Hello again.

Sorry for the long silence, I had a Jan. 20 date in Washington I couldn't break.

And while I was there, this new president dude was sworn in and he's already making all kinds of radical changes.

For example, it turns out President Obama didn't think much of his predecessor's policies as they relate to this global warming thing threatening the existence of life on Earth. Turns out, he's against it and intends to adopt a "pro-Earth" policy. Who knew?

So among the first things he intends to do once he'd finally mastered that pesky Oath of Office (both he and Chief Justice Roberts have pledged to take remedial Swearing In classes) was to issue executive orders increasing fuel efficiency standards on automobiles and to allow states to impose limits on carbon dioxide, something the Bush administration rejected.

As Reuters reported here, "if the EPA reverses the previous ruling, more than 12 U.S. states could proceed with plans to impose strict carbon dioxide limits. California wants to reduce the emissions by 30 percent by 2016 -- the most ambitious federal or state effort to address global warming."

Obama "is scheduled to deliver remarks on jobs, energy independence and climate change in the East Room of the White House on Monday," Reuters reported.

By March, he wants the Department of Transportation to set the new mileage guidelines, that will be in effect by 2011.

As The New York Times reported here, once states freed to enact standards do so, "automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule. The auto companies have lobbied hard against the regulations and challenged them in court."

Seems to me, those auto makers have a choice, get with the program or give back the bailout money. It's not as if they haven't seen this coming for years. Hell, if they had spent half the money re-tooling their plants that they've spent on lawyers fighting the obvious need to re-tool their plants, their plants would be re-tooled by now.

(Strange, don't you think, how the words "tool" and "auto companies" keep coming up in the same sentence?)

Not satisfied there, Obama "will also order federal departments and agencies to find new ways to save energy and be more environmentally friendly. And he will highlight the elements in his $825 billion economic stimulus plan intended to create jobs around renewable energy," the New York Times reported.

Speaking of which, let's consider how well that might work. If only there were some kind of real-life example we could turn to....hmmmm.

If only there were some sort of report showing how green technology might affect growth...

We take you now good citizens to the pages of the Los Angeles Times where we find evidence of -- wait for it -- yes! a report on a report that shows how green technology might affect growth.

In two words or less -- "very well."

The report, by a non-profit research group called Next 10, found "Green-collar jobs are growing faster than statewide employment. Clean-tech investment in the state hit a record last year, despite steep stock-market declines. California leads the nation in patent registrations for green technology. Efficiency measures pioneered (in California) over the last three decades have created 1.5 million jobs and allowed California businesses to generate many more goods and services per unit of energy consumed than other states."

"Those green jobs encompass a variety of occupations, including research scientists, wind-energy technicians and solar panel installers. Such positions are growing fast, the report showed. Green employment was up 10% between 2005 and 2007. Statewide job growth was 1% over the same period," The LA Times reported.

California has already adopted the toughest energy efficiency standards in the country. "The result is that the state's energy productivity -- energy consumed compared with economic output -- is 68% higher than that of the rest of the country, according to the report."

"Venture capital investment in clean technology in California totaled $3.3 billion in 2008, more than double the amount invested in 2007. Between 2002 and 2007, 607 green-technology patents were registered in California, the study said. That's more than any other state," the LA Times reported.

Hm. And all without cutting taxes for rich people.

But really, who can believe some wacky non-profit with a weird name out on the left coast?

OK, would you believe Wal-Mart?

"When Wal-Mart first embraced green initiatives, its fortunes were sagging," The New York Times reported in this article.

"After blanketing the country with its giant, all-in-one stores, it began cannibalizing its own sales. Older stores looked tattered and tired, and Wal-Mart’s flirtation with higher-end merchandise, like skinny jeans with fur trim, alienated low-income shoppers who preferred unadorned basics. "

So CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. did what smart business people do, he stepped back, looked at the big picture, saw the future and then, by virtue of what the Times calls Wal-Mart's "Herculean size," it led.

"By virtue of its herculean size, Wal-Mart eventually dragged much of corporate America along with it, leading mighty suppliers like General Electric and Procter & Gamble to transform their own business practices.

"Today, the roughly 200 million customers who pass through Wal-Mart’s doors each year buy fluorescent light bulbs that use up to 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs, concentrated laundry detergent that uses 50 percent less water and prescription drugs that contain 50 percent less packaging," the Times reported.

"By selling only concentrated liquid laundry detergent, an effort it began last year, Wal-Mart says, its customers will save more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic resin, 125 million pounds of cardboard and 520,000 gallons of diesel fuel over three years," the paper reported.

"Wal-Mart says it now saves itself $3.5 million a year just by recycling loose plastic and selling it to processors. After changing the design of its trucks and how efficiently it loads them, its fleet had a 25 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. Amory B. Lovins, a MacArthur fellow and chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research organization, said Wal-Mart would save nearly $500 million a year in fuel costs by 2020. "

So, "as the saying goes, Wal-Mart has also done well by doing good. Along with the McDonald’s Corporation, it was one of only two companies in the Dow Jones industrial average whose share price rose last year.

"Profits climbed to $12.7 billion in the 2008 fiscal year, from $11.2 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, while sales jumped to $375 billion, from $312.4 billion, during the same period" and this as the recession was beginning to take hold.

Hmm, Go Green, Make Green.

You can use that if you want.

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.