As we count down to our 40th anniversary in October, we've been revisiting our archives to highlight Metro Times stories that resonate in 2020.
20 years ago in Metro Times: Sometimes it feels like it’s one step forward, two steps back. In a 2000 cover story, Curt Guyette looked at how the auto industry was grappling with global warming after Ford Motor Co. and the former DaimlerChrysler withdrew from the “Global Climate Coalition,” a deceptively named lobbyist group that trafficked doubts about climate change. (“They have allowed political leaders to hide behind the false notion that there is significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community,” environmentalist Kevin Sweeney of Ozone Action told Guyette.) Today, President Donald Trump has zig-zagged on the issue of climate, claiming on Twitter in 2012 that it was a “hoax” cooked up by China to hurt U.S. manufacturing, and later, as president, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement to mitigate greenhouse gases. But Trump continues to zig and zag: Last week, he admitted that “Nothing’s a hoax” about climate change; meanwhile, the White House announced rollbacks to the National Environmental Policy Act. The MT story also notes that of the top-five-selling vehicles in 1999, four were trucks. In recent years, the Big Three have scaled down their car production in favor of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, citing customer demand. Some things never change.
What was happening: Jim Carroll at the Blind Pig and the Magic Bag; The Third Annual North American International Anti-Auto Show at detroit contemporary gallery.
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