Maybe  green energy could have been further along in its commercial development, if wind, solar and biofuel et al had been promoted as supplemental rather than alternative energy sources. Environmentalists shouldn't have been so quick and strident to vilify fossil fuels, especially since oil and gas are almost soley responsible for the high standard of living Americans have enjoyed for more than a century. At this point in its development, alternative' energy (unless you're counting nuclear energy) can't come close to matching the efficiency and economy of fossil fuels. Oil produces 11 times more energy per dollar invested, say some in the oil patch. But that doesn't include the cost of  harm to the environment, argues the green lobby.

Bench technology in 'supplemental' energy generation has indeed advanced. But it is in no position yet to replace fossil fuels economically and practically. President Obama misspoke last March at a truck plant in Mount Holly, North Carolina, when he described oil as  "a fuel of the past." But he spoke for a lot of people who think wind, solar and bio energy can step right in and do what fossil fuels have done for the last 100 years. It's too early to write oil's obit, and I'm not keen on being regulated back to the stone ages. Or even back to the 1800s for that matter.

Oil as a fuel of the past? Not so fast. Mother earth has been turning matter into fossil fuel resources for 400 million years. But humans have only been using oil for 100.  There's plenty more where only a century's worth of it came from, though admittedly it's tougher and more expensive to produce.  In the last 40 years, we've become skilled at burning it efficiently, conserving it wisely and even cleaning it up better.

Green energy should play a backup role to fossil fuel until its ready to compete at the varsity level. At some point it will become a reliable alternative. If  green energy were regarded as the JV team instead of a rival, big oil would probably  train it, groom it and guarantee its eventual membership  in  the energy industry's Lettermen's club. Big oil has the capabiliity to put  green energy into the game before the  'greens' can.

The environmental movement got underway in earnest about 42 years ago when Los Angelenos, perpetually bogged down on congested freeways, finally got fed up with the blanket of pollution their automobile emissions cast over the City of Angeles. Not too long  afterwords (by the mid-1970s), but long before the EPA exploded into the nation's most powerful regulatory institution, engineers had implemented  techologies to deal with smog: catalytic converters, reformulated fuels and more efficient engines. They worked.

Earlier this year National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) presented research showing Los Angeles' smog is under control. Since the 1960s there has been a 98 percent decrease in air pollutants known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), even though more cars are venturing over the region's complex, serpentine freeway system. While ozone levels, however, do not meet EPA standards, the NOAA says they're trending downward.

Meanwhile when pressed, a majority of California Air Resoruces Board (CARB) members have admitted they want to get rid of internal combustion vehicles altogether. The sooner the better. But sooner might not be better because there's a big problem technology hasn't solved yet. For every five-percent-market share electric cars gain, one new power plant has to be constructed to meet battery recharging demand. Unless nuclear generation goes mainstream, those power plants would have to be coal, gas or oil-fired operations. And that will send more carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all the old gasoline fueled cars ever did.

Today Mom would have been 96 years old. Well, she still will be; it's just she's not here anymore, and hasn't been for 30 years. It's a shame our sons had not been born when she passed away. It's a shame a lot of people missed out on her personality; and there's no telling how much wealthier the world would have been had she had these last three decades to let  her wisdom age into a fine vintage.

She was aunt to all of my sister's and my friends, and she was the best friend of those who were her friends. Her father immigrated from Ireland and owned a bar on Wall Street in the 1920s that gave him a  living good enough  to move his wife and  six children to a farm in New Jersey. Of all her brothers and sisters, Mom seemed to have best captured the sagacity, insight, sharp wit, gift of gab and story-telling skill that proves over and over again that the Irish really were responsible for the development of Western Civilization.

She lived in a time when women were said to be repressed whether they knew it or not. But I don't think that concept phased her. She had other concerns. Both of parents died within a year of each other before she graduated from high school in the 1930s. Her job at J.P. Morgan in New York required conformity to a fairly strict dress code, but she described it as more glamorous than confining.  Especially the white gloves. Like many other women of the time, she had to wait out the war to marry my Father. Then she experienced the unthinkable, being widowed with two young children when our Father died suddenly, tragically in a commuter train wreck.

My uncle, the black sheep in my Father's  family, warned Mom at the funeral if she wanted any kind of life she needed to get away. My grandparents, he said, would come to Red Bank, New Jersey, for the funeral and never leave. Which is what happened. So Mom followed Uncle Mac's advice and decamped from New Jersey for Seattle where he and my aunt lived. In 1952 she bought a new Plymouth Suburban (the original Suburban)  station wagon and plopped my sister in the fold-down backseat so she could sleep most of the way while I rode shotgun with no seatbelts. Driving across the country back then was an adventure, to say the least, for anyone, let alone a widow with two children.

We set up shop in Seattle. A new life for Mom and the beginning of one for my sister and me. She married a wonderful man seven years later; intensified  her life of service to the community and the poor; practiced a devout, practical brand of Catholicism (even dragging our agnostic stepfather to many liturgical  events and ceremonies). While most people who knew her exclaimed how remarkable she was, she never made the claim herself. She never batted an eye at her accomplishments, and always looked forward to tomorrow. For a woman who reached her fullness in the 1950s and nutured it until her death in 1982 when a lot of women were letting loose their frustration and resentment at the inequality of the sexes, she seemed set apart. She already was her own person, and she was happy.