It’s been four years since we went solar. It started with Solarius Precarious (pic left), our 2 kWh, sun-tracking array in November 2006 (it went on-line in March 2007). We expanded our commitment in January 2010 with the installation of our solar hot water system (video below). During this time, we’ve felt strangely alone. Not only do the vast majority of people not share our beliefs, commitment, and investment. Many of them still consider us stupid, crazy, and perhaps even dangerous.
After a couple of years endlessly talking about and promoting solar energy- part of my role as director for the Utah Solar Energy Association which I left in 2009 after three years- I’ve pretty much stopped. In conversation or at parties, I still get the blank disinterested looks, the angry eco-terrorist-in-our-midst reactions, and more than anything, the I-just-don’t-get-it capitulation. It’s at that point I cease my ramblings and return to the subjects of other people’s kids, movies, celebrity scandals, and the other stuff most people seem to care about.
Throw in the lousy economy and a president who seems to have abandoned his commitment to clean energy and solar appears to be a dead issue. But a couple of developments the past few days have me encouraged again. First,
was featured in one of the few in the Deseret News last year (pic from the article at right). Things have definitely improved in Utah from when I got here in 2006. But the change has been glacial, mostly because of the ruling
Republican Party’s blind allegiance to coal, the fossil fuel lobby, the bad economy, and lack of effective renewable energy industry lobbyists.
Second, my commitment, promotion, and knowledge of solar power may have scored my biggest renewable energy video gig. I can’t give out details yet. I’ll know more this week and report it here. All I can tell you is it’s big- really big. That’s why I’m so excited about solar again. Not just for me but for the entire planet. Things are indeed changing for the better. And it makes me want to talk about it again- even if I still get the blank looks and have to talk about other people’s kids first.
Inexplicably, people have been scratching their heads for decades over where all the mercury pollution in our lakes, rivers, and other waterways is coming from. It’s been steadily increasing in our fish supply during this time and prompted occasional then permanent warnings about the dangers of eating fish because of the escalating amounts of mercury in them, regardless of species. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a cesspool of mercury. It sits among a cement plant, a couple of smelters, and a coal-burning power plant, all known mercury polluters. Yet, researchers seem at a loss to determine the source of the pollution. All I do is read a little and I figured it out.
We’ve known the source of most of this mercury all this time and have done nothing- until now. The Environmental Protection Agency is finally going after cement manufacturers, the leading emitter of mercury and one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and possible human-induced climate change. This will not sit well with birthers, right-wingers, Andrew Breitbart groupies, and other Earth-happiness-and-peace haters who think restricting their right to destroy the planet is another sign of the apocalypse.
How about cancer, asthma, birth defects, and heart attacks? Better now? Of course.
As I rode my bike along Willow Creek near downtown Park City the other day, I noticed something new since I’d been there a year ago. There were about seven new homes, built not only to be affordable but also passively and actively solar. They all had at least 1kWh of solar PVs and enough solar thermal panels to provide hot water for a family of at least four. As a construction guy told me at a bar later on, it’s the first subdivision of its type in Park City. This from one of the most otherwise progressive towns in America. I mean, they have a dog park.
But instead of being happy, I was actually rather sad. Seeing these new homes, which fit my idea of what all new home and office and construction should be, I thought about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I tried to detect a change in my own attitude as well as the rest of America. It didn’t change me much because, frankly, I changed my mind about renewable energy about ten years ago. Sadly, it has had almost zero impact on the rest of America.
No one seems to understand that our dependence on fossil fuels- oil as well as coal- is finite. No one seems to care that the toll on our children is going to far outweigh the convenience we enjoy now because of our fossil fuel folly. No one seems to care about anything except not wanting to hear about it any more. Just as they don’t want to think about energy, power, pollution or any of that ever, they don’t want to hear any more about BP, oil spills, solar power, or the people of Earth having to change their habits or face a bleak and avoidable future.
Yet another major disaster involving fossil fuels has people talking about renewable energy again. But only until the corporate news media get tired of the story and start chasing Sarah Palin and Tiger Woods again. So if you want to REALLY understand the difference between a nation and world that run on poisonous crap and one that runs on non-polluting, natural energy, here’s a simple chart put together by RenewableEnergyWorld.com.
Argue over taxes, geopolitics, supply and demand, and economies of scale all you want. The reality is we can’t survive in a fossil fuel world anymore. We can switch to renewables now or when it’s too late- if it isn’t already.
OUR LACK OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND SECURITY IS MORE FRIGHTENING THAN GETTING ATTACKED IN A SKYSCRAPER.
But Americans spend more time trying to discredit innovative, job-creating, decentralized, cleaner and renewable energy sources than finding and using alternatives to the crap we’re addicted to. We can’t get past the idea that fossil fuels are the only thing that works when the reality is that fossil fuels are perhaps the worst thing humans could possibly come up with to provide electricity, heat, etc. Even manure is cleaner.
