High-Heeled Hope and Clean Cars

I got some good news this week. The last campaign I worked on, which passed cleaner auto emission standards for Washington state, that campaign just went national. Obama announced that he is adopting the Washington, Oregon and California standards for the country. This is good news, people. This makes me think of reggae legend Jimmy Cliff who breaks down politics in the following way: “Poli means people. And a tick is a bloodsucking parasite. So politics is the people’s ticks.”

 And I think Jimmy’s right some of the time. But today, and I hope tomorrow, I think he is wrong. I think we can have democracy and business and wildness and deep green ethics at the very same time. I didn’t always feel this way. Once upon a time, I was pretty firm about the divide. You can put your wild, perfect nature over here and your dirty, inherently evil technology over there. It’s the hobbits vs. Saruman’s tree-eating pits. Although Tolkien always maintained that that was not what he meant. And, anyway, I was never as bad as my ex-roommate Bob, who wouldn’t allow the use of electricity in our San Francisco flat. He wanted everything to be candlelit. But he also shaved off all the hair on his body and walked around moaning the lyrics to his band’s songs, along the lines of “I am walking backward down the spiral staircase of deaaaaaaaath.

So, Bob had other problems.

Anyway, today, I’m feeling pretty darnn giddy. Mix it up! We can do this! Combining the wild with industry can, no must be part of the solution. And there is good reason to hope that our deepest wildest selves, our very genetic programming, can combine with market forces to become a powerful and good thing. More reason than just the new emission standards, I mean. Take, for example, the fact that very bendy ankles made our female ape ancestors super sexy. Did you know that? It’s true. Major turn-on. Female apes with more extendable ankles could forage and leap from tree to tree that much better, provide better for their ape kiddies, Darwin, etc, Darwin. And look, we’ve still got that good old-fashioned feeling! Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of “Sex and the City,” but the fact that our ancient bendy ankle lust can become an industry that employs many, many makers of high-heeled shoes…

Well, that makes me downright optimistic.

Thanks, President Obama.! Way to go Clean Car team! More power to you, Manolo!