I will soon be seventy six and I recall, as a child, a woman who drove her electric car to church every Sunday. Quietly it passed through the streets of Grosse Pointe, a potted palm resting from floor to top in what would have been the passenger side and she, the driver, seated on what appeared to be a curved love seat.

The invention of the electric car is not new. It's conception was killed by an industry so tied to oil that any thought or ideas or inventions which relied on alternative methods for transportation were firmly destroyed.

When we consider the cost that the nation has paid to protect oil interests, one can easily conclude that had those costs gone instead to maintaining our inner cities, high education standards, affordable and energy efficient homes and buildings, lower tax burdens, universal health care and college educations for all who are worthy and capable of reaching graduate goals. Instead, we continue to spend money on wars and missions impossible in the middle east and while doing so, we manage to aid emerging nations while ignoring the needs that are vividly clear when we drive through places like Detroit.

As long as Detroit and Michigan itself resists going green, the age of reason will remain an enigma and the people who live in all inner cities will continue to live without hope.