The Big Three's Earth Day

(MoneyWatch)  This is Earth Day at Bnet.com, and it's a chance to celebrate all that the auto industry has accomplished on behalf of our beleaguered planet. After more than two decades of SUV indulgence, the Big Three are not only turning green, but have decided it's good business. Remember, it was business as usual that got them to the brink of bankruptcy.

General Motors is poised to introduce the Chevrolet Volt. We can debate whether it will cost too much, or whether it's five years behind Honda and Toyota (whose new Prius is a hard act to beat) but it's a real car. Ford says it will improve fleet efficiency 14 percent in 2009, 26 percent by 2012 and 36 percent by 2015. It has the new Fiesta sub-compact, a new electric van for commercial fleets next year, and an electric battery sedan as early as 2011. Chrysler has a fleet of ENVI cars, and it says it will produce at least one of them. It has just signed on A123 as its battery supplier.

The Big Three say they welcome the EPA's recent declaration that greenhouse gases are pollutants and hurt human health, because it will lead to the single fuel economy standard they say they want. They may continue to fight against state emissions standards (calling it double jeopardy) but they seem resigned to an electric car future.

So it's an Earth Day to celebrate the news that a cleaner, greener transportation future lies ahead. I talked to climate blogger Joseph Romm, and he's optimistic we're on the right track. He's a proponent of the sweeping Waxman-Markey bill, which has numerous provisions to encourage clean cars, and also requires utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2025.

And Romm thinks Earth Day needs a tweaking. "The public is not going to be motivated by saving the planet or the polar bear, but by the fact that we have to save our own skins," he said. "Climate change will make life miserable for billions of people. So maybe we should be calling it Triage Day instead of Earth Day."