“History will teach us nothing” is what Sting wrote. Now, I like his music just as much as the next fifty-something but there’s another good reason he quit teaching to become a global rock star. He’s wrong. History teaches us everything. Humans’ power of imagination is endlessly fruitful. Just look at religion, art, architecture and cheering for the Cubs. But imagination without some idea of what’s already been tried, tested and succeeded or failed can be a big waste of time. That’s the reason we do research. Research is merely studying history. And it propels our economy, our families and communities.
So as the headlines fill with more stories about growing wars, economic failure, societal infighting, religious and racial intolerance and the usual human miseries, let’s not forget how we got to this point. It started by electing (albeit dubiously) a regime that has tried virtually everything it can think of to destroy America, our economy, the world, its people, the environment, our educational systemn and done a pretty darn, good job of accomplishing their mission. But the truly sad part is we saw it coming and half of the country still thought it was a good idea to give them not only one but two shots at ruining this once great country and the entire planet. In the process, America is now perhaps irreparably divided, up to our eyeballs in debt, hated by the universe and poised with our fingers on the trigger, ready to drop the big one if, for nothing else, to put us and the world we helped create out of its misery. How do you ruin paradise? You’re looking at it.
As this election year plods along, we must not forget the last eight years and the people who sponsored this national nightmare. Let’s not ever, ever, ever, ever do that again.
Republican Utah state senator Curtis Bramble’s statement about why environmentalists don’t support his meaningless renewable energy bill merely confirms how belligerent and stupid he is. The Sierra Club stayed silent on his bill because they just wanted to see something pass that resembled renewable energy legislation. What we got was Bramble’s bill, which essentially gives power companies the right to do anything they want with no deadlines or incentives. Some bill.
Why Utah is pursuing tar sands, oil shale and other fossil fuel development when oil’s at $102/barrel is beyond me. When consumers see the price tag for oil made from these widely destructive and hugely expensive and polluting processes, they will be in even more shock at the pump than they are now.
One reason the Deseret News and others are buying the name “unconventional fuels” because it sounds vaguely futuristic and even green, like “renewable,” “sustainable,” and “alternative.” What most people and our political leaders don’t realize is that “unconventional” in this context means among other things “expensive,” “destructive,” and “polluting.”
Let’s stop the charade and just do the right thing, not look for more and more ways to make our enemies, political leaders and corporate robber barons even wealthier.
It’s no coincidence that that the world’s transition to renewable energy is accelerating as the price of oil hits a new high of $102/barrel. What’s unclear and frustrating is that our president, Congress, legislators and other powerful and entrenched political interests are putting their own greed before the voters’ welfare.
With bills on renewable energy tax credits and incentives before them, neither the federal government nor Utah’s seem to grasp the importance of this issue. If you want to contact your U.S. representative to relay this information to them, click here. For Utah legislators, click here.Â
As Congress prepares to vote again on renewable tax credits and support for research and development, they should consider these facts:
- Renewable energy industries, led by America’s favorite- solar, now employ so many people and provide so much energy, that pulling the rug out from under them would further aggravate our current economic downturn
- A new report shows that production of solar panels creates far less pollution than originally thought and reduces air pollution by 90% compared to fossil fuels overall
- A bill currently in the Utah legislature would provide incentives for individuals and municipalities to build and invest in solar energy systems
I wish I had more hope that Congress and Bush will do the right thing. But based on their performance the past seven years, there’s no reason to expect that. Oh, well. At least we know the kind of country we could have as soon as the losers get out of the way. As for Utah, the chances of this bill passing are about as great as the sun not coming up- providing us clean and safe energy-Â tomorrow morning.
I’ve seen that Lipitor ad with Robert Jarvik about one-million times. I catch myself reciting lines from it as I munch my fourth piece of bacon. When I heard that it was pulled because of a congressional investigation, I was simutaneously relieved but also a little concerned. Like all TV ads, the Lipitor ad is dramatic artifice. Video of Jarvik running with his son was carefully choreographed and it was later revealed that the runner was in fact not Jarvik but a stunt doctor. The son appeared more real because it looked like the last time he ran anywhere was about thirty years ago.
But the “issue” here is that Jarvik is not a licensed physician and is handing out medical advice to viewers. Since when has stopped the advertising business? We’ve had medical advice handed out to us on TV for more than half a century by such health industry experts as Jack LaLane, Lindsay Wagner, Sally Field, and countless/nameless actors, spokesmodels, average citizens, patients, victims and other “qualified” pitchfolks. Why is Jarvik different?
My guess is that the medical community, which donates heavily to congressional campaigns, is angry over the pharmaceutical industry usurping more control over patients by promoting their products directly to them instead of through hospitals and doctors. For the record, I’m not against doctors telling me what drug to take and I’d never just take something I saw advertised on TV. Anyway, this has been a sore spot for the AMA and medical community for years since pharmaceutical companies started advertising prescription drugs. Doctors have been battling to retain control since the drug industry started telling patients to “ask your doctor” for their product, implying that if their doctor doesn’t give them the drug, the patient should find one who will.
Regardless of the massive societal implications (is everyone’s cholesterol going down a bad thing?), I think this is not the stuff of congressional inquiries and it’s a potential violation of Pfizer’s (Lipitor’s maker) First Amendment rights. Pfizer has voluntarily pulled the ad so the latter is no longer an issue. Lipitor is the largest selling drug in the world which begs the question “why is Pfizer advertising it at all?” If the Lipitor controversy is so controversial that it preoccupies Congress, then the sub-prime mess, Iraq and all those other “issues” must not be that big a deal. Let’s all just take a pill and calm down.
