Schreiner’s Media Landscape

I worked as a freelance live shot coordinator for NBC during the 1992 political conventions in New York (Democrats) and Houston (Republicans). FYI: Clinton beat Bush the Elder- the last of the good times. The Democrats’ and Republicans’ presidential nominating conventions used to be important gatherings instead of meaningless pseudo-events where the leader the Free World was chosen by arm-wrestling, jawboning and good, old-fashioned intimidation and power. Issues, not images, were paramount. Now, they are made-for-TV events just like the Olympics and American Idol: the lead actor already chosen and the convention merely his acceptance speech. The conventions aren’t even as meaningful or exciting as the Oscars. At least with the Oscars, you don’t know who’s going to win or what they’re going to say.

I remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger sitting with the royal Bush family (W right there as well) at the Astrodome being chummy and all GOP-like. Years later when Ahnuld ran for governernator of California, W withheld support of him and actually stated that he didn’t know much about him. Odd, because they seemed pretty friendly that night. W was probably stoned, drunk or both and doesn’t recall.

At Madison Square Garden, Al Gore delivered his famous “It’s time for them to go” speech and Comedy Central made their auspicious first appearance “covering” the show- which is all it was. MTV’s Tabitha Soren (remember her?) marked the beginning and end of her dubious media career. It also developed into my first documentary since college. I shot it on Hi8 tape on a Sony pro-sumer camera which was the exciting, new small format in 1992 and the precursor to the digital revolution then just on the horizon. It was after the conventions that I knew I would never stay in corporate TV. I left the news biz a month later, returned in 1994, and retired from it in 2003.

The technology has changed a lot since 1992. But two things haven’t: 1) the conventions are pointless and 2) they’re not good TV anymore, just a sad cliche from a bygone era (balloons, signs, funny hats, etc.). For that matter, check the blogs. They’re even boring on the Internet.

Every time I see one of these stories I wonder “Why isn’t Utah getting any of this?” Google is dropping $10.25 million on a “breakthrough” geothermal technology which will be spent in Texas, California and other places that don’t have nearly the abundance of geothermal activity that Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada do.

It’s clear that AS LONG AS THE SAME PEOPLE RUN UTAH, WE WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE BILLIONS TO COMPETITORS INVESTING IN AND DEVELOPING RENEWABLE ENERGY while we dish our money to the same old, wealthy fossil fuel companies who are going NOWHERE.

What do we have? Pie-in-the-sky oil shale, unproven gasification and a bunch of other maybe technologies that won’t do anything to bring the price of energy down or fight environmental degradation. What are our so-called leaders thinking- assuming thinking is, indeed, going on?

Farmers markets are mushrooming (had to find some metaphor- it’s an old journalism habit like a facial twitch) all over the country. In Utah, the biggest one is the Downtown Farmers Market at Pioneer Park, 300 West and 300 South. Because we’d just moved here in 2006 and we’ve been out of town most of the summer, we hadn’t had a chance to visit it until this Saturday. We were both shocked and pleased. It’s got to be one of the best and biggest in the country.

First of all, if you’re familar with Salt Lake City, you know there’s lots of parking everywhere. The market’s hours are 8 a.m.-1 p.m. (Saturdays only) so I got down there a little after 9 a.m. I parked less than two blocks from the park. But it was already jammed with people. Even so, there was lots of room to walk, everything was well-organized with no long lines. Plus, you’ll see the latest in tattoos, tee-shirt art and microdogs (do those things really like being carried around like a loaf of organic olive bread?).

Second, the produce is starting to come in and the quality was top-notch. Peaches, apricots (we already had plenty from our neighbors’ trees), melons, berries, corn, zucchini- all organic. You name it- it was there. Fresh lamb, goat products, organic breads, grains, mixes, spices. Contrary to popular misconception and disinformation, the prices were competitive with the grocery stores. We actually paid less for a locally-produced dip, Rico, than we’ve paid at Albertson’s for the same thing.

Third, as Bill McKibben and other eco-conscious writers note, foods purchased at farmers markets help them stay in business and keep rural farmland from being turned into suburban subdivisions, help your local economy, save energy, are better for you and give you and your neighbors a place to mix, catch up and be seen. You can give your money to Trader Joe’s (Monrovia, California), Whole Foods (Austin, Texas)- or to your friends and neighbors with the idea that by giving it to them, some day you’ll get it back.

That just all makes sense. And there’s POPCORN!

It was as if Salt Lake City had suddenly become the capital of Mars. I watched the front ooze into the valley from behind the Oquirrhs last night. With it came high winds, clouds and the distinctive smell of wood burning. It was smoke from Yosemite where the fires there burn on and the tourists keep coming anyway.

