GOING GREEN

Has any one else noticed the proliferation of 'green' items lately? Clothing catalogs have 'green' items with things such as bamboo linen - every grocery store has ecologically-correct bags to reuse (of course, you have to purchase the bag first) - automakers now all seem to have a hybrid available 'or coming' and update us passionately about their 'great mileage' gas guzzlers ("You will get up to 21 mpg!") - and all the major oil companies seem to be running commercials stating their concern and willingness to 'solve' the oil problem facing all of us fat happy Americans.

Not to sound old or anything, but some of us should remember the first real 'gas' crunch in the early 70's. It wasn't so much the price as the availability - the lines at every gas station were incredible, and you could only get gas on certain days.

Back then, the immediate advice was car-pool - ride your bike - take the bus (which, unfortunately, in Los Angeles at that time was not possible - there really wasn't any sort of mass transit) - and the message to the industry was clear - "Develop alternative sources of energy - solar, wind, water."

Now, those of us that can count, let's all figure this out - hmm, this was back in 1972, I think, and now it's 2008 - carry the one, subtract the square root of pi.... let's see, it looks like 36 YEARS ago that we had problems. And what has happened in the meantime? A few hybrid cars - some wind energy - but haven't we also gone for bigger and bigger cars - less and less of us are car-pooling (however, the sale of manikins to allow use of the car-pool lanes have been very good), we're living further and further outside the cities where we commute for work and shopping (yes, yes, I am SO guilty of that - 20+ miles outside of any city limit).

I'm just being a little bit sorry that 36 years from now (let's see, that'll be 2044), we're going to still be dependent on oil from the Middle East, and one of my children will be writing something like a blog much like this one bemoaning where we as Americans are... or aren't... or should be.