Watching TV news in my house means I hold the remote firmly and jump among all the stations to see what they’ve got. I’ve cut back my news viewing to 10 p.m. because that’s all I can stomach on a daily basis and Fox 13 isn’t worth watching- I don’t care if it’s on at 9 p.m., 2:30 a.m. or whenever. It’s just junk.
The usual 10 p.m. infomenu consists of murder, crime, death, fires, dead babies and basically the same stuff you’ve just watched in the previous three hours of prime time network television. So imagine my surprise when I watched last night and Channel 5 ran a story about the growing problem of wildlife descending upon the lower elevations looking for food left unburied by the record snow depths of the mountains. To their credit, all the news media in town have been covering this story for weeks. But this KSL offering went deeper into the problem of carcass collection, showing a rotting deer corpse on someone’s curb (OK, it qualifies as a death story, I guess).
Then I bounced to Channel 2 where Rod Decker, a reporter I actually met and worked with at the Republican Convention in Houston in 1992, was doing a story about the controversy over new coal-burning power plants being built in and around Utah. He did a good job, talking with all sides including Tim Wagner of the Utah Sierra Club chapter and Utah Clean Air Alliance (FYI: I’m a member of both as well), an outspoken critic of coal plants and whose recent editorial on the subject appears right below this post.
Could it be that environmental stories are ready for prime time? Are enough Utahns showing interest that corporate media are waking up and realizing this is an important issue that needs addressing urgently? It looks like it and I sure hope so.
I’ll simply reprint the comments of Tim Wagner of Utah’s Sierra Club and the Utah Clean Air Alliance in the Salt Lake Tribune on the sham “renewable energy” bill which states that coal and nuclear are the same as solar and geothermal:
Soft mandate: Bill would do little to boost renewable energyÂ
Tribune EditorialÂ
Obviously, Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, believes renewable energy is a good thing and its development would be positive for Utah. He just doesn’t believe it very strongly.
   Bramble touts his Senate Bill 202 as the Legislature’s best effort to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging development of non-carbon energy sources. But it is unlikely to have much impact on carbon dioxide pollution, the major cause of global warming.
   The bill would require utility companies to incorporate renewables such as wind, geothermal and solar energy – and coal-powered power if they use carbon sequestration, an unproven process still under development – in their mix of power sources, with a big loophole. The “requirement” can be ignored if adding renewables would not be “cost effective.”
   Patterned after a Rocky Mountain Power proposal, SB202 would let public and corporate utility companies off the hook if they can show that meeting the bill’s target of a mix of power that includes 20 percent from renewable energy sources by 2025 would be too costly.
   It would also allow companies to pass on the costs of producing power from renewable sources to consumers.
   In other words, if a company has to sacrifice revenue, or pay the costs for new technology beyond what they pass on to consumers in order to meet the target of Bramble’s bill, they can simply ignore it.
   That’s hardly a Carbon Emission Reduction Initiative, as this bill is titled.
   Gov. Jon Huntsman’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change, charged with recommending the best ways to cut carbon emissions in Utah, twice rejected Rocky Mountain Power’s proposal.
   Still, Bramble’s bill was endorsed unanimously by a Senate committee, while another committee killed a bill sponsored by Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, that might actually have made a difference.
   The only way to promote renewable energy development and truly cut carbon emissions is to reward companies for such development and financially penalize them for continuing to rely on polluting energy sources such as coal.
   Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing faster in Utah than in the rest of the country. We need immediate and decisive action, not a bill that panders to utility companies.
   We need immediate and decisive action, not a bill that panders to utility companies.Â
The sad, bizarre death of Suzanne Wangler, a long-time television news personality in Michigan, hit me today. I worked with Suzanne at WDIV in Detroit between 1994-1998. She was our helicopter reporter at the time and did a good job. She was generally friendly and I never had a problem with her even though I was management and she was an employee. That’s unusual in an area where relations between those two sides are historically strained at best and hostile at worst.
But TV news is really more like Hollywood-style show business than journalism. The people attracted to it are mostly looking for fame or power (I enjoyed both but left when I got tired of fighting and competing for them). Hence, many people in TV news are not what they seem, taking on the personalities of posturing, self-conscious celebrities while hiding their real, more average and decidedly more admirable characterstics. Suzanne turned out to be one of those people.
Still, it’s sad to hear of the demise of someone you know or once knew, even if they’re not the same person you thought they were. She’s not the first person in TV news to surprise me with her real life. She won’t be the last.
If Utah state senator and bigot-in-chief Chris Buttars knew what he said about black people was bad the moment he said it, as he now claims, why didn’t he retract it and apologize or clarify it right then? And why did he keep making racist statements about “lynch mobs” and “those people?” Because he’s not sorry. He’s said as much ever since he said it. Until yesterday. There he was Sunday morning, pandering to African-Americans and every other justice-and-equality-believing human- groveling at their feet. He was begging for forgiveness but what he really wants is for the whole thing to go away so he can resume his war on the people he dislikes and his campaigns to help his political contributors at the expense of the people who vote for him.
He’s only sorry that people are holding him accountable for his hatred and bigotry. Buttars is a classic bigot. And clearly totally unfit for office anywhere- except maybe Utah.
