Schreiner’s Media Landscape

Just as we were forgetting how incompetent, corrupt and arrogant the Bush/Cheney War on Everything Good Team is, they’re back to inflict yet more of their boundless stupidity and violence on the world. In announcing the development of “oil shale” bearing properties on public, federal lands, this out-of-control administration has done for energy what Iraq did for Vietnam: keep failing at the same thing again and again, doing it the same way over and over. As long as it’s with taxpayer money.

Bush and his Legion of Losers are ignoring history, a la Vietnam, to follow their ideological star of Bethlehem. It was about 25 years ago that all the major oil shale projects in Colorado- at Parachute and Rifle on the western slope, abruptly shut down and were abandoned. The reasons were never fully explained (Big Oil doesn’t have to explain anything to anyone and would we believe them anyway). But it was obvious the process was too iffy, too expensive and that the environment was endlessly expendable but Big Oil’s gambling money was not.

I was a reporter for KUSA in Denver and covered that story the day it happened. Colorado instantly became a state of shock. It was like 9/11. The abandonment by Big Oil of its once-precious and gleaming venture was also an abandonment of the people of Colorado and the environment: the thousands who came there to work, the economy that built its hopes and dreams around the billions that would be produced for everybody by these wonderful oil executives. Deep scars were left on the once-beautiful mountain countryside with nothing to show for it. Almost overnight, Colorado’s economy plunged into recession. New homes were abandoned, foreclosed and bulldozed. People fled the state to find work, employment shooting skyward. The taste left in the mouths of Coloradoans by Big Oil has stuck to this day. Colorado is one of the nation’s leaders in renewable energy.

I can still taste it today myself. I was there and lived through the tough years from 1982-1987 until I too left. Much like Michael Moore’s documentary “Roger and Me” where General Motors abandoned the people of Flint, Michigan, the the Black Sunday oil shale disaster is a tragic story of Big Oil hoodwinking government and sticking it to the people of Colorado. The question now is are the people of Utah and the other states affected by the resurrection of this unproved, expensive, environmentally destructive process similar to Canada’s tar sands in which it takes two tons of sand to make one barrel of oil ready to face the possibility of TOTAL ABANDONMENT after MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PRISTINE PUBLIC LANDS ARE DESTROYED?

If you are, then get ready to go back in time to 1982 in Colorado. It ain’t pretty, folks.

“If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”

The immortal words of Canadian TV icon Red Green (actor/writer Steve Smith) echoed through my head as I stood aghast over my favorite chair. I’d just sat down in it to read like I do every day when the entire support fabric ripped and caused the cushion to fall through. As luck would have it, my wife was sitting right there when it happened. “That old thing- let’s just get rid of it” she said or something like that. Was it the truth- or a challenge to my manhood? At first, I agreed. But stupidly, I instantly squandered the perfect opportunity to buy a beautiful, new recliner by replying with those six dreaded words: “No, wait. I can fix it.”

I went to the workshop and gathered a retractable strap I use to hold the swamp cooler cover on during the winter. That was not adjustable enough to tighten sufficiently. Then Red Green spoke to me again: “if it ain’t broke, you’re not trying hard enough.” He was right. The answer was the same one Red had to every do-it-yourself sketch in the show’s history from 1991 to 2006: duct tape.

I quickly got my current roll (every real man has at least two in the house) and started rolling. About five minutes later, the job was done, complete with new velcro applied to reconnect the head rest. I’m not sure if my wife was impressed but I was. More than just proving it could be done or being cheap or whatever, I felt good because I didn’t throw the chair out. Besides the backing, the chair’s in perfectly fine shape and now it’s better than ever. It will probably last another ten years. One less blotch on the environment too.

Thanks, Red for the advice and all the great years on TV in both the U.S. and Canada. And, yes- I will keep my stick on the ice.

The naming of the polar bear to the endangered species list is sad but momentous occasion. It indicates a tiny change in the Bush Regime’s hostile attitude toward all things natural but more signficantly it shows how far American society is ahead of government- at least the current one- on environmental issues. The data on climate change around the poles has been out there for years. The loss of polar bear habitat and the animals themselves has been available everywhere and dramatized in numerous documentaries, news stories and academic research. Yet it took this long for the current administration to act. Why? You know. So you can imagine how long it would be before they’d consider ending the Iraq War or our dependence on foreign oil.

Counting the days…

Another of my musical heroes has passed into the spirit world, Joe Zawinul having ascended earlier this year. Oscar Peterson was one of the most recognizable and exciting jazzers to ever command a keyboard. Click here to see and listen to just some of the unbelievable recordings he made over his 60-plus-year career. Or check out the outstanding documentary (one of several) about his incredible contributions to music, culture and the ongoing battle against racism in Canada and the US.

The Iraq War, imperialistic foreign policy, ideological domestic policy, rampant corruption, unrelenting environmental destruction, contempt for voters and average Americans. What embodies all of these nasty characteristics and so many more? The federal government under George Bush.

The new energy bill is just the latest example of why it’s time the United States-make that united states- just disband and go freelance. We the American West, western provinces of Canada and perhaps even Mexico have no need for Washington. Greater than that, as the Bush Regime gives away our “public lands” that we pay for to private interests for their own financial gain, as the Iraq War drags on with no discernable benefit to anyone in America much less the west (except to weed out the adult male population of the country), and Bush’s waning, desperate assault on our environment reaches its climax, we begin to understand why ”USA” now means “Useless Self-Serving Assholes.”

If someone can explain to me why the United States as nation needs to exist accept to defend ourselves from our own military industrial complex, please leave a comment. I really would like to hear why the United States is of any use and why, for environmental, economic and social reasons, Utah or any other western state needs to be part of it.

Get ready for even higher oil prices. This latest accident in Canada pushed prices up $4/barrel to $95 yesterday. Throw in a couple more tanker accidents and we’ll be lining up at the pump again soon. I remember the great Arab oil embargo of 1973 when I had to get up at 4 a.m. to drive my Chevy Vega to the gas station and wait in line for more than an hour. Once, my car ran out of gas and I had to push it to the pump. Ah, memories…

New York Times magazine has an excellent story about how human sprawl in western Canada is affecting the behavior of bears. Like my 2005 documentary “Our Other Neighbors,” about how the people of Maine get along with moose, it’s less scary than it is encouraging. That is, of course, unless humans don’t like the idea of bears acting more like us. Then we’ll just have to do what we usually do with humans we don’t get along with- kill ‘em all. With the problem of humans encroaching further into bear habitat, we can expect more of these confrontations- and hopefully, more stories- in Utah and the many other states where bears are growing- and learning.