Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...save by trading his 15-m.p.g. Toyota 4Runner for an EV1. "While I was debating," he recalls, "I looked out my window and the mountains were gone." Likewise, actors Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, president of the American Oceans Campaign, replaced their Ford Explorer out of concern for coastal oil pollution. Now, after six months of driving an EV1, Danson says, "It's sweet to be environmentally correct--violins and all that! What sends me over the edge is how fast and smart this...
...seven years since California set a 1998 deadline for carmakers to begin marketing zero-emission vehicles, oil companies and auto manufacturers have lobbied to kill any mandate. They succeeded only in postponing it, to 2003. Similarly, carmakers took New York and Massachusetts to court. In recent months federal judges have handed down contradictory decisions: one barring Massachusetts from duplicating California's mandate, and the other allowing the Empire State to force manufacturers to offer some 8,000 electric cars for sale next year...
...start-up companies, many of them financed with venture capital. But as business has boomed in the past two years, major corporations have jumped in. The lure is obvious: the use of wind and solar power is growing more than 25% a year, while the markets for coal and oil are expanding only...
...quickly the world's energy systems are transformed will depend in part on whether fossil-fuel prices remain low and the entrenched opposition of many oil and electric-power companies can be overcome. The pace of change will be heavily influenced by the climate agreement that emerges in Kyoto and the national policies that follow. In the 1980s, California provided tax incentives and access to the power grid for new energy sources, which enabled the state to dominate renewable-energy markets worldwide. Similar incentives and access have been offered by European countries in the 1990s. Sometimes such measures are needed...
Although many economists argue that it will be difficult and expensive to find an alternative to oil and coal--and that we should delay the transition for as long as possible--their position is based on a technological pessimism that seems out of place today. The first automobiles and computers were difficult to use and expensive, but the pioneers persevered and made improvements, and ultimately triumphed in the marketplace...