If one oil rig, one power plant, or just one feeder cable goes out and you are crippled, that’s wrong. If you have viable, sustainable and affordable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, soy diesel and a myriad of other fuels available and affordable and you’re still dependent on fossil fuels, you’re stupid. If we trust the future of our entire country to companies like BP, Exxon-Mobil, Enron, and Massey Energy, we’re doomed.
America could be the world’s leader in renewable energy development. Instead our captains of industry and so-called “leaders” have lashed us to the oil rig and coal bin and we’re getting- well, drilled by the rest of the world because of it. Regardless of the cause of the Deepwater oil rig calamity, it exposes the Achilles Heel that America’s current energy “policy” is. And if we don’t break the chains of enslavement that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Massey and other fossil fuel masters have around our necks, we have no right to complain or expect improvement.
It took a lot longer than it should have. But the federal government- under folks with just a tad more sense than George W’s dominion of dolts- has finally taken steps to curtail mountaintop mining which has literally destroyed West Virginia (not that anyone would notice now). Sadly, it may be too late to correct the problems West Virginia’s reckless and arrogant coal mining moguls have caused the state’s people and environment. But perhaps the punitive damages Washington can extract from the coal mining industry’s anticipated violations of the suggested rules changes will soothe Appalachia’s wounds and prevent this grotesque and irreversable procedure from spreading.
Someday in America, water will become a more precious substance than oil. In many parts of the world, it already is. Here in Utah, we’re finding out now what many places in the west, Arizona and Nevada among them, already know: humans’ growing thirst is causing the Earth to literally fall out from under them. It’s similar to the problems caused by mining, oil drilling, mangrove uprooting and other human, Earth-moving activities.
Excessive pumping for agriculture and other human uses has caused a two-mile stretch of the Cedar Valley in southwest Utah to fall 100 feet in 70 years. The fissure has grown so big so fast that it’s causing the sewage in a nearby subdivision to flow backwards. State authorities are telling farmers, ranchers and land developers to cut back. But don’t expect that to happen. The human behavioral pattern regarding our planet is to use and abuse it until the resources are gone or the land is irretrievably damaged and things collapse, people die, and government is called in to clean up the mess.
If they’d invented these 30 years ago, I might’ve never gone into TV. I’ve been shooting for a company named TurnHere for more than two years. They’ve become successful and been instrumental in my own company’s success. Recently, they spun off a new company named Vook. The name comes from “video book.” They put videos to books made available on-line for download to your computer, PDA, phone, whatever. Numerous vids are sprinkled throughout a Vook, short and artistic scene-setters that put the reader in the mood or otherwise enhance the experience. They contacted me because I’m one of TurnHere’s “preferred filmmakers” and wanted me to produce one.
Some of their titles are new, some are literally ancient. They wanted me to tap into the virtually bottomless vault of literary works known as “public domain.” Books, essays and other writings so old (Plato, anyone?) that you can reuse the work for any purpose you’d like and not have to pay royalties. I looked over the extremely partial list of titles Vook was interested in doing and found one I thought would be outstanding: Jack London’s “Call of the Wild.”
I say outstanding because it’s not only a classic, suitable for the family, involves dogs, sledding, mystery and, of course, redemption. It also gave me the chance to take my camera up into the mountains and do what I love at my favorite time of year. There was one major question though: where was I going to find sled dogs and an old mine- two major ingredients to the story?
I got the email from Vook on a Saturday morning in early February giving me the green light on the project. I was spending the weekend in Park City helping my wife run an academic conference (helping as in skiing). I thought about it a second, remembered I was right in the heart of Winter Sports USA, and spun the Google of Fortune. I revved up the laptop and did a search for “Park City Dog Sled.”
I found several local firms that offer dog sled rides for families and groups. But I also found an international dog sled event happening just a few miles away. I paged down to find the date. It was TODAY. In fact, it was an hour from now. I threw on my coat, gloves, etc. Then I realized. I don’t have my camera gear. Insert word here most Utahns never imagined.
I mushed like hell down to Salt Lake City (that “all downhill” thing works great until you realize it’s eventually “all uphill”). Got home, grabbed the camera, Sorel boots, anything else warm I could find among our house construction debris, jumped back in the car and screamed back up the 3,000 ft. vertical to PC. I got to the dog races just in time to catch the start.
It was a perfect day for Park City. Not sunny, dry and in the 80s. But partly cloudy, slightly snowing and in the 30s. It took all the creativity, endurance and muscle I had- with the inspiration of 3-4 lattes- to shoot around the crowds, tents and cars to transport a 2010 spectator event into a desperate, solitary slog through Alaskan gold country in the 1890s. Thank God for filters and Photoshop.
