Trace a simple stalk of celery back to its raw roots and you get a lesson in how diesel fuels America's economy.
Before it winds up in a grocer's bin and is sliced into a salad, every step of the way--from field to kitchen--celery grown at A.G. Kawamura's farm in Irvine is touched by dozens of machines, all powered by diesel.
First, tractors and plows prepare the rough land. Seedlings arrive by truck and are planted by machine. Fertilizer is sprayed, water is pumped; diesel provides the power. When the crop is ready, diesel drives harvesters and picking platforms. Big rigs haul the fresh celery from packing sheds to market. Then, it all starts over again: Diesel machines mulch and chop the field to prepare it for the next season.
"Every aspect of getting the crop grown and packed in a box--every step along the way has diesel involved in it," said Kawamura, a third-generation farmer. His farm, average in size, consumes enough diesel fuel every year to drive a heavy-duty truck half-a-million miles.
From tractors, bulldozers and ships to big rigs, trains and buses, these rugged engines are the workhorses of America. Reliable, fuel-efficient and tough enough to log a million miles and haul loads up steep mountain passes, "diesels are in every aspect of commerce," said Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce. "We may be moving things more and more through the communication highway, but remember that nobody has a computer unless we deliver it by truck."
But while diesel powers the modern economy, it also makes thousands of people sick. How to eliminate the massive volumes of pollution these engines spew into the air without disrupting the society that depends on them poses a major dilemma for environmental officials and engineers.
Technology, experts hope, could provide the solution.
"The need to find something better than diesel has spurred a tremendous wave of research and development," said Bill Van Amburg, a vice president of CALSTART, a business and government consortium promoting advanced transportation technologies in California.
For the first time in the 40 years that diesels have dominated heavy machinery, cleaner alternatives do exist.
Several thousand heavy-duty trucks and buses fueled by natural gas engines--which pollute about half as much as diesels--are plying the roads, carrying groceries in Sacramento, hardware in Irwindale, plasterboard in Los Angeles, mail in San Diego and garbage in Anaheim.
