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TODAY Wednesday 15 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: We Love You, Hiroshi Okuda

The unseasonably balmy weather we've been having here in the world's greatest city has come to a foggy, drizzly end, and this morning we require a restorative with more punch than the usual joe. Maybe something in the paper.

The Florida Marlins over the Atlanta Braves fails to excite, though you're glad for Bobby Bonilla, and rueful that a team with teal lettering has made the World Series. On the front page there's Clinton-and-Reno, Rudy Giuliani, and assisted suicide.

But hope springs. For there, back in section D, page 20, is a small story from the Associated Press, dateline Tokyo. "Toyota Shows Hybrid Engine," the little head reads. "The Toyota Motor Corporation rolled out the first gasoline-electric car ready for market today, beating its rivals to a complex technology that offers better mileage and can run cleaner than regular gasoline engines."

"The Prius four-door small sedan," the story continues, "which will sell at first only in Japan, got as much as 66 miles a gallon in test drives, Toyota said. It will sell for about $17,700... (T)he Prius emitted only half the carbon dioxide of a regular gasoline engine under Japanese test conditions and cut other emissions by about 90 percent."

At last. For more than ten years now, green car nuts (count me in) have been debating the merits of the hybrid car. More convenient and cheaper and farther-ranging than an all-electric car, less environmentally harmful than all-gasoline car. In the hybrid hypercar described by Amory Lovins and colleagues, efficiencies are far greater and emissions far less than in the real-world Toyota, but half a loaf of green car tastes pretty good this morning. Let's hope the Prius has zip and reliability, let's hope that the Japanese love it, and let's hope that Toyota's president, Hiroshi Okuda, follows through with contingency plans to enter the American market in mid-1998.

I'll buy one as soon as I can lodge a bullet into the camshaft of my 1987 Subaru. More important, Howard Stern says he'll buy one. Howard Stern! Everyone's favorite shock jock assures us he's no environmentalist, but says all these gas guzzlers are crazy.

Pop the cork, Howard.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

Bill Belleville has the enviro Right Stuff: expert scuba diver; careful lover of all saltwater life; master of the simple declarative sentence. In his latest op-ed, our resident aqualung says that the time is long overdue for better underwater counting. Why can't scuba divers emulate birdwatchers?, he asks. Volunteer birders are crucial to the annual censuses of avian migrants. Divers need to get in the act and help develop the marine science that will save the reefs and fish they treasure.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

10/14: Good Deals at Showroom and Pump
10/10: Clinton Waffles!
10/09: Can Therapy Help the Songbirds?
10/08: Girls and Puberty
10/07: Japan The Genial Host
10/06: You Don't Need A Weatherman...
10/03: Cochise County, Arizona
10/02: The Copper Queen
10/01: Pesticides in California
9/30: Climate Policy: No Pain, No Gain

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