Schreiner’s Media Landscape

I like to give credit where credit is due, especially when it’s someone who repeatedly disappoints and angers you. So congrats to the Bush EPA who finally did something good for the environment: tightened emissions standards for gas-powered lawn mowers. This is no small feat as fossil-fuel burning lawn mowers produce more pollution than vehicles, according to a famous Swedish study.

Me? I’m still using my now two-year-old Ken-powered mower though I’ve nearly beaten it to death and am a little disappointed that it wasn’t more durable. My next mower- solar-battery powered.

Irony is lost on the born-again- not to mention truth, facts, what’s really in the Bible and whose side God is on. But despite the Radical Christian Republican Party’s lack of a sense of humor, the bizarre and utterly groundless religious statements coming from their Twin Cities tent service are so sad they’re funny. Sarah Palin and the Republicans are now basing their efforts to make the oil companies richer, pollute and destroy the Earth even faster and further, and usurp the rights of innocent people in Iraq on “God’s Will.”

IS THIS IN THE BIBLE? DID I MISS IT? WHERE DOES GOD SAY THAT ANYWHERE? HOW DOES A FORMER BEAUTY QUEEN AND ATV DEALER KNOW THIS IS WHAT HE WANTS?

If I was God, I’d sue.

It’s always interesting when someone vehemently and convincingly claims innocence of a crime for years then abruptly admits they indeed committed the offense and want to get the punishment over with as quickly as possible. That’s what’s happened in the case of a West Valley City mining operation that finally ‘fessed up that they dumped deadly selenium into some of Utah’s signature waterways including Great Salt Lake.

There are a number of environmental criminals still running around free and claiming innocence: chief among them Crandall Canyon mine owner Robert Murray. But as independent media coverage, resulting public outrage and political pressure grow, hopefully more of these liars, thieves and environmental murderers will meet justice.

Now let the investigation of the Bush Regime into its protracted efforts to destroy America’s natural places begin. And so too- the claims of innocence.

I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the newspaper of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois where I lived before I moved to Utah. State government is closing a number of state parks, including Kickapoo State Park outside nearby Danville, to pay for their own fiscal incompetence. Residents of the area are fighting it but it’s probably a lost cause and indicative of the tragic and short-sighted attitude our so-called leaders have toward natural places and their contempt for the people who put them in power.

I used to go there often to hike, picnic and row my raft. It’s where I took my camera to practice videotaping wildlife, Nature, and work out in preparation for my grueling trip to Tibet and hike around Mount Kailash in 2005: the result being my documentary “Kora: Tibet and the Trail of Truth.” It was one of the few, remaining natural places in an area long decimated abd denuded by corporate and large-scale agriculture.

Actually, Kickapoo was far from being wild. It was reclaimed coal-mining ground that had been scarred and scraped beyond industrial use. So it was left to return to the Earth and the result was a strangely beautiful park made up of hills, forest, streams, ponds and other stuff Illinois never had much of and has even less of now. Kickapoo is ironically, unnatural.

But open or not, it’s a gleaming example of what humans can do to correct the environmental mistakes we’ve made. Sadly, it’s now also an example of how we just never learn.

Like the U.S. and other countries, Mexico faces an energy crisis as the underground supplies of oil show rapid deterioration and ultimate exhaustion in as few as ten years. Do they have geothermal, solar, wind and other renewable resources? They sure do. Check the solar power map, the wind map, and especially the geothermal map (left). If there was a country ready for renewable energy, it’s Mexico.

But the opportunities to change their fortunes are lying there waiting, like they are for America. And some visionary individuals and companies are saving the planet and making money off the Renewable Revolution. Read on.

I don’t consider myself a member of either party. But clearly, one party appears much more ready to make America more energy independent and environmentally responsible while the other is satisfied with enslaving Americans to foreign terrorist governments, wealthy multi-national corporations, deteriorating air, water, environmental and climate destruction, and economic doom. Maybe there is a clear choice for president this year…

The editorial board of the Provo Daily Herald suffers from the same psychopathy that the Bush Regime has: constantly searching for ways to attack their opponents instead of reading the facts and doing what’s right. In their latest campaign to stop renewable energy in Utah, they’ve written a volume of steaming excrement saying “wind power will be an environmental disaster.” They strangely cite West Virginia’s “much-lauded mountain skyline” as being potentially ruined by the sight of windmills. Apparently, they haven’t seen the pictures of the tops of that state’s gorgeous mountains already ruined by being blown off to dig coal.

Why does a newspaper that ostensibly serves the public spend so much time defending the wealthy fossil fuel industries that gouge not only their customers but our precious natural landscapes as well? Why do they ignore Utah’s abundant renewable resources- solar, wind, geothermal, biomass- and advocate more drilling, mining and other destruction of Utah’s public lands so the rich can get richer?

To their credit, they did run the story by AP about how the oil sands project in Canada is ruining the environment while producing little oil and doing nothing to lower prices. But the question is: IS THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE PROVO HERALD ACTUALLY READING WHAT’S IN THEIR OWN NEWSPAPER? Or is there something bigger going on here. My reporter instincts tell me- follow the money.

The only viable criticism of solar energy is that it requires the creation of solar panels which, opponents ridiculously and deceptively claim, causes pollution. Hey folks- everything causes some pollution. But every study ever done shows making solar panels produces virtually zero pollution compared to coal, oil, nuclear and every other form of consumable energy.

But soon, even that outrageous argument may be moot. Scientists in South Dakota are finding ways to turn organic material into solar conductors instead of the greatly benign and prevalent silicon. The day is not that far off when an entire building, parking lot, or virtually anything can be a solar energy producer. Let’s hear the argument against that.

$24 million. Not a bad investment in the security, independence and economic stability of our country as recently announced the Regime. But their “efforts” to help implement solar energy on a mass scale pales before similar programs in Germany, China, India and virtually every country on the planet. We can only hope that the next administration recognizes the urgent need to develop renewable energy- not give away more public land for fruitless drilling and digging by obscenely wealthy oil and coal companies who THEMSELVES admit the days of fossil fuels are numbered.

There was a character on Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s played brilliantly by Dan Aykroyd named Irwin Mainway. Mainway was a sleazy salesman who pitched dangerous and outrageously diabolical products such as “Bag O’ Glass” and “Teddy Chainsaw Bear” as being harmless and fun. But nothing is funnier than reality and Shell Oil has done Irwin Mainway one better (apparently hiring him to not only develop the product but write the script as well). Shell came out with a print ad in the United Kingdom claiming that their development of oil sands would “secure a profitable and SUSTAINABLE future.” I guess they either believe that nonsense or they thought no one would catch it.

The World Wildlife Federation did catch it and filed a complaint with the British organization overseeing advertising in the UK. They ruled that the ad is misleading and does not back up its environmental claims. In their defense, Shell quotes a 20-year-old report by some obscure ”World Commission of Something” that defines something as sustainable if it is ”development which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Shell’s not allowed to run the ad anymore but claims it was only going to run it a short time anyway- in the UK. If they start running it in Utah or elsewhere in America, you’ve been warned. Just remember Irwin Mainway and it will seem a lot funnier instead of pathetic- which it is.