In the last half of the twentieth century many of the major social, political and cultural trends in the United States started in California.  The worship of the car and the surrounding car culture, the glorification of suburbia via sitcoms, surfing, music, the drug and counter-culture,  free speech and student protest, progressive public higher education, the Silicon Valley explosion of technological innovation, and of course, right turn on red.  Later the negative issues of traffic gridlock, illegal immigration, brown outs and state budget deficits started first in California.  Now, on one of the most fundamentally important issues of the day …

On a recent trip to Europe I was reminded of the fact that Europeans are so much more conservation oriented and energy efficient than Americans.  The lights in hotel hallways are off until you walk by the sensor or push a button; they go on for two minutes and then go off again.  Motion sensors everywhere that turn lights on in hallways, stairwells and public spaces. In Munich I saw something for the first time: public escalators that don’t move until someone walks onto it and passes the motion detector.  All over downtown Munich there were non-moving escalators, waiting.

Then of …