THE MORNING AFTER The morning after a thunderstorm is a special time. The air is scrubbed clean, and azure blue. Things even look different-one sees features of the landscape with 20/20 clarity after a storm. Even in the city the smell is more refreshing, particularly in the springtime. It is not so i much that something new has been added; rather, an offensive something i s missing. T h e r a i n a n d clouds have scavenged the waste of our industrialized civilization through processes we are only now understanding, leaving the gentler vapors of grass, trees, and flowers. As likely as not, we observe this refreshing beauty while we are walking to our car in the morning, preparing to drive to work. We then join the millions of people who are tied to that wonderful, polluting machine, the automobile. My generation and most that have followed have been enamored of the auto, as in a love affair. To many people it is little more than a convenience, but to others it represents security, ego, and independence. It is personal power, more than human beings of earlier times could have imagined. It gives us freedom to go as we wish, to pull off as we wish, and to shut out the rest of the world. We can wrap ourselves in the sound of our stereo, rap with our friends by cellular phone, or just cruise. No part of our personal lives is more challenged by the concepts of environmental protection and sustainable development than our use of the antomobile. Our millions of vehicles traveling billions of miles each year have an immense effect on our atmosphere and on terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, the fuel that we require to feed these beasts compromises our national independence and
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0013-936)(191/0925-993$02.50/0 c 3 1991 American Chemical Society
forces us into a foreign policy that is risky, to say the least. We have just spent a very large amount of money on a war in order to retain the self-determination and convenience that this contraption gives to us. We must now begin to seriously develop alternatives to it and to relax the burden of feeding it and our other energy appetites. We must accept the prospect that if we do not, we may endanger the planet through corruption of the atmosphere. And we must concede that a new style of travel may be necessary in order for us to provide acceptable energy alternatives for our descendents. The energy policy that has been articulated recently by the Office of the President is not sufficient to do this. We must have an aggressive program to promote energy conservation, mass transportation, and nonfossil fuel power generation including solar. Research in these areas must become a renewed priority for the federal government, and incentives must be given to private industry to invest in new energy-saving ventures and to conserve. We found the money to fight the war against Iraq. We can find the money to promote these equally important programs. Fresh air should not he available only after a storm.
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Environ. Sci. Technoi., VOI. 25, NO. 6, 1991 S33