The next day, Sunday, we were supposed to go home. But I still needed to find an old mine: another central element to the plot of “Call of the Wild”. The night before, I was in a Park City bar (doing research, of course) when I struck up a conversation with the couple next to me. When they asked me what I was doing there (besides goofing off), I told them about the Vook. They were from Utah and excited about the idea. So I asked them if they knew of any good, old mines. The guy said, “Yeah, saw one yesterday right behind the golf course.” Of… course.
Park City is an old silver mining town but ruins can be hard to get to because of the steep terrain and deep snow. So “right behind the golf course” sounded pretty good. Sunday morning, I drove to where he said they were and, sure enough: saved as a landmark to promote a housing development called “Unbelievably Convenient and Visual Mine Ruins Estates”. Or something like that. It worked beautifully.
The weather held so I took the next day to shoot in the Uinta Mountains east of Park City and at Echo Reservoir near the Wyoming border. Running down one of my favorite showshoe trails to simulate dog sled POV (I’m not posting the video of my lens-first fall for professional reasons), I just happened upon the perfect dog (a Bernese) for one of the book’s great scenes. The dog’s owner, also a snowshoer, was into it. I told him the story and he told the dog how to act. Good job, but working with animals is harder than herding anchor people.
So my first Vook experience was a gas, plus I got to use my extensive news gathering skills to do something that wasn’t a murder, scam or other tragedy. “Call of the Wild” will be released soon and I’ll let you all know when. Thanks to Stacy Waters, Peter Duddington and everyone else at TurnHere and Vook for being so good to me over the years. I look forward to more Vooks in Utah’s spectacular national parks and wilderness. But most importantly, I’m looking forward to sharing classic books and my video work with all of you.
When I travel outside Utah, usually the midwest, and people talk about “the news”, I usually bring up our numerous environmental issues. In seconds, their eyes glisten and close, their heads slowly tilt to one side, and anyone awake after a minute has gone to get another beer even though they already have one.
But the environment is BIG NEWS here in Utah and the west. It affects everything we do here and a lot of things people who don’t live here do. Tourists, the recreation industry, energy industry employees, federal government workers. So the news this morning was huge: the lift of the ban on guns in national parks, one county’s new lawsuit to seize roads in a national monument, and plans to make two areas new national monuments or parks. But instead of writing exhaustive and comprehensive reasons for my positions, I will make it easy for those of you who don’t care AND the opposition whom I know read my blog:
1) Lifting the gun ban in national parks: why doesn’t this make ME feel safe? All I have is bear spray.
2) Kane County’s Grand Staircase road lawsuit: State Rep. Mike Noel and other Kane County “leaders” will never understand you can’t “take back” land that was never yours. Their endless, costly attempts at theft are an ironic abuse of taxpayer money, futile and still illegal. They might as well try bear spray.
3) Two new national monuments: It’s already PUBLIC land. The only things we’re losing are the cow pies from cattle allowed to graze for free, the ORV/ATV attacks destroying it, and the threat of oil and mining companies taking it. Sounds like a pretty good deal. And it will still be good for local business: selling all that bear spray.
The recent Treehugger report on how states are being manipulated by the coal industry and other fossil fuel interests includes special recognition of Utah’s Republican-dominated and easily-manipulated-for-the-right-price legislature. Not only are Utah’s Republicans upholding the most lenient lobby laws in the country, opening the door for virtually unlimited perks and other activity even Illinois would call corruption. They do it in the name of “freedom.” Now that’s irony.
These clowns’ version of “freedom” would have all Americans- not just Utahns- enslaved by coal, gasoline, oil and other fossil fuel products. They would defend the current energy system that enriches our enemies while exposing our nation’s power sources to terrorists, Enron-style criminals, and foreign monopolies. All this while ignoring the fact that Utah has some of the greatest supplies of renewable energy- solar, geothermal, biomass, wind and all the rest- in the world. So why would they fight renewable energy and recommend that President Obama do the same?
Because renewable energy companies are not willing or able to grease the greedy palms of Utah’s cash-hungry government wonks. What the renewable energy industry in Utah is practicing is something we used to call “integrity. ” Utah’s Republican legislators would be well-advised to read some of the swill they’re passing off as legislation before passing it before the eyes of people much smarter and honest than they are.
It’s been four years since we went solar. It started with Solarius Precarious (pic left), our 2 kWh, sun-tracking array in November 2006 (it went on-line in March 2007). We expanded our commitment in January 2010 with the installation of our solar hot water system (video below). During this time, we’ve felt strangely alone. Not only do the vast majority of people not share our beliefs, commitment, and investment. Many of them still consider us stupid, crazy, and perhaps even dangerous.
