Big 3 Bailout…Not without Offsets

Last blog entry in August!? So much has transpired; Our economy has taken its final slide into the toilet, Congress sent some form of a life raft, the Big 3 are chartering jets to plead for a piece of that raft, we elected a democratic president (Thank you Jesus!) and oil is down to less than $45 a barrel. These are only some of the pieces that are shifting and dislodging our current global market puzzle. I suppose with Ford, Chrysler & General Motors (hmmm...could this be to decreased sales of the notorious GM Hummer during hard times as it's the LEAST economical SUV out there? I wonder...) asking for $14 billion to avoid bankruptcy the time has come to ask, 'Are you worth saving?' Economists are still fighting over whether it would be best to let bankruptcy come to these automakers or save them. Have we all forgotten that you can still run a business after declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy? What’s extra nice about Chapter 11 is that taxpayers don’t pay a dime! Gee, what a thought! The only way they could potentially be worth saving and to make this bailout slightly fair (for I know it will eventually be given as Bush is still in office…) is to calculate the total carbon footprint that the gas guzzling Hummer has created in-so-far on our unstable eco-system and tabulate just how much GM owes the planet and then...drum roll please...deduct it from the bailout! For example; if the Hummer H3 unleashes 12.2 tons of greenhouse gases per year (http://green.msn.com/Green-Living/Is-A-Hamburger-As-Bad-As-A-Hummer/2), and if Hummer’s civilian sales for 2006 & 2007 total 127,510 vehicles (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-02-20-hummers_N.htm) then that means 3,111,244 total tons of Co2 have been released in the last two years alone from this beast of burden. Now if we take these tons and convert to lbs., that gives us 6,969,186,560 lbs. and according to http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/land/car_climate_tags, GM’s offset for 2006 & 2007 alone would be $31,605,231.30. Obviously this calculation is not taking into consideration all the Hummers sold since GM acquired the brand in 1992 and started marketing it as a civilian SUV. I’m no mathematician, but I’m sure we can all see that if we were to tabulate GM’s Hummer sales since 1992, there wouldn’t be any taxpayer’s bailout money left after GM paid the planet. Check please.