Bill Dietrich was science reporter for The Seattle Times and faculty advisor for The Planet magazine at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment. He now is a mostly retired journalist and author, and lives in Anacortes.
The Tesla I was so excited about in 2000 became, in 2025, “swasticars” to their critics. The once apolitical libertarian allied himself with “drill-baby-drill” Donald Trump, the longtime scourge of electric vehicles and windmills.
It’s a national crisis that’s been accelerating at warp speed since 1990, when newspaper revenue began to crater because the internet eliminated want ads and much of print retail advertising.