Who Can Kill the Combustion Engine?

There's a giant California wave undulating through the crowd of "change" fans with Henry Waxman the latest change agent to rise out of his seat with his arms in the air. We Californians are a rowdy bunch, and we like our transformations impolite, immoderate, sweeping. Fed up with an ineffective legislature, we got this wave going years ago with first a governor and now ordinary citizens turning state-wide propositions into the rule rather than the exception on the ballot. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have the temps running the office while the staff is playing finger flick football in the conference room, but you gotta love our pluck. Twenty percent of energy's power from renewable resources by 2010? Go for it! Reliable, high-speed public transit between San Francisco and L.A.? Bring it, baby! Help people acquire more alternative-fuel vehicles and fund research for renewable energy. Huzzah! Sure, only Prop 1A providing 10 billion dollars to plan the high-speed rail actually passed, but damn we're saucy (as well as sly for pinning Pickens' greed and sick of picking the scabs of our '00/'01 energy crisis. Make no mistake though, Props 7 and 10 will be back.) You can't help but wonder how deeply even California's nervy nature can penetrate the sludge that fuels the combustion engine of Washington, but it feels right that the state sueing the government to allow stricter greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is the one to lead the way. So, the question is how, and this is where California needs to walk the talk to make Washington make change real. The internal combustion engine was the main driver of the industrial revotuion, yet no one can argue that it is the Frankenstein of progress. Revolution implies making something new out of something old, a retread, if you will. We all know it's not a new set of tires we need, but something on the order of discovering the wheel. It's got to be altogether other, and we're thinking the "Eureka!" state is the place to birth such innovation, am I right? It doesn't escape notice that it was the California Energy Commission who killed the electric car, but that was before we took matters into our own hands. Reading the morning's news accounts of Waxman's victory, a Californian can't help but shed a hopeful little tear of joy imagining the resurrection of the electric car (this time fueled by alternative renewable energy sources and who knows what better) and other utopia-mobiles (are you thinking of the Jetson space-car too?), hopefully building a whole new auto industry that will transform the economy with mass employment and wealth and well being for all. Indeed, sipping a latte before we head out to the Prius to get to yoga class, we're all dreaming of the new California power in Washington turning our freeways into paths of enlightenment where lightweight vehicles made of organic materials safely drive zen-like speeds of 40 miles-an-hour purring oceanscape music out of their tailpipes.

Auto-industry lobbyists might see Waxman's victory as bad news for Detroit, but they don't need to be such downers. If we get this right, the auto-industry will not only recover, it will be stronger, leaner, and healthier (kind of like it got a blue algae "seachange" spa treatment). It's the wave, the new wave, if you will, and you don't have to take my word for it. Even Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez saw it in describing the democratic party caucus decision: "You could almost feel the votes move in the room." Peace out.