There were three reported news stories last week that taken together point to clear trend lines.  In a court ruling, the state of Vermont won the right to set auto emissions and MPG standards that are stricter than those of the Federal government.  The dollar reached an all time low against the Euro and oil crossed over the $80 a barrel price barrier.  

Vermont is one of twelve states where the state government is going to court to gain the right to institute lower emission standards.  Most of these initiatives are patterned after a policy already signed in California. This …

The news out of Detroit last week was that GM had given up the title of the world’s number one auto company to Toyota.  This was a development that had been expected, but when both companies reported first quarter sales last week, the numbers made it official.  Toyota sold 2.35 million cars and trucks, about 100,000 more than GM. These numbers were expected, as GM had made a decision last year to cut back on bulk sales to rental companies which have historically been included in the total sales numbers.

The reporting in the media was predictable.  Why did this happen?  …

In the prior post I gave a general definition and overview of peak oil for those that have yet to track this development.  Until recently, the brightest minds unencumbered by vested oil interests have strongly suggested, and with good documentation, that the world could well run out of extractable petroleum sometime around the mid twenty-first century.

Up until a year ago, this was cause for great alarm.  Most countries in the world, with the U.S. being at the top of the list, have, in the last 50 years, allowed economic development, urban planning, real estate development and transportation issues to …

In my last post I wrote about GM and the presentation it made to some of us in the media about the new battery technology they are developing along with several other companies.  At the end of that post I highlighted the two distinct lines of challenging questions that have come up in response. 

I will quickly restate these two before moving on to address them.  The first challenge to GM about their commitment to creating a new battery technology for vehicles is to directly question how serious the GM commitment is.  How can the people who were identified as …