Dear Pete,

The Clarity is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and even though it is “zero emission”, what is not explained is that a hydrogen car is 3 times less efficient than a battery electric car, which is also zero emission. It takes 3 times more energy to go the same distance in a hydrogen car than an EV. So, even though I support the research into hydrogen (maybe one day it wont be so inefficient), I believe that electric cars are where we should be putting most of our focus and dollars. We just don’t have time to waste, and even car manufacturers admit that it will take several decades until a hydrogen car to be mass produced. And the hydrogen infrastructure issue is a huge challenge, whereas every house has outlets from which to charge your car, and there are electric poles on most every street.

No transportation option is perfect – they all use some energy or natural resource – but battery powered cars getting their fuel from sun and wind energy strike me as the best long term solution. And the technology is much, much farther along than H2 cars.

For more information on electric cars, go to www.pluginamerica.org. On that site are many interesting links and there you can also buy the excellent and very readable book Plug in Hybrids, the Cars that will Recharge America by Sherry Boschert, and a copy of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? which has a bit on hydrogen cars.

So, no test driving the Clarity for me! I am happy with my battery electric car and my next car will also be an EV.

Alexandra

Hi Linda,

This is a great question. I do not eat any meat or fish, and do not wear leather, wool nor silk. I don’t use products tested on animals, try very hard not to use products whose ingredients are tested on animals, and boycott companies that test on animals (see http://search.caringconsumer.com/ for information). However, the protein powder I use does have whey in it and I do buy eggs, but only from my local farmers’ market, at a stall where they don’t sell a lot of eggs and I am very sure that the hens are treated well and have access to the outdoors when they want. So I am not a vegan, because I do include dairy and eggs in my diet.

I do not buy the “cage free, free range, organic, all natural” eggs in the health food store or anywhere because, as you will read if you go to http://www.goveg.com/organic_eggs.asp , those labels are incredibly misleading. The bottom line is that any place that is a factory farm (housing thousands of chickens) cannot treat the hens humanely. They still cut off their beaks to prevent hen-pecking (caused from their stressful lives), their “free range” is a overcrowded shed filthy with excrement. The excrement dust and the horrific ammonia smell from their waste give them lung issues. Male chicks because they cannot be egg layers. It might be better than living in a cage so crowded no hen can move and their feet start growing over the wire beneath them, but it is still extraordinarily cruel the way hens are treated on big farms.

So my recommendation is to stay away from eggs unless you have seen where they come from or you have your own happy hens. Your question reminds me that I should go look for myself at the farm from where the eggs I buy come, instead of relying on photos and what the lady selling the eggs says. I will go there – thank you!

Alexandra

The movie, Javelina, was shot on a ranch that was 640 square miles, about 45 minutes from Del Rio, Texas, which is a border town. It is an independent movie directed by my old friend Barry Tubb. He describes it as “Jaws, but with wild boars instead of a shark”. Definitely not a Lifetime movie! In 1988, I starred in After the Rain, filmed in San Augustine, Texas, which is so beautiful. So I like shooting in your home state!

Thanks for your kind email. Don’t know when A Sister’s Secret (also called A Sister’s Revenge) will be airing on Lifetime, but keep checking back on this site to find out. Vietly, the webmaster, always knows everything about my career before I do!

Alexandra