Back in ‘96 a movie came out called “Who killed the electric car?” that sparked interest in why we are driving with combustible engines knowing full well we are killing the environment with them. Much in typical American fashion, we’ve forgotten all about the movie and the flavor-of-the-month attitude killed the majority’s interest in it as well.

Flash forward to today and you’ll see the interest being renewed (pardon the pun) in a race to build a car that either reduces carbon emissions or gets rid of them all together. Ford is dead set on making Ethanol cars which, to me, is just trading one problem for another. Toyota has the hybrid but that’s just cutting the emissions in half and, unfortunately at this point, it isn’t enough.

Enter Shai Agassi.  Wired Magazine’s cover article this month has a fascinating interview with him. This 38-year-old dot-com veteran took on the task to change the way we see cars and how a new approach would, and could work. The concept is somewhat simple, but not without its questions: create a car that has a rechargeable battery. The battery can be recharged at various stations that will be constructed around the country. This has been thought of many times over. So we need a new perspective on it and here it is: the battery is not the property of the car owner, it’s merely leased to them. Just like you don’t get petrol and oil to feed your car when you buy it, you don’t get to keep the battery. This way the owner gets the piece of mind knowing that if something goes wrong with the battery they can just give it back for a new one and the car company gets profits from the lease. Here’s one of the diagrams of the set-up:

Agassi has had an interesting last few years, talking with everyone from Israeli president Shimon Peres to U.S. state representatives about this idea. He’s got the passion of 100 poorly-paid school teachers and seems like he can really pull this off. He was asked in the interview if he was afraid of some other company taking the idea from him and running with it. “…he stares at me like I’m an idiot. ‘The mission is to end oil,’ he says, ‘not create a company.’ ”

We need more people like Agassi for the (right) new world order.

We lost someone this week. Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet who was referred to as the “national poet” of Palestine.

Darwish used his poetry to gain the attention of the world so they may understand the Palestinian movement and it’s problems of obtaining a solid state. The Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement “He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience. He embodied the best in Palestinians… even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being.”

If there was ever any trace of animosity in his words it was due to a substantial amount of frustration he felt as both a public figure and a refugee himself. Once stating “my homeland is not a suitcase,” Darwish showed that despite the struggle for placement of his people with Israel, their energy should be used for humanity. He was quoted as saying “The first step of real peace is to know the other side, its culture and creativity”.

A great example of this is his poem “He Is Calm, and I Am Too”

He is calm,
And I am too.
He drinks lemon tea,
And I drink coffee.
(this is the only thing different about us)
He, like me, wears a loose striped shirt,
And I stare, like him, in a monthly magazine.
He does not see me as I eye him discreetly;
I do not see him as he eyes me discreetly.
He is calm,
And I am too.
He asks the waiter for something;
I ask the waiter for something.
A black cat passes between us,
And I touch its night of fur;
He touches its night of fur.
I do not tell him: The sky is clear today,
More blue;
He does not tell me: the sky is clear today.
He is the seen and the one who sees;
I am the seen and the one ho sees.
I move my left leg;
He moves his right leg.
I hum the melody of a song;
He hums the melody of a song.
I wonder: Is he the mirror wherein I see myself?
Then I look towards his eyes, and I do not see him.
I leave the coffee shop in a hurry,
I think: Maybe he is a killer,
Or maybe he is only a man passing through
And though I am a killer.

His website says “[he] quietly left us…He was a beautiful human being, able to see what no one else can see: in life, politics, and even people, expressing his visions in a language that seems to be made only for him to write with.”

We need more people like Mahmoud. I think this earth has more people like Mahmoud, but they are afraid to come out of hiding. I don’t blame them.