Pictured at right is The Honda Clarity, a new hydrogen cell fuel car and the reason we the taxpayers are being asked to bailout the auto industry -- failure to innovate.

The Clarity offers the kinds of attributes that would make an advertising executive drool in the current economic climate -- "No emissions, 79 mpg and $600 a month."

If that isn't a recipe for success, I had better go back to riding a horse around town.

But there's a catch. (Isn't there always?) This slick looking model runs on hydrogen. Yes, that far-off technology that Detroit has been telling us can't possibly be designed, much less manufactured, without years of research and millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded incentives.

And yet, here we have it. Already researched, already manufactured and being test-marketed in the most receptive market of all, southern California.

It's called capitalism and the Japanese are kicking our asses at it. And frankly, we deserve the ass-kicking.

It's hard to imagine a more moribund, short-sighted, intellectually defunct or otherwise shiftless industry in America than the one based in Detroit.

America's former auto giants got that way by convincing Americans they wanted something they didn't need just as the words "disposable income" were becoming commonplace.

But once it came to interpreting the market instead of creating it and defining it, we fell behind. In other words, once car companies had to figure out what people wanted instead of telling them what they wanted, they lost their way.

Certainly, their success in making us believe we needed a converted pick-up truck with leather seats just to drive around town, convinced them they still had it. But it what they didn't realize is it was the last hurrah. When the price of running these SUV monsters became too much for even besotted Americans to stomach, Detroit just couldn't convince itself the honeymoon was over.

Which brings us to the present. At the worst possible time, when we would look to them to be a bulwark against what economists are now calling a world-wide recession, Detroit has its hand out.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose new book on the future is titled "Hot, Flat and Crowded," ranted in the Nov. 11 edition, "I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation? If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?"

Since I like to recycle everything, including good writing, allow me to let Mr. Friedman say for me what I couldn't say as well myself (besides, he's better paid): "Instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers."

In the meantime, Honda and Toyota were investing in innovation and while working to give us what we need, crafted designs that made us want them too.

As the Associated Press reported in its review: "the Clarity opens a window into the possible: the combination of environmental responsibility and zero emissions with a fun, hip ride. If only refueling was a matter of pulling into the nearest filling station."

But that's how it is with innovation. It doesn't spring fully formed from the brain of the entrepreneur into the market ready to go. You see the direction the market is taking, you make the investment and you (and your workers) reap the reward.

As Friedman wrote: "Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

(In a side note, if you're wondering why Canada got this plant and not us, take a look at who will be paying the health care costs for the workers of that new plant and then look at what is bankrupting GM: health care costs. Just a little food for thought.)

If, on the other hand, you are a struggling manufacturing giant in the electoral vote-rich Mid-west, innovation becomes something you deride from a distance while your Congressional delegation protects you from having to survive on your own, blocking government efforts to require improvements in fuel economy. And now the time has arrived to pay the piper for this lack of vision.

As CNN reports, "Congressional Democrats want the Treasury Department to offer the troubled automakers loans from an unspecified portion of the $700 billion bailout package originally passed to help the financial industry, which is reeling from the global credit crisis.
The White House and congressional Republicans have not signed on to support such a move.

The Republicans rightly point out that a $25 billion package to aid lawmakers has already been passed, but GM recently revealed that it is running out of cash and cannot survive the year without help.

The question becomes, is GM another company that is "too big to fail?" The answer is probably yes, not because it is deserving but because of what a GM collapse would do to a U.S. and world economy already on its knees and gasping.

CNN reports that "It is estimated that a GM bankruptcy alone would cascade widely throughout the economy and cost as many as 2.5 million jobs."

Some of those jobs will be in places like Pottstown, where the sole surviving auto parts plant, Dana, is already waiting to hear if it will be among the 10 plants and 2,000 jobs the company recently announced it would cut.

Time is running out as the news gets quickly and steadily worse. On Tuesday, General Motors stock continued to slide downward, reaching $2.92 a share, the lowest it has closed since April 1943. The company has also laid off 5,600 employees in less than a week.

And last week Ford announced that it has lost $3 billion dollars in the third quarter and was also planning to reduce its salaried and hourly workforce.

But if we are going to spend money to save the auto industry, let's remember whose money it is -- ours.

So the money should come with strings, lots of them. Not the least of which is to fire the entire management team (and maybe the enabling boards of directors as well) that got us into this mess and replace them with innovators who don't get paid million-dollar salaries if they don't succeed.

Set requirements for fuel economy, flex fuel, plug-in hybrids and all the things that may be the future.

Philosophically, we should let them sink or swim on their own. As Friedman pointed out recently on The Daily Show, right now there should be thousands of entrepreneurs in thousands of garages working on thousands of solutions, maybe three of which will end up working.

