AS GASOLINE prices surge to record highs, General Motors teeters on the verge of collapse with a credit rating one step above junk. This is hardly coincidence. GM has willfully ignored fundamental trends in technology and oil. To make matters worse, so has our government. U.S. security is threatened by rising dependence on oil and instability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Our automakers and government have a brief window to adopt an aggressive strategy to push fuel-efficient vehicles, especially hybrids, or we risk yielding our destiny to outside forces.

Oil prices have risen sharply, yet GM stubbornly keeps making the wrong vehicles, losing market share to fuel-efficient, foreign-made vehicles that have caught the public imagination - the identical predicament GM found itself in three decades ago. GM had been warned in the early 1970s that oil prices would rise, but it refused to match the gas-sipping, high-quality competition from Toyota, Honda and other imports. GM fought the future and lost.