The tremendous push for the fuel cell seems to come more from a spirit of panic than anything else. It is being marketed as an amazing new technology that will completely restructure human life – an argument last seen in the year 2000, as the Internet Economy collapsed. The fuel cell is to correct a major problem – the depletion of fossil fuels (pollution being secondary). Yet the fuel cell is a new technology designed to replace another technology which, not too many decades ago, was being touted as something that would restructure human life. And in the Western world – 20% of the world population – it has altered life drastically.

Yet the fuel cell is not so much a new technology as an incremental improvement to an existing technology. It is a new engine to replace the internal combustion engine in the same automobile bodies. It will not affect the death and injury rate from automobile accidents. It will not change the increasingly crowded nature of our streets and highways. It will not relieve the number 1 anxiety of all parents – that their child will be killed or injured in an automobile. It does not address the cultural problem – the values noted above.

Even more important, it is unlikely that the fuel cell vehicle will even achieve the goal of eliminating dependence on fossil fuels. The fact that almost all hydrogen is made from fossil fuels is always skirted as an issue or dismissed with some casual reference to "transition fuels." The decades spent in development with few results are ignored – which indicates a high risk technology. Ballard, the leading supplier of fuel cell research engines and founded in 1979 is still not profitable – 25 years later.

And the nuclear issue is completely obfuscated, although continual small hints are being made in books, media articles and government reports.

What is desperately needed is a change in values – for Americans to abandon their ìlove affairî and become concerned about the values and health of the human family, which any ordinary love affair threatens. Efficient cars are available and have been for years. When a car is viewed as transportation and also as a machine that requires care to insure others are not hurt by ones use of the machine ñ then the values will lead to different choices.

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