Schreiner’s Media Landscape

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.

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?

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.

Testimony to the power of media is that for the last three days in southwest Montana- one of the most naturally gorgeous and spectacular places in America- I’d couldn’t stop singing “Going to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon.” Why Frank Zappa’s nonsense lyrics should have that kind of hold on me after more than thirty years is a crime. But my brain was able to separate the media from the magic without too much effort thanks to pure power of Nature.

Our friends Bill and Pat are building a log cabin south of Sheridan, Montana just a couple hours west of Yellowstone. We were there to help sand, chainsaw, screw and glue the logs into place. The weather was a little windy and cool but it made working during the day more tolerable and sleeping in our tent nicer. Sandhill cranes, whitetail deer, buffalo (more-than-slightly domesticated) and wildlife roamed throughout the valley which is mostly BLM land and private ranches. Everyone was happy under the big, cloud-dappled sky.

During this time, I was also editing a web ad on my laptop running off the X5’s car battery and setting up shooting assignments with a new client located in the UK. I got the ad finished just in time to burn it to DVD and drive it five miles into town to catch the FedEx pickup at noon Friday (pickup times are normally around 5 p.m. but rural areas must get picked up earlier depending on how far they are from a big airport). My cell phone didn’t work so well but we were able to book my trip to Chicago and set up a Salt Lake shoot before the weekend descended. You just have to be flexible and patient, I told myself: something I’ve never been good at but living in the country apparently teaches you.

After running power tools all day, carrying 1,000 lb. logs around and surviving a smashed toe, only one thing will satisfy you: a massive Montana steak. No matter how big this state is, you can’t swing an expired marmot without hitting a steakhouse. A New York strip the size and weight of a dictionary topped off our perfect trip. Well, not REALLY perfect but when you’re flexible and patient either every thing is perfect or nothing is. Either way, you deal with it better.

Now, we’re back home in Salt Lake. Time to get back to work, catch up on the bills, pull the log glue out of my leg hairs (ouch!), and re-adjust to urban life. But the flexibility and patience I learned after just two days in Montana have sunk in. Whether it’s Utah, the Rockies or the desert, The West is home.

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.

I confess: I water my lawn. But I also let it get a little brown and my water bill is below the national average. America’s and Utah’s obsession with grass has made our state the second highest water-users per person in the country. To what end? Our own vanity? With the spector of water simply running out here by 2020 and human-caused “drought” due to over-consumption already hurting America’s southeast and southwest, WHY DON’T WE JUST STOP IT?

Ideological pathology. Like those who cut down the final tree on Easter Island, who will be the last person to watch the final drop fall from the nozzle of their hose as it falls uselessly on a blade of outdoor carpeting?

I get a charge out of so-called “conservative” media’s ravings that are about as conservative as Bush’s accountants. But this one hits the trifecta of wacko radical right-wing paranoia, blind-deaf-dumb parroting of the fossil fuel lobby’s boilerplate script, and the dismally poor and irresponsible “reporting” ruining newspapers across the country- not this one, unfortunately. This editorial by the Provo newspaper is a LOL for lovers of irony, a self-delivered black eye to the fossil fool industry, as well as even more proof that defenders of America’s enslavement to oil, coal and the usual suspects will not go quietly. 

If it wasn’t for inept Republican leadership, out-of-control OPEC oil barons, colluding with our own corrupt fascist government ideologues, and America’s addiction to oil (Bush’s words, not mine)- ALL THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS POLICIES THAT GOT US INTO OUR CURRENT ENERGY CRISIS- maybe the Provo Herald’s editorial board wouldn’t have written such an outdated, anti-public health, anti-American waste of words.

