ConsumerDemand andDevelopment of GreenCars
The day automakers put the earth at the top of their agenda will go down in history. Reading this book, one gets the sense that day is coming, major automakers—still no paragons of environmentalism—have gotten the message that replacing the dirty internal-combustion engine is an urgent priority. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population,Americans produce 14 percent of all global warming carbon-dioxide gas.And car tailpipes pump out more than 30 percent of U. S. air pollution.
In his new book, ForwardDrive: The Race toBuild "Clean"Cars for the Future, environmentalist Jim Motavalli concludes that capitalist competition is leading the way over government mandates to clean up that exhaust. Motavalli chronicles the movement for cleaner cars: the few visionaries and zealots building and driving home-built battery-powered cars; the divided giant automakers working tirelessly to develop clean cars while fighting regulatory efforts to require them; university researchers concluding studies; and the regulators trying to speed their adoption.
ForwardDrive covers the technological advances of the hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles poised to take over from the internal-combustion engine. In some ways, Motavalli is an unlikely narrator.A、self-vowed car nut who stumbled into a job editingE, theEnviromental Magazine, he seems biased on both sides of the issue.But ultimately, that’s what makes him best suited to tell this story.
Motoavalli’s concern for the environment is sincere, and his knowledge of cars is refreshingly accurate. The most interesting passages follow his transformattion from internal-combustion devotee to environmental auto cynic and battery-car zealot to hopeful future-car realist. "It was disconcerting, to say the least, to learn that my hobby of collecting classic cars and my growing concern for the environment didn’t necessarily mesh," Motavalli writes. "The car has certainly been good to me, but I’m becomin disenchanted."
In the preface, he noted that he set out to write a book critical of the auto industry for teaming up with major oil companies to block the development of clean cars.But when he dug in to do more research, he found a different story. Namely that automakers inDetroit, Japan, andEurope are in a heated race to start selling cars that are more environmentally correct.
A、[■] Unfortunately, Motavalli glosses over issues of consumer deman
D、
B、[■] He never mentions that today’s electric cars and gasoline-electric hybrids cost far more than internal-combustion cars of equal or greater capability.
C、[■] He notes their utter dedication to their electric cars and implies that the rest of the buying public should simply be as enthusiastic, without addressing issues of price or various ways families use their cars.
D、[■]
He strongly favorsCalifornia’s mandate that 10 percent of all vehicles sold in the state be zero-emission-vehicle-battery or fuel-cell electrics, not hybrids—even though he writes, "Ultimately, vehicles halfheartedly designed to meet a mandate would fail in the marketplace."And he gives a short shift to the point that clean cars do nothing to ease congestion and sprawl.
In a telephone interview, Motavalli concedes that technology is progressing faster than the book deadline allowed him to keep up with. If anything, automakers are working harder to develop hybrid-electrics.And mass-market hybrid-drive systems will likely first show up in the big sport utility vehicles that Motavalli rails against.
Nevertheless, he now believes that the automakers with the deepest pockets have the best chance of building better cars for tomorrow. "The new, clean cars will emerge not from a tinkerer’s garage, but from the well-funded research labs of the same big auto companies t

Social Readjustment Scales
Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) to measure life change as a form of stress.
The scale assigns numerical values to 43 major life events that are supposed to reflect the magnitude of the readjustment required by each change. In responding to the scale, respondents are asked to indicate how often they experienced any of these 43 events during a certain time period (typically, the past year). The person then adds up the numbers associated with each event checkeD、

The SRRS and similar scales have been used in thousands of studies by researchers all over the worlD、
Overall, these studies have shown that people with higher scores on the SRRS tend to be more vulnerable to many kinds of physical illness--and many types of psychological problems as wellDerogatis &Coons, 1993; Gruen, 1993; Scully, Tosi &Banning, 2000).
More recently, however, experts have criticized this research, citing problems with the methods used and raising questions about the meaning of the findingsCritelli &Ee, 1996 ; Monroe & Mc0uaid, 1994; Washington, 2000).
First, the assumption that the SRRS measures change exclusively has been shown to be inaccurate. We now have ample evidence that the desirability of events affects adaptational outcomes more than the amount of change that they require (Turner & Wheaton, 1995). Thus, it seems prudent to view the SRRS as a measure of diverse forms of stress, rather than as a measure of change-related stress (McLean & Link,1994).
Second, the SRRS fails to take into account differences among people in their subjective perception of how stressful an event is. For instance, while divorce may deserve a stress value of 73 for most people, a particular person’s divorce might generate much less stress and merit a value of only 25.
Third, many of the events listed on the SRRS and similar scales are highly ambiguous, leading people to be inconsistent as to which events they report experiencing (Monroe & McQuaid, 1994). For instance, what qualifies as "trouble with the boss" Should you check that because you’re sick and tired of your supervisor What constitutes a "change in living conditions"Does your purchase of a great new sound system qualifyAs you can see, the SRRS includes many "events" that are described inadequately, producing considerable ambiguity about the meaning of one’s response. Problems in recalling events over a period of a year also lead to inconsistent responding on stress scales, thus lowering their reliability (Klein & Rubovits,1987).
Fourth, the SRRS does not sample from the domain of stressful events very thoroughly.Do the 43 events listed on the SRRS exhaust all the major stresses that people typically experience Studies designed to explore that question have found many significant omissionsDohrenwend et al., 1993; Wheaton, 1994).
Fifth, the correlation between SRRS scores and health outcomes may be inflated because subjects’ neuroticism affects both their responses to stress scales and their self-reports of health problems. Neurotic individuals have a tendency to recall more stress than others and to recall more symptoms of illness than others (Watson,David & Suls, 1999). These tendencies mean that some of the correlation between high stress and high illness may simply reflect the effects of subjects’ neuroticismCritelli &Ee, 1996). The possible contaminating effects of neuroticism obscure the meaning of scores on the SRRS and similar measures of stress.
The LifeExperiences Survey
In the light of these problems, a number of

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