It's often useful to take a long view on change, the environment, and society. Last night, an Afro-american captured the democratic nominee. A monumental event that my parents' generation can appreciate better than mine. Yesterday, GM announced that due to rising fuel prices they will be closing four truck plants and will undertake a "strategic assessment" of the Hummer brand. It might be hard to find a buyer for that one. I can remember 99 cents a gallon in high school; now $4 dollars a gallon appears here to stay. And the Discovery Channel thinks that can make money with a TV channel dedicated to the environment - Planet Green.
So things are looking up for change. Even John McCain adopted Obama's change rhetoric in a speech last night in New Orleans (not a good sign for Republicans). These are exciting times. But don't get to excited, there is still much fight to be had. At the moment, you have to go all the way up to channel 286 to watch Planet Green.
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The Huffington Post also just launched a 'Green' page:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/green/
While I'm delighted to see all the interest, let's not let the message get diluted with all the folks jumping on the bandwagon.
I can remember 99 cents a gallon in high school
Ouch. You're making me feel like I have fossil DNA here. Try 58c/gal when I was in High School. And $35c/gal when I was a little kid.
Don't want to be a party-pooper but I just want to point out that "change we can believe in" is different from "change that is going to happen." I have to see more of the latter before I become a true believer.
Maybe that has something to do with my fossil DNA. We fossils have seen a lot of politicians come and go. The amount of change they all promised was way, way beyond the change they produced.
I'm in the same class as "yogi-one" above there, and like him have seen a lot of movements come and go, and have read about a lot more (history being more and more a part of me). The consensus argument for specific political remedies in particular I find short-sighted and the polarizing effects of name-calling and frame-setting, I find disheartening. A stampede is a wonderful thing to watch in nature but it can be pretty frightening and even counter productive.
I , coincidentally, caught a segment of the GreenPlanet last night. I can't recall the name of the program..uh, "eco-something-or-other", but it was (to put it kindly) a piece of unscripted "reality TV" in which a couple of urban young adult males explore a little piece of undeveloped landscape or park somewhere near where they live (I'm guessing LA or SF) and are scared out of their witz by a...snake! Who knew there were snakes in the city? "eeewww..do you think it will chase me?" (that's almost verbatum). I have to believe there was more to the show than this but I guess this segment was supposed to appeal to that audience the producers would like most to have watch and learn something from, but I have a hard time believing that in this day and age they would, unless the remote was broken and they couldnt change the channel or leave the room or find an internet connection with fast access to youtube and myspace.
Perhaps it means they are desperate for content (the producers) in which case, when I get done with my current obligations, perhaps I'll seek work, though I know that young producers are not fond of hiring old creative staff for fear that we'd bore the heck out of some abstract potential viewing demographic...presumably as young or younger than the producers themselves.
So, in the mean time the best piece of consciousness raising eco-TV is probably Animal Planet's "sunrise earth" and that looks like it's only on "too early" and not on weekend or during the summer..ratz! Too bad, we could do with an entire channel devoted 24/7 to our developing an appreciation for nature's patient unscripted beauty minus the terribly clever and oh-so relevant voice-overs and ideology. What other show is a top seller in HiDef on Amazon? Certainly not "eco-something-or-other" as seen on Green Planet last night, I'm afraid.
PS...when gas was 35 cents (note: the little "slash C" character that used to denote "cents" is no longer on keyboards), the minimum wage was well under a dollar and gas was just as expensive then, as old timers remembered when it was 15 cents...ah, the good old days...talk about sliding baselines.