At Yes! Magazine, Erika Lundahl writes—The West Coast Electric Highway Enables Zero Emission Road Trips:
The West Coast Electric Highway—one of the longest electrified corridors in the world—is demonstrating that electric vehicles are here for the long haul.
In 2008, the West Coast states of California, Oregon, Washington and the province of British Columbia all recognized a simple, but alarming fact: western North America was experiencing significant population growth. That meant tens of thousands more vehicles on the road, producing more climate change-causing greenhouse gases and lowering air quality across the whole region.
To prepare for that outcome, they laid out a shared vision in two 2008 agreements for an alternative fuel corridor along I-5 and Highway 99 to promote the use of biofuels, hybrids, electric or zero-emission vehicles, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles. Federal funding from The EV Project helped kickstart the effort and the first charging station on the West Coast Electric Highway was opened in 2011.
“The focus is to give electric vehicle drivers a unique and consistent driving experience,” says Tonia Buell, a project development manager with the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Now boasting thousands of chargers, the West Coast Electric Highway makes it possible for an intrepid zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) driver to drive from Baja California to British Columbia, charging as needed at stations spaced every 25-50 miles along the highway.
Buell, a proud ZEV driver, has been a part of the West Coast Electric Highway project since its earliest days. She identifies new station locations, forms partnerships with utilities and private companies, and creates unified branding and signage up and down the West Coast. Buell dreams of the highway system becoming the Route 66 of electric infrastructure—an iconic road for fossil-fuel free travelers. [...]
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2006—Matthews, Buchanan Eviscerate Neocons And Warmongering On The Right:
I have a love-hate relationship with Chris Matthews. OK, it's mostly a hate relationship, in that I hate his documented record of being so misleading and so fundamentally wrong on so many issues.
But, I must give credit where credit is due. In those rare occasions where Matthews gets it right, he hits it out of the ballpark.
As Hunter pointed out, Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, and Rush Limbaugh are among a disturbing number of conservatives who are calling for an all-out world war.
These conservatives have an insatiable appetite for conflict and a maniacal desire to try all 31 flavors war. They want to use events in the Mideast as an excuse to invade any country whose citizens dare to call God "Allah." But their calls for a wider war are not the result of some warped idea that the sound of rockets pounding in neighborhoods will lull the hate to sleep. Nope. They. Just. Want. War.
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