Ironically, and perhaps superfluously, I puffed on my cigar as the sky and eventually everything turned a grimy shade of pinkish-red (or is pink reddish?). I hadn’t seen sky like that since the Great Inversion of January 2007. This too demanded pictures for posterity.

At the same time, I found out on the 10 p.m. news, wildfires were burning near our own airport and up City Creek Canyon to our north. As the the aromas and plumes converged along the Wasatch, I felt an eerie oneness: a sense that a fire just up the road and another hundreds of miles away affect us all. Nature is so big, vast and powerful that it overwhelms us when it wills so without having to think, plan, choose or execute anything. No matter how we try we are incapable of taming or totally destroying it. We are only capable of destroying ourselves while Nature continues disinterested.

It’s sad to see Yosemite in California, one of America’s premier national parks, threatened by fire. It was sad in 1988 when Yellowstone, our largest and most popular park, was similarly devastated. No matter that it was a human (shooting a gun) that touched off this blaze. It could’ve been lightning or a number of causes. The dry conditions due to persistent drought in the southwestern U.S., people building luxury cabins and towns too close to and actually in Yosemite, and too many people driving into and around the park have turned Yosemite into a massive tragedy no longer waiting to happen.

We should take this time to recognize humanity’s role in not only starting the fire but creating the conditions that led to it causing so much damage and threatening so much more. Forests burned millions of years before humans walked the Earth. It was part of the natural process forests need to replenish themselves and stay healthy. But because humans demand consistency and predictability from Nature, the natural processes of our planet including floods, storms, fires, earthquakes, eruptions, droughts, etc. become DISASTERS. The ultimate disaster is that without an awakening to the devastation we have caused and a reversal of our destruction, there will only be more disasters- with no one to blame but ourselves.

As you’ll see by reading the next post about a Utah company’s dynamic new geothermal energy project for California, and watching my video on Iceland’s unique and incredible sustainable system, geothermal is HOT! Get in on the action by joining a webcast on the subject this Wednesday July 23. Click here for all the details!

This is an interesting but not terribly helpful list of places where the major forms of alternative energy- solar, wind and geothermal- are most prevalent. But it assumes power as a centralized, monolithic institution and not distributed safely and securely among America’s homes, offices and other places on rooftops, in fields and other locations actually in the community they serve. Proof the concept of distributive energy continues to elude most of our so-called visionaries. Probably because it won’t make them fabulously wealthy or keep us under their thumbs like the utility companies, Big Oil are doing. Corporations also see what happened to the phone companies, television and other monolithic institutions who lost their stranglehold on media and communication when their technology was democratized. Heaven forbid we let that happen with renewable energy.

It was only a matter of time before the federal government’s new  policy of fighting forest fires wherever and whenever they broke out would break down. That’s what’s happened in California where there are too many fires to fight, not enough people, money or time to fight them all. But the redirection of nearly the entire national park management budget into fighting fires to protect the zillion-dollar luxury homes ill-advisedly built right next to our national parks now appears a clearly expensive, unsustainable and destructive policy. But we can’t blame Bush for it. We can just blame him for not doing anything about it when he had the chance.

What we need is a federal law that says if you build your fantasy home next to a national park, YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE for protecting your home, not Uncle Sam. Why did the US Forest Service become the national fire department?

Just because something doesn’t happen doesn’t mean it will never happen. Just listen to critics of human-induced climate change, the oil crisis and challengers to American primacy who still somehow believe that the USA is the best nation on the planet and George Bush is not a loser. The unthinkable is now happening in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: floods due to heavy rain and human intervention on numerous levels. Too many levees, too much agricultural land, too many people living where they shouldn’t. It’s fairly self-explanatory. Yet people in Cedar Rapids are surprised.

It’s events like this that knock the delusions right out of our skulls: the only way that appears to work. Take 9/11, California’s wildfires, the southern drought. Our so-called leaders and the ”experts” who enable their myopia somehow did not see these things coming or, if they did, they certainly did nothing to stop them. Can’t stop fires, floods and droughts? Sure you can. Live in the right place, don’t recklessly destroy Nature and live sustainably and you’ll be fine. Get arrogant, think you own the planet and can do whatever you want whenever you want? You get this. 

A congressional investigation proves the White House ordered EPA administrator Stephen Johnson to reverse federal emissions standards. Johnson, who was considered moderate on environmental issues, appeared to uncharacteristically thwart California’s attempt to set its own standards. But now, we see who was really at work. Usual suspect, usual outcome. Counting the days…