He might hug a tree but not necessarily. Others are poor folks, trying to stretch a buck. They all see the value of heat pumps and buying low-flow shower heads and cars based on how many miles per gallon they get. Yet in Seattle, the first place to make coffee a separate food group, Conservation Wusses have saved the equivalent of a new power plant over two decades. In the late 1970s, instead of merely investing in new plants, Seattle City Light focused on incentives to change consumption patterns and invested in boosting efficiency.
Conservation is cool beyond the cappuccino-sipping communities.
Much of Big Business is ahead of the Administration. Automakers may lack the single-mindedness that regulation may bring, but they have been making ever more economical cars. Ford and GM are dueling it out over whose emissions are lower and whose suvs will get more mileage. Toyota and Honda are spending billions on hybrid engine cars, while companies like GE and Whirlpool are developing more efficient low-BTU mousetraps, like dishwashers that can be programmed to click on in the middle of the night. A few bones thrown its way, and business would surely do more.