In the absence of a government-launched Manhattan Project to ignite the alternative fuel revolution, the public must turn not just to the White House or the state house but also to the largest fleet owners in the country.

Carmakers such as Honda, BMW, and Toyota are waiting for only one thing before they commit their considerable resources away from gasoline cars and toward hydrogen, electric, natural gas (CNG) or other alternatively fueled vehicles. Those companies want tangible demand. Fleets -- governmental, commercial and private -- have a compelling volume purchasing power no automaker can ignore. Carriers in 2004 operated 675,000 trucks; the top ten include such firms as UPS, Federal Express, and Yellow Roadway. UPS alone deploys some 80,000 brown trucks daily as it makes 13 million deliveries every 24 hours. Only about 1,000 of UPS's massive fleet ran on compressed natural gas as of mid-2006. Within Federal Express's 70,000-vehicle fleet, the company operated 30,000 medium-duty trucks. Less than 100 were hybrid diesel as of mid 2006.

Some six million additional vehicles are owned by private commercial fleets. Wal-Mart alone operates 3,300 trucks that in 2005 drove 455 million miles to make 900,000 deliveries.

Many believe the notion that man inherits the Earth. Not so. He only holds it as a precious legacy for succeeding generations. That inheritance must not be squandered or reduced to rubble because of the war, industrial epidemic, or ecocidal damage arising from the intoxicating but nonetheless toxic fumes of internal combustion.

PUBLIC LECTURE

Edwin Black is the author of Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives, which has just been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He will give a public lecture on his book at the University of Alberta's Telus Centre (at 111th St and 87th Avenue) today at 3 p.m.

Today, alternative fuel vehicles are ready -- or fast becoming ready -- to roll out en masse. If fleet managers adopted a Green Fleet Initiative, that is a hierarchy of purchasing that mandates hydrogen cars first, fully electric cars second, and CNG cars third, the race would be among all truck and heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers from GM to Mercedes to be the first to fulfil those orders.

Volume purchasing would multiply and accelerate the technology, bring down costs, and migrate such vehicles swiftly from commercial fleets to average consumers.

Therefore, the public and environmentally conscious companies can choose to ship green, shop green, drink green, and even communicate green. For example, in choosing an overnight shipper will it be Federal Express or UPS? In buying soda, will it be Coke or Pepsi?

Corporate policies, such as nondiscrimination, labour fairness, environmental damage, and other conduct are already determining factors for many in choosing where to place their business. Therefore, there is more power in one petition to UPS and Federal Express than to all the members of Congress.

Ironically, the U.S. government itself maintains America's single largest fleet by far -- some 600,000 vehicles.

Environmental groups have consistently sued the federal government to compel it to follow its own alternative fuel guidelines. The Energy Policy Act, passed after the first Gulf War, mandates all federal agencies to reduce oil dependence by ensuring that some 75 per cent of new vehicle purchases use alternative fuels.

The law has been totally ignored.

A steady cascade of court rulings has rejected government requests for delays. Government purchases alone could spur the rapid adoption of any category of alternative fuel vehicle.

Governments and regimes since the time of the timber-hoarding pharaohs have declined to embrace a public policy that exercises sane stewardship over energy and those who control it.