car country with a negative equity on the house, $6-7 gas (wait until you see what that does to property values in outlying suburbs) and expensive SUVs that nobody wants. The saddest thing for me was that most who will get fucked the worst had no idea this was coming.

I've always thought that there may be an issue looming on the horizon, but taking the steps to avoid it cost more than it costs to just stay the course, so the decision is made to stay the course for a postive short term, but a negative long term. A tradeoff is made, smooth sailing for now in exchange for trouble later. The issue is, the problem is going to arrive anyhow, and putting it off until the last possible minute is only going to make things worse. A planned transition would have beeb best, but we're just going to be stuck with a last minute effort to fix a problem that has been staring us in the face for years. And on top of it, it's going to be a poor solution not chosen based upon merit, but politics.