It dawned on me the other day, despite the fact that everyone seems to agree that automobiles are one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases imaginable, WHY this state of affairs would be is still open to question. Now, if you brought back someone who was frozen in 1976, not to be too Austin Powers, it's pretty much a fact that they wouldn't recognize very much; 8-track tape players? You gotta be kidding. They've been long-since supplanted by, consecutively, cassette players, Sony Walkmans, Sony CD Walkmans, and seemingly the ultimate incarnation, the Apple iPod; carry thousands of songs, practically in your friggin' wallet. 35mm SLR cameras? Once again, technology had a better idea, and we've all now traded even our trusty point-and-shoot 35s for digital cameras, sometimes even dispensing with those, and just trusting the ones that came in our cell phones. Cell phones? Boy, that'd fry some diodes in our societal time traveler, to say nothing of Google, Twitter, Facebook, and, God forbid, even email. Which begs the question, what WOULD our friend recognize from his own time? Flourescent light bulbs, Bob Dylan, and the ultimate no-touch-um item on automobiles; the catalytic converter. Foisted upon Americans by public outcry admonishing us to clear the smog from our air, so we could all breathe better, these devices were supposedly in our best interest. How did they work? In the event that you've forgotten, or never knew to begin with, the concept was simple; platinum pellets, or, later, platinum embedded in a ceramic substrate, would oxidize the Carbon Monoxide produced in internal combustion engine exhaust into-TA DA!-Carbon Dioxide and water. For a while this seemed to work. The skies were clearer than they had been in decades, never mind the fact that soon after this, the post-industrial era would begin in America, and almost everything we were even remotely able to buy came from China, Malaysia, or somplace else other than Heartland, USA (unless you happened to be in the market for a conversion van or mobile home, which would almost inevitably come from Elkhart, Indiana.) Obviously, then, too, the technological change brought about by catalytic converters brought all sorts of new things with it, like stealing catalytic converters and selling them for their platinum content. This is not a procedure I'd recommend, primarily because I'm not of that criminal a bent, first of all, and second, having removed catalysts in the course of being a mechanic, (and then dutifully replacing or reinstalling them, of course,) it's a bit*h. This is NOT a procedure you really wanna be involved with, trust me. The water content in the exhaust also necessiatated the almost universal use of galvanized or stainless-steel exhaust systems. In the event you haven't checked, a stainless-steel exhaust, while it does have a 5-to-10-year life span, also costs at least 5 times as much as a comparable setup where there is no worry about what the water content of the exhaust is going to do to the pipes over time. Which, of course, is almost impossible to compare, since catalysts have been with us for almost the last 35 years. But let's examine what else has occurred in the past 35 years, shall we? In 1974, a Lincoln Mark IV, arguably the car Jesus would have chosen to make his return in, had He returned from the right hand of God in that year, was a by-today's-standards paltry $10,194. Slightly more reasonable was the $3,088 charged for a 1973 Mustang Mach I. (We shall not even contemplate that automotive travesty known as the 1974 Mustang II; a Pinto in drag doesn't qualify as a real car in my book.) By 1978, the Ford LTD Landau like my dad had, when I first got behind the wheel of a car, would set you back $5,898. By 1998, a top-of-the-line Mustang Cobra convertible would set you back $30,200, although it also had a significant power advantage over its 1973 brethren. These days, a Lincoln MKZ will run you $37,000 and change. This, friends, is the real world, dollars-and-cents cost of progress; that a new Mustang will significantly outrun its 1970s counterpart, but cost you ten times as much. Which, of course, has driven the necessary increases in wages, due to the increased cost of living. And by all that, of course, well, the supply of money employers can generate is just as finite as anything else in this world; there's a finite number of consumers for everything. What happens then? Unemployment goes up, stress increases, the cost of health care skyrockets so much, having a job with health benefits has almost gone back to being a gamble. Which brings us back to my initial point about the catalytic convertor; 30 years ago, the waning size of the polar ice caps wasn't causing alarm that, as Robin Williams once said, "all the people in California (would surf) to Denver." Are we seeing the spiral here?! In my opinion, (humble though it is,) catalysts, stainless-steel exhaust systems, and all the other detritus that has come to go along with them, need to be consigned to the history books where they belong; we don't need to be able to access our emails, answer our cell phones, or do anything that's going to distract us from the chore of simply driving. And I'm fairly certain Polar Bears don't enjoy falling through the ice because it's so thin it can't support their bulk. (And no wisecracks about telling the bears to go on diets; if you had to live on Salmon, Seals, and whatever else you could lay your paws on, you wouldn't even begin to contemplate the notion of feasting of Honey Barbeque boneless chicken wings.) This is yet another case where we need to be smarter, which is nothing new, really; Sir Alec Issigonis, if you examine pictures of him, appears to be towering over the Austin Mini he brought the world in 1959. He was; and still, at six-feet-four-inches tall, he drove a Mini, a car no longer than ten feet in overall length, for years. Also amazing was the fact that 80% of the original Mini design was devoted to passenger space. The world can suit us all, we have the technology to do amazing things in the name of saving us all, and all we need are a few more creative genuises, not willing to think about how to remake what belongs in the trash heap of history, but contemplate something totally new. Step right up and save the world, if you've got the goods.