Schreiner’s Media Landscape

Even the mainstream media are reporting and lamenting what appears to be the senseless but calculated demise of federal support for renewable energy. The renewable industry admits the final attack on American independence launched by the Bush White House with Cheney’s Big Oil task force behind them is going to be Katrina-esque in scope. We can only hope that President Obama and an enlightened Congress can resurrect renewable energy tax credits before Bush and Company destroy more jobs, environment and hopes that the United States can ever be anything more than a fading empire again.

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.

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?

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.

The question over whether the growing oil crisis is real or manufactured or the product of geopolitical partitioning is moot to the consumer. We are going to pay more and more unless we as the bottom feeders invest in technologies that don’t pollute, are durable, and don’t go up endlessly in cost of operation. That’s why SIMPLE CONSERVATION in the form of driving less and renewable electricity in the form of solar and wind energy and battery-powered vehicles look like the best options.

Ethanol, biodiesel and other renewable resources are not only more polluting, powering engines that require high maintenance, but are commodities controlled by a conspiratorial market (OPEC) that can manipulate and gouge the consumer any time the boss needs a new summer home. Again, if you don’t care about the Earth, IT’S STILL YOUR PROBLEM. You’ll end up doing it for the wrong reason- but you’ll do it.

A great new collection of essays “A Passion for this Earth” advances many new, optimistic approaches to getting the emerging pro-Earth movement out of its anti-media, politically-anchored, isolationist doldrums and into the mass market and consciousness. Scientist Carl Sarfina argues that environmentalists’ efforts failed in the 1970s, despite the same evidence of human excess and damage we have now, because they failed to make environmentalism a VALUE.

To really motivate most Americans to do anything, they need to be INSPIRED he says, not just presented with a lot of irrefutable evidence in a dull and often judgmental and combative package. That’s why the radical Christian right-wing took over the ideologically-adrift Republicans and hijacked America’s sense of what is true and good. “Getting anywhere requires both a destination and navigational equipment” Sarfina writes. “Factual findings can suggest the destination. Values are the moral compass.” What is the compass? Sarfina suggests media- getting the word out, prosletyzing, just like the Christian Right: a blueprint environmentalists have ignored or avoided because of their own petty prejudices and ignorance.

In his essay “Fools’ Paradise,” Ronald Wright reprises Jared Diamond’s analysis of the Easter Island eco-disaster in “Collapse” by invoking the anthropological concept of “ideological pathology.” That’s essentially a society committing suicide by eating itself to death instead of going on a diet to live healthier and longer. Wright like Sarfina, believes media, communication and, in Wright’s case history, are the keys to understanding our dilemma and what we must do to avoid Easter Island’s fate.

“Archaeology is perhaps the best tool we have for looking ahead. Unlike written history, which is often highly edited, archaeology uncovers the deeds we have forgotten or have chose to forget. It also offers a much longer reading of the direction and momentum of the human course through time.”

Media and communication are essential to the re-emerging Earth movement to not repeat the mistakes of the 1970s. Self-righteousness, confrontation, and politicizing environmental consciousness fail to make stewardship a MORAL VALUE and INSPIRE PEOPLE to do it because it’s the right thing. All the evidence, facts and political wrangling over the past 30 years failed to prevent the crisis we now find ourselves in.

Persuading the American people of the urgency and need for Earth-consciousness and action will require, as Sarfina wrote, a mass media attack along the lines of what’s happening on this blog and all over the Internet: video, art, music, writing, theater, education. That, in a nutshell, is where I’m coming from. And as Sarfina’s “compass” would indicate, it’s where we’re all going. We just need to be able to read a compass and have the motivation to pick it up.

Our U.S. ag secretary says the Bush Regime is spending $600 million on renewable energy research and implementation. But note that all the forms of renewable energy mentioned are biofuels, one of them the dubiously-effective corn ethanol. But you should also know that biodiesels and other organically-based fuels, besides increasing the cost of food and taking land out of food production for a growing human population, require LOTS OF WATER. Do you want to pay more for water, or maybe water your lawn less, and risk shortages and deeper, more serious droughts, so you can drive a biodiesel-powered vehicle?

More evidence of how much power the agri-business lobby has, how politics is more powerful than truth in America, and how little public opinion, hard evidence and quality scientific research really influences our elected official, corporate media and the free market.