But such is the imagination of a newspaper that clearly doesn’t understand the concepts behind freedom enough to write about them. Then again, REMEMBER WHO THE OPERATORS OF THE PROVO HERALD ARE REALLY SERVING. It’s not you, me, their readers or average citizens of the state of Utah. It’s the already-wealthy corporations licking their chops waiting for the chance to waste billions more of our dollars on squeezing a few drops of oil out of Utah’s irreplaceable public lands. And attacking environmentalists? Come on, guys- you can be more creative than that. Attack the real culprit here- THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF JUSTICE THAT ALLOWS ORDINARY CITIZENS TO CHALLENGE THE SINGLE-MINDED GREED AND INCOMPETENCE OF THE EXPLOITERS OF OUR COUNTRY’S ESSENCE FOR INCREASED PERSONAL ENRICHMENT. Your true masters.

Like the Bush Regime, the Provo Herald’s editorial board loves to see our justice system circumvented on environmental matters- like in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay- to keep the proven inept and self-serving federal and energy industry leaders in power and keep those nasty green goons handcuffed in their treehouses. Conservation? Conservative? Any resemblance here is purely accidental.

Motorists do NOT like to share the road with anyone. If we had our way, we’d drive right down the middle of the road as fast as we want- like they do in China, Tibet and other places where cars are a comparatively new phenomenon. So you can imagine how America’s car-obsessed masses are struggling with the growing number of motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians and other more economical forms of transportation on the road as a way of dealing with increasingly unaffordable energy prices.

If you read a lot of news like me, the buzz is all about “road rage” and the number of violent incidents involving motorized vehicles and bicycles. NewWest has done an article about problems in Boulder, Colorado, the Economist covered the issue in Portland, Seattle and Florida, MSNBC in Minneapolis and San Diego, and here in Utah, the latest story involves a man charged with assault who attacked several bicyclists with his pickup because he could not stand driving alongside a well-marked, scheduled bike race.

As a bicycle rider, I generally fall (perhaps a bad choice of verb) on the side of the cyclist. We know the rules of sharing the road while most motorists don’t. But there are going to be more and more inexperienced bike riders on the road because of soaring gas prices. Those people are going to cause problems. But as the saying goes, “Car hits bike, bike loses. Bike hits car, bike loses.” American motorists still haven’t gotten used to sharing the road with other vehicles, not just the ever-growing number of bikes and motorcycles. But personally, I think most of these motorists are just mad at everything and take out their frustrations on defenseless bicyclists because they can.

Anti-bike motorists mostly believe bicycles should be confined to bike paths. Unfortunately, that’s not the law and that would force people to further damage the environment by being required to drive long distances and burn more precious yet deadly fossil fuel. It’s another indication of how many Americans hate change, hate people who are not like them, and generally hate. In our rapidly changing world, people like that are not going to survive because they fail to adapt. But these folks are not even capable of reading Rules of the Road. They’re not big fans of Darwin either and adaptation to them likely means “KILL EVERYTHING ELSE.”

I believe in survival of the most cowardly. That’s why I try to stay on the bike paths as much as possible. We’re lucky we live right on the Bonneville Shorelie Bike Trail, the best in Utah. Yes, I have just as much right to be on the road as the cars, trucks and the nuts who drive them. But we are talking about survival here. I’ve been threatened by motorists before and my policy is to simply ignore them. But it’s becoming clear that many motorists do not appreciate being ignored by bicyclists and will go to prison before sharing the road with them. 

In which case, my Darwinian instincts tell me not to go there- unless I’m driving.

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!

Escorting the United States into Third World status would seem to be a hard job. But Utah’s U.S. Senators Orrin Scratch and Bob Blownit are doing their darndest. Besides overseeing the accelerating downward spiral of the American economy, endless war and the most incompetent and corrupt administration in history, they are making China the preeminent, world-leading nation by letting them SAVE THE WORLD FROM AMERICAN EXCESS AND IGNORANCE.

I’ll admit to being a harsh critic of the Chinese government. But their progress in renewable energy is enviable and responsible. They may emit the most CO2 now, but the biggest eco-criminal has always been the United States. So let’s give credit where credit- and discredit- is due. China, despite its brutal oppression and deception, is really trying to reverse the effects of its economic growth. Can America say the same thing?