But practically, the country simply cannot afford, in the midst of an economic crisis, the collapse of an industry on which so much of its economy is built. And so we will be forced to reward what amounts to capitalistic malpractice.

As bitter as it may taste, the least we should insist upon is that our money be put toward investment in the right direction. At least then, we and our planet get something for our money.

So are you tired of me writing about cars and gas mileage yet?

Too bad, this is my blog, not yours.

Anyway, I'll try to make this one as brief as it is remarkable.

You've heard of Ford Motor Company? You know, the maker of the lumbering Expedition SUV that set the standard in gas guzzling?

Well, in case you hadn't noticed, they're getting their butt handed to them on a regular basis by people buying more fuel efficient cars so they don't have to take out a second mortgage to fill the tank.

More on them in a minute.

Many of those sales are going to hybrids like the one I write about ad nauseum. (BTW, right now its "around town" mileage is barely cracking 35 mpg. I'm about to write my Congressman!).

Anyway, since everything old is new, there's this old technology out there that is really the newest thing and it is the darling of one of my most loyal readers (and they are few!).

It's called diesel.

Now I have always looked askance at diesel because while it is more fuel-efficient, the amount of particulate matter it spewed into the air was enough to give asthma to a fish.

But did you notice how I used the past tense there? Clever right? That's because with fuel economy all the rage, those folks in the white coats are working over time to make diesel a cleaner fuel.

No, it's not a solar car, but it's something.

But according to this article in Business Week, "diesel vehicles now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient."

The other argument against diesel is it's more expensive, but that is the fault of the tree-hugger types like me lobbying Congress to impose higher taxes on diesel because the fumes spewed by trucks using dirty diesel impose health costs on the country, primarily in the form of respiratory diseases, that society as a whole must absorb.

But it seems to me that if we can distinguish between the old, nasty diesel and "clean diesel" (which is by all reports and a quick glance at the family tree, is no relation to "clean coal") that tax should be lifted in the interests of fuel economy, particularly if it is no longer more polluting.

Over in Europe, where they like to think they do everything better and are often right, half the cars sold last year were diesel.

While brings us back to our friends at Ford.

The car they're introducing in Europe is called the Fiesta EcoNETIC and gets a whopping 65 miles to the gallon folks. Three cheers for American technical ingenuity!

But don't get too excited, American technical ingenuity is about to fall victim to American marketing stupidity.

Ford says it won't sell the car here (even though it looks wicked cool!) because they don't think we'd buy enough of them to make them money.

While Ford balks at selling it here in the U.S. market, the Japanese and Germans already have plans well underway to introduce diesels here.

Is it just me, or is there a whiff of deja vu in the air?

Isn't this how American car makers got their asses kicked last time there was a new trend in automobiles?

Now before anyone starts pounding their chest about buying American cars, you should know that Ford is manufacturing this little beauty in England. It would cost too much to import because the dollar smells like week-old fish and the English Pound is much stronger, they say.

And they can't build it here in the good old U.S.A. because it costs $350 million to build a new plant and Ford is too busy hemorrhaging like $1 billion a week from its reserves to cover its losses to think about investing in its own company in its own country.

For those wondering why this would happen, consider that a few years ago when Henry Ford's great,great,great, grandsire (or something like that) tried to turn the company green, those far-sighted execs at Ford forced him out of the driver's seat so they could make great decisions like this one.

Since I learned about this idiocy from my friends at Grist Magazine, (worth reading for the headlines alone) let me promote a few of their links on the subject. Click and be enlightened:

There's this one, about the cleaning of the diesel fuel supply;

Then there's this one, about who will be introducing new diesel models;

And there's this one, from just two months ago, about a report predicting the dominance of diesels by 2012.

And for the zealots among you (raise your hand, I know you're out there, quietly reading and spreading sprouts on your homemade peanut butter) there is Grist's all-knowing columnist Umbra Fisk's how-to on converting your diesel to run on vegetable oil.

You hear it all the time.


"Government needs to be run like a business."


"Those tree-huggers are costing us jobs!"


After a brief review of the information omniverse, here are just a few of those nutty tree-huggers:

• Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Safeway, Whole Foods. These are just a few of those wacky extremists who are destroying our economy by putting up solar panels on their giant, football field-sized roofs. Apparently, in their misguided attempt to save the planet and cut down on fossil fuel consumption, they have this crazy idea about being efficient and saving money. They're practically Communists! Read all about it in The New York Times here.


