How Did It All Get Started?

In History Preservation class, we've been studying how General Motors destroyed America. This is a long and semi-complicated issue so I won't go into a lot of detail. Basically, there were nice towns and some larger cities. People went to and fro on their horses, carriages, feet, railroads and eventually streetcars (trolleys) made available by harnessing the wonder of electricity.
Do you sense a bum-bum-bum-BUM moment?
Yes, the invention of the car turned everything upside down. Only rich people could afford them at first and roads had to be built. Who paid for the roads? Rich and poor people's taxes. Then the price of cars went down and more people could afford them and even more roads had to be built. This infringed on the trolley lines. So GM bought up the privately owned trolley lines and destroyed them. Not all at once, mind you, just enough that they could make the lines run less efficient and people stopped using them due to frustration and got themselves a car. Only the poor weren't able to buy a car and weren't able to leave the city to the lush new identical cookie-cutter suburbs newly being built for GIs that had come home from WWII. With oil prices so low and reserves in America great, it was ideal. In the process, we made getting anywhere impossible without a car. Now we're faced with $4 a gallon gas.
So for many of us that questioned how all this got started, I hope this helps. Greed has been behind much of this issue. It wasn't enough to build and build - it was necessary to drive out the smaller, efficient guy too.
We watched a movie about 2 weeks ago that outlined much of what I stated above. It was very quiet in the room with the exception of a few funny quotes and newspaper clippings from the time. One was that GM and the Highway Commission (chaired by a board member of GM) said that riding a bus was much healthier than riding a trolley because there were no harmful emissions. We all started giggling. Then there was the 30 second long footage of trolleys being burned. It was incredibly sad - like the scene in Titanic where Rose keeps saying she'll never let go and in the next breath, KLUNK goes Jack to the bottom of the Atlantic. This guy behind me (I didn't turn to look at him) started sniffling. I swear he was crying.
Reading books and watching films on this subject really put it all in perspective for me. I have no intention of walking everywhere or riding a bike 17 miles to college one-way (and that's highway miles). But I am making less trips out. I've become a coupon queen and signed up on the internet for coupon sites. I'm reusing plastic containers and recycling plastic bags. My husband and I are planning on making a small garden next year. I'm thinking of ways I can reverse the situation. (But I'm not a tree-hugger and don't own a Prius or only shop at the Salvation Army, thankyouverymuch.)
It leaves me wondering if the future is going to fall apart on its own or if someone is going to be able to come up with a solution. Until then, I'm going to keep trying to do SOMETHING.