Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS
MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 -
(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
September, 2004
Hybrids
By Harry Holdorf
|
|
In this town, as in many others, they keep building thousands of apartments and
houses, and adding stop lights, guaranteeing that all of us'll spend
significantly more future time stuck in traffic. One could begin to get depressed
about the prospect of spending multiplied hundreds of hours idling at
stoplights, except for the fact that we're about to experience a most rapid
technological change: hybrid vehicles are about to sweep our culture: we're
about to enjoy the beauty of sitting silently at stoplights.
Toyota Priuses don't run when they're stopped: the gas motor comes
on only at higher speeds, and it gets 50 to 60 miles per gallon. In some
markets, there's a two year waiting list. Gas/electric Hybrids will remarkably
soon replace the bulk of our vehicles, and the roar of the engines will
disappear from our culture not a gallon too soon.
The American carmakers' refusal to build Hybrids (instead,
claiming the future lies with fuel cells) has continued the Ugly American
dedication to being as dependent as possible on burning fossil fuels. This
allegiance to the rruuuugh rruuugh of the unmuffled motors, is the cultural
roar which has nearly destroyed us. How less ugly would we all have been if we
hadn't been wantonly consuming fossil fuels all these years? (What are the
chances all this intensive global warming was timed just right to avoid another
ice age? Is this ultimately wishful thinking?)
So, Ford finally comes out with a hybrid SUV that gets thirty
miles per gallon. Big whoopty do. It will indeed be impressive when a hybrid
F150 gets the thirty mpg. The world's great imitators, the Chinese, are
probably just a couple months off from producing their own low-cost hybrid.
Thank God for Oriental car-makers: they probably saved our collective butts,
again.
After the rruuugh rruuugh is removed from the roads, we'll remove
it from the air: horrendous defensive aircraft roars will exit the skies, when
air travel ecologically, sensibly quiets. The photo of Air Force One abruptly
rising from behind the stands at the Daytona Five Hundred says it all.
Someone said, in American politics, Conservatives don't like what
happened to our culture during the Sixties, while Liberals do. Bush's constant
complaining about the permissive 'If it feels good, do it' Liberal philosophy
definitely places him in the pre-Sixties Conservative camp, along with
Ashcroft's retro, retro, retro. So, George, if it feels bad, is that what we're
supposed to be doing?
This European/style Redstate/Bluestate, cultural confrontation
comfortably accommodates each of our extremes, but one shouldn't lose sight of
the fact that cultural arrangements are circular, that the Left and Right meet
in the Backside Libertarian Connection, that substantial amounts of fundamental
goodness reside in the reddest and bluest of us all.
Along with Hybrids, another sign for optimism is the way Davey and
other Tree Services, while trimming roadside trees for clearance and power
lines; are creating these ecologically cool tunnels through which we motor. I
could see future cultural movements involving millions of humans sitting,
working, and sleeping, under trees.