• Integrys Energy Group Inc., Quicksilver Resources Inc., Tesoro Corp., American Electric Power Co. These are just four "out there" companies which, The Wall Street Journal reports here, are joining other fringe nut-jobs like Occidental Petroleum, DuPont Co. and Rohn & Haas in appointing environmental committees to their board of directors. They probably all wear Birkenstocks to work. The Journal reported that "About 25% of Fortune 500 companies now have a board committee overseeing the environment, compared with fewer than 10% five years ago, estimates Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a national coalition of activists, investors and others concerned with the environment. Such panels typically try to make sure that executives effectively handle conservation efforts, new environmentally friendly ventures like wind power, compliance with environmental regulations and related business risks." Why all this crazy hippie talk? apparently, "the Earth's sustainability 'has become a much more important part of every board's activities,' observes Lester A. Hudson, chairman of American Electric Power Co.'s governance committee, which monitors environmental concerns." Imagine, realizing you might not make money if the atmosphere disintegrates, perhaps because of your own company's activities. I tell you, it's nuts.


• Allegheny Energy, Ford Motor Company. As if that wasn't bad enough, now this insanity has spread to shareholders, who must have also swallowed the Kool-Aid. The Associated Press reported here that 2008 marked a new high in share-holder resolutions concerned with Global Warming. According to Ceres, support for these measures averaged 23 percent so far in 2008. "While that's not enough to pass a resolution, Ceres contends rising vote totals compel companies to act, like a plan by Ford Motor Co. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020. 'It's easy to ignore 3 or 5 percent votes, but it's pretty hard to ignore 22 percent votes or 39 percent votes,' said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs for Ceres," according to the story. Ceres says 57 climate-related shareholder resolutions were filed with U.S. companies in 2008, up from 43 in 2007 and 31 in 2006. Support likewise has climbed from an average of 17.8 percent in 2006 and 21.6 percent last year. This year, support averaged 23.5 percent, according to Ceres. It sounds the folks living near West Virginia's Coal Mountain, need to find some shareholders from Massey Energy, which has plans to shear the top off this mountain like it has so many others. But the locals are trying to convince the company to instead make the most of the mountain's most renewable resource -- wind. As reported in this story in Grist Magazine, Their plans call for at least 14 valley fills to deposit the debris, which is likely to bury at least six local streams. Residents in the area, led by a local group called Coal River Watch, "are hoping to convince state agencies, local landowners, and the coal companies to allow a 440-megawatt wind farm to be built atop the mountain while still allowing Massey Energy to mine beneath the surface, a compromised plan that they hope can start moving the state away from reliance on coal -- and protect one of the most endangered mountains in the country."


• Xcel Energy. Now this one really hurts. This company has a bunch of good old fashioned coal-burning power plants in Colorado and now, (sniff) they're closing them down to reduce emissions, the first in the nation. I tell you, this environmentalism thing is spreading like a virus. Now where are we going to get our pollution? What are the people of Denver and Grand Junction supposed to do for power? Apparently, according to this story in The Rocky Mountain News, still send their money to Xcel, which is replacing its coal burning power plants with solar power plants. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission "approved the utility's request for a 200-megawatt solar plant using concentrated solar technology that not only helps generate electricity from the sun, but also allows energy to be stored for later use." This may help the company meet Gov. Bill Ritter's goal to reduce greenhouse emissions by 20 percent by 2020.


• FPL Group Inc. Not to be outdone by their neighbors in the north, this Florida utility, which already bills itself as the nation's top producer of wind power, is investing $688 million in capital, the lifeblood of American capitalism, in this goofy new technology as well. According to this story by Reuters, "the new plants would take FPL more than a third of the way to a goal announced last year to build a total of 300 megawatts of solar capacity in Florida, and the company is more bullish than ever on the prospects for solar, Chief Executive Lew Hay told Reuters in an interview. Coupled with the skyrocketing cost of conventional power-plant fuels like oil and natural gas and the rising price of commodities to build such power plants, solar is becoming more competitive, Hay said. "


• Delmarva Power. And right down the road in Rehoboth Beach Delaware, the first offshore wind farm to be developed in the United States has already sold one-third of the power that will be generated during its first 25 years of operation before a turbine is even placed in the water. According to a story published by the Environmental News Service, Delmarva Power agreed in June to buy up to 200 megawatts of power from an offshore wind farm to be developed by Bluewater Wind Delaware. The company "believes this contract is a significant step toward developing Delaware's first offshore wind farm, which will almost certainly be the first offshore wind farm in the country," said Hunter Armistead, head of Babcock & Brown's North American energy group. Sunrise at Rehoboth Beach where the Bluewater wind farm will be constructed 11.5 miles from land off the coast of Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. "This offshore wind farm will bring clean energy, new jobs, and stable rates to Delmarva Power customers," said Armistead. According to this 25 year agreement, Bluewater Wind could begin delivering electricity to Delmarva Power's Delaware customers around the year 2012.
  

I tell you, it's just nuts out there. Clean energy, new jobs and stable electric rates? What is the world coming to?

Next thing you know, next thing you know one of the political parties will have a woman and a black man compete for the right to run for president.

These crazy kids. When are they going to wake up? What makes them think they can change the world?