TV star leads clean-vehicle drive

An eclectic crowd gathers on a street corner inside Reno’s National Automobile Museum—The Harrah Collection. Parked on the museum street are a handful of environmentally friendly cars: A Toyota Tacoma truck with a converted engine that burns hydrogen fuel, sporty Hydrogen Cobra in a slick red body donated by Carroll Shelby, and a Toyota Prius—the leader of the pack driven across the country in the Drive to Survive 2003 by Dennis Weaver. Yes, that’s Weaver the actor—but also Weaver the founder of the Institute of Ecolonomics.

The press conference starts late because cameras from two Reno TV news stations don’t arrive on time. Weaver, dressed in a pale blue Western shirt, tan boots and Wranglers with a chunky turquoise belt buckle, leans against a faux light post while he waits to speak.

One museum visitor, Ernest Riley, can’t quite place Weaver in TV history. Riley, touring Reno from Stockton, Calif., on the “gambling bus,” works as a docent for the Towne Ford Museum in Sacramento. He wonders whether Weaver is the kind of celebrity who’s along for the ride.

In fact, Weaver started the Drive to Survive to raise awareness of alternatives to fossil fuels. Weaver and his wife of 57 years built and live in a sustainable solar house—called “Earthship"—in Colorado that’s built from recycled tires and aluminum cans.

“Ah, so he’s an enthusiast,” Riley, 80, says.

When Weaver is introduced as “America’s favorite cowboy” and folks start referencing the actor’s role on Gunsmoke, Riley gets excited.

“That’s the guy who limped!” he says. “That’s Chester the limp! I liked him.”

After joking about the age of folks who remember his role on Gunsmoke (somewhat younger people might be more familiar with Weaver’s role as Marshal Sam McCloud), Weaver begins his pitch for alternative fuels.

“We see the evolution of the automobile right in this building,” Weaver says. “Henry Ford had no idea the impact the auto would have on our daily lives … or that autos would populate the country the way they have. He talked thousands, now we talk millions and millions.”

Nowadays, Weaver says, our nation’s profusion of gas-powered vehicles contributes to smog, acid rain and ozone depletion. And fossil fuels, not a renewable resource, will be extinct in three or four decades. That’s why Weaver and his crew of folks are doing the Drive to Survive 2003. The tour began in Los Angeles on April 30 and will conclude in Washington, D.C., on May 14. There, Weaver will present a petition calling for federal support of clean fuels.

“We’ve gotta go beyond what we have been using,” he says. “We’re pointing out that there’s a better way of doing things—one that reduces our dependence on foreign oil.”

Weaver’s Prius—an electric/gasoline hybrid that gets about 45 to 50 miles per gallon—represents a technology that’s available now. Vehicles that run on hydrogen fuel aren’t far off, he predicts. In California, a state Assembly bill under consideration calls for a $500 million bond to subsidize the building of 400 hydrogen fuel stations by the end of 2005. That should boost demand for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

“We are the creative species on this planet,” Weaver says.

He quotes the cartoon character Pogo: “'We have met the enemy and they is us.’ We’re the only hurdle between what we have now and a clean alternative.”

—Deidre Pike