When Joe Romm, the terminally grouchy Grand Poobah of Climate Change Bloggers, is spreading good news about environmental policy, you know that the news is genuinely good. He's calling Obama the Green FDR, and has compiled a list of things Obama has already done to turn this boat around.
I really like it when Joe Romm focuses on good news. I think it's good leadership on his part. The organizing principle of 21st Century Plowshare is that good begets good, that the biggest problem with environmental activism is that the news has been so dismally bad for so awfully long that our minds and souls got stunted. The future sounded so hopeless that it became impossible to see that the environment is worth making less poisonous and disgusting right now, for selfish reasons, and that the moral and economic imperatives of fixing the climate are both more urgent and more satisfying than previously marketed.
All in all, it's an amazing time to be alive. Not only is there a company that has actually committed to deploying electric car infrastructure in Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada and Hawaii...
...and not only will this infrastructure lower the cost of driving to the point that it is cheaper to use an electric car than an internal combustion engine...
...but we seem to be at a moment in history when it is actually possible to implement this technology across the entire United States.
In the last 100 days, CO2 has become a pollutant. Green jobs are no longer an idea, they are becoming policy. And to top it all off, Ford and GM are on life support! It's an amazing stroke of luck that the Federal Government cares a lot about when you are going to buy your next car.
Here's why. Personal vehicles represent almost 25% of the carbon emissions in the United States. And even if global warming didn't exist, internal combustion engines emit all manner of nasty particulate matter and ozone that leads to asthma, sinus headaches, and other upper-respiratory problems. A world without internal combustion engines is a healthier world--it's that simple. And since the economy seems to have the American car industry by the balls, we have an amazing opportunity to help the Obama administration truly affect large-scale change.
I pledged to myself some time ago that my 91 Nissan Pickup would be my last internal combustion engine. And right now, I think that if every single person in America who wants an electric car effectively communicates that they are holding on to their dollars until they get one, then there is no political or economic reason not to create the kind of electric infrastructure that Shai Agassi and Better Place proposes.
Do you want electric cars, which emit nothing and are as carbon-neutral as we can make the grid? Do you want them to cost less per mile than gas-powered combustion engines and travel effectively over long distances? We have the technology, political will and economic reality to actually make this happen. All that's missing is a clear message from me and you.
The first thing you can do is sign Better Place's petition. You can also do more. And it will be fun. Over the coming weeks, 21st Century Plowshare will be rolling out a comprehensive campaign in which your personal pledge not to buy a car until you can buy a low-cost electric car will be broadcast to the people who need to know: everyone from the major auto companies to your congresspeople to the President himself, because there is simply no reason not to.
the setback and the defeat, this kind of self-confidence will cause us to enjoy the life.
5. undergoes the misery test the misery is wealth, it will temper person's will
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