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"What do you consider progress? Rhetoric? Designs outlined in magazine articles?"

Are you really asking this or is it just a rhetorical question? - it seems awfully rhetorical to me - but i will attempt an answer anyway.

Ok, I am talking about manufacturing and testing models, of Hybrid vehicles (Petrol and Hydrogen) and simply hydrogen vehicles that, unlike the electric cars, actually allow people to go the same speeds and thus have the same convenience as a currently 'normal' car. Once they perfect their current models a little bit more they are planning on releasing them to the general public. There is the potential for hydrogen cars being on the road next year.
However, there are two big obstacles that car companies are going to have to overcome with these alternatively fueled vehicles.
1. with ANY new invention there is a long period of trial and error - look at the Wright brothers, it took them a while to get that whole flying thing down ( no pun intended)and even when they did, it took HOW LONG for flight to catch-on as a safe method of transportation?!
2. there are stubborn people who do not like the idea of change either because they have the potential to lose money on the deal, or just because there is something in human nature that is terrified at venturing into the unknown ( that is why explorers are hero's, they faced the unknown challenges that lay ahead of them and persevered). Yes, it IS going to take a while for the Hydrogen vehicles to catch on - at no fault of the government, the scientists and engineers building them and the companies producing them. what will take the longest to convince is the general public, you start convincing people that Hydrogen is an option and you can bring about your definition of progress perhaps a lot sooner.

Thanks for your response. One of the biggest obstacles to the introduction of hydrogen-powered cars is the lack of fueling stations. Yet nobody is going to build a fueling station until there are customers with tanks to fill. It's the chicken or egg dilemma.

This may be a situation where the government will need to subsidize the industry in order to get it started.

But I think instead of crediting the Green Party with trying to get the technology in place, you might credit President Bush, who outlined this proposal over a year ago. And Governor Schwarzenegger has made some proposal regarding fueling stations in California, although I don't know the details.