GOOD idea?

My favorite magazine is GOOD, here is the start of an article I read there you can catch the rest on their site...

What would it take to get you out of that old jalopy and behind the wheel of a shiny new hybrid? Vancouver will give you a couple thousand bucks. Texas might give you up to $3,500.
It’s a concept called “Cash for Clunkers,” though the individual programs each carry their own names (“Drive a Clean Machine” in Texas, “Scrap-It” in Vancouver), and the idea has recently hit the national stage. It doesn’t seem, however, like all Americans are going to be able to cash in on their gas guzzlers. At least not yet.
Here’s how it works: The government offers a credit to anyone who trades in an older vehicle that doesn’t achieve certain fuel efficiency standards, and that cash can only be spent on a new, higher miles-per-gallon car or truck. Some programs, like Vancouver’s, will also trade you a bicycle or let you use your credit on public transportation fares.
On paper, “Cash for Clunkers” hits something of an immediate domestic policy trifecta: it reduces our dependence on foreign oil; it saves Americans dollars at the pump, allowing for increased consumer spending (and the economic stimulus that generates); and it should help bolster the sputtering market for Detroit’s latest offerings.
And that’s not to mention the environmental benefits, which could be huge. (Does that make it a quadrafecta? A superfecta?) Gather this—American cars more than 12 years old account for only 25 percent of the miles driven in the United States, yet they produce roughly 75 percent of all automobile-born pollution, including greenhouse gasses and low-level pollutants like ozone and fine particulates that wreak havoc on the lungs of urban dwellers.
As Congress frets about what does and doesn’t get funded in this stimulus plan, “Cash for Clunkers” should stand out as a simple and streamlined way to get money into the pockets of the most economically distressed, while boosting much-needed sales for the Big Three, helping move America beyond oil, and lessening our nation’s carbon emissions. On Friday, however, such an old car scrappage proposal was dropped from the Senate’s version of the stimulus bill.
Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, has proposed a “Cash for Clunkers” amendment that would “offer $10,000 to any moderate- or low-income consumer who trades in a car or truck that is at least 10 years old and buys a new one that is more fuel-efficient and ‘assembled in the United States.’” Ultimately it was the latter caveat that killed the plan (critics said it reeked of protectionism), though the $16 billion price tag didn’t help.