| the first family of fuel cells takes the baby for a ride...... |
[Dec. 5th, 2005|09:22 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ***, 15, 16, 17, 18, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, evs, fuel cells, i want one!!! | ] |
sometimes it pays to be polite to those pesky telemarketers
The big news out of LA's Daily Breeze is about Jon Spallino and his family's new car. Mr. Spallino, from Redondo Beach, is the first non-industry related person in the world to lease a fuel cell car (pictured above). He's the proud driver of a Honda FCX. Lucky guy! "We wanted a regular guy with a family," said Stephen Ellis, Honda manager for fuel cell marketing. And they found that in Spallino. Well he isn't exactly a "regular family guy" Jon's been driving a Honda CX (runs on natural gas) and that made the HOnda team feel he was ready to deal with some added issues (like, where would you fill up a fuel cell car if i dropped it into your driveway this afternoon? where huh?). Also, from the following quote we can see that Mr. Spallino is pretty calm and well tempered:
A few months before leasing the FCX, Ellis called Spallino to ask him about his impressions of the GX. The survey lasted about half an hour. A few weeks later, Ellis called again and asked Spallino more questions about the GX. Ellis called one more time. Ellis asked to meet Spallino for lunch. At that point, Spallino had had enough. "I thought it was some sort of survey-extreme and I was ready to put an end to it," Spallino recalled. But Spallino agreed to meet at a restaurant, where Ellis and another Honda official offered to lease the FCX to him for $500 a month.
Wow. pays to be nice to the telemarketers! (well maybe sometimes) |
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| hitting stride with the mainsteams |
[Nov. 23rd, 2005|09:42 am] |
GreenRoofs and green living getting more and more mainstream press
I've said it before and I'll say it again; when it starts hitting the mainstream media, two things become certainties. One, that something's changing in people's general perception; environmentalists are no longer wackos, and every person feels a kinship with this home-planet. The other certainty is that no matter what, this will snowball.
I've heard journalists say that they keep stories they'd love to report on, and wait for something big to happen so they can cram them out, watershed stylee. In the case of eco-technologies, they wait for a peak oil or a $4 Gallon and then BLAM! they can put out their pet stories about efficiencies or wacky inventors and their zero pollution cars. The other natural part of the MSM ecosystem is mimesis. When a few articles get written in some slightly avant magazines, publishers and editors can be heard the world over barking their need for a solar story or some back-to-the-earth reportage in a manner not unlike Jameson calling out for a photo of Spideyman.... As if they just invented the scoop(!)
So I am inspired to mention this phenom, yet again, because of a convergence of three events this morning; two were posts in The Treehugger. One, a roundup of several MSM magazines that are all now touting green, and then the other a mention of Treehugger showed up in Business Week ((BTW Way to go TH!!)). So those two obviously made me happy, and confirmed what i was already saying....
Then walking down the street I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something I usually ignore. Dose. For those of you that aren't fortunate enough to live in a city Dose decided was target-market enough, this is a daily rag, almost a newspaper (but free an dall of 16 pages-- tabloid style) it usually has some news lots of entertainment and a sex column. It's geared towards the 20-somethings so there may sometimes be a little bit of counter-culture.. but it is produced by CanWest a huge megaNewsCorp with a right of center (hidden) mandate.
That's why I was shocked, bemused and delighted to see a rooftop garden on the cover today. The bi-line was "how a rooftop revolution could change life in our cities." Yay! Even the right-wingers are getting on the bandwagon! Welcome! Not only is it the main story of the day, but on every page (whether about green roofs or not) there are cute headlines with green roof factoids. Like how much sound is reduced after greening your roof....
Just put a big smile on my face and made me hopeful hat we are now entering a stage of perception shifting. Woooooo Hoooo Hoooo! |
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