While I think that thousands of autoworkers losing their jobs is awful, I can't pretend I'm shocked about any of this.

We all have the ability to make choices in our lives: how and where to live and what to do for a living, and how we get around.

I have lived car-free for nearly 20 years. I have watched the high cost of driving continue to be subsidized (and therefore largely camouflaged) by government. Instead I would prefer that the government began subsidizing mass transit, mixed-income housing and job re-training, smart-growth and urban density, and smaller, more localized economies of scale for everyone. We don't need McMansions OR McCars. What we DO need is more community, and perhaps the beginning of the end of car culture is key to developing that for everyone.

We saw (or should have seen) this collapse coming for decades. Those of us who already live closer to the ground simply won't have as far to fall. Those who fall farther will need more help to adapt. Instead of putting off the inevitable, let's help those who are falling learn the new skills and mindset they'll need to help them transition to a simpler, more localized life that the end of car culture really means. Teach community gardening; barter; scavenging, recycling/repurposing and creating as alternatives to constant consumerism. Teach the laid-off auto workers new skills and put them to work rebuilding our crumbling inner cities and improving transit-bike-pedestrian travel in them. Elevate teachers to their rightful place of respect and rebuild the schools as smaller, leaner, more independently-functioning institutions that answer to their local communities. Utilize parent-teacher-COMMUNITY partnerships to give our kids the skills they'll REALLY need to adapt to a changing world: creative, independent thinking, conflict resolution and teamwork, and the ability -- and WILLINGNESS -- to live on less.

Meanwhile, the powers-that-be at the Big Three get NO sympathy from me. The bloated, consumerist way of life their industry represents is part of the past, not the future.