Happy Media Day!
HAPPY MEDIA DAY!
I am officially declaring April 23rd Media Day - the day when all the media companies rejoice over the extra profits they have made trying to fool the public into believing that the mega-corporations who rule the world actually give a flying fudge-sicle about the environment on Earth Day.
What did I do this past Earth Day? I walked the dog down streets still roaring from the sounds of overly large gas-guzzlers, vehicles with usually only one person behind the wheel. I know Americans have put on some extra weight but does it really require a twin-cab diesel combo to get around? I swear I am not making this up, but about two or three weeks ago there was a Winnebago parked outside my neighbors house which was towing - not a smart car, not a prius, not even a Ford Mustang - but an entire Ford F150 pickup truck, a vehicle that doesn't get over 20 mpg on the highway when driven by itself. I can't manage what the whole rig gets as it rolls around the countryside. And what tremendous cargo was it hauling? A wrinkled little prune of a man and his wife. I wonder how much he complains when he spends an hour at the Flying J pumping gas into his tank at $4 a gallon - probably not as much as I do knowing that our tax dollars, through fuel subsidies, are all that is keeping him from having to pay $8 a gallon. I love the idea of paying for other people's gas.
On Earth Day (but certainly not <i>for</i> Earth Day) I went to McDonalds for breakfast. Summer hits early and sticks around way too long here in Florida, but at 8AM it was still nice and in the low 70's. Inside Mickey-D's they had the air conditioning cranked to where ice crystals should have been blowing out of the air vents. It was quite uncomfortable, especially to someone in shorts and a t-shirt. Of course, if I were to wear a suit and tie, drive around in a car with the windows up and the AC cranked, and then go to work in an office building where the thermostat is locked in at 60 degrees all year long, and live in a house where the windows are kept closed and the thermostat pegged at 60, then I wouldn't be freezing my ass off now would I? <i>I'm such an asshole sometimes.</i> Why do I have to go and ruin the world by dressing according to the way it is outside and not the way that corporate America keeps it inside?
I didn't say anything because I've been in this position before and know that the corporations (Wafflehouse and Burger King are also egregious offenders in this one) do not trust their employees enough to let them touch the thermostat. They can cook our food, dab their dicks in the mayonnaise and spit in the salads (afterall, you eat the food, not the CEO's, not off-camera), but the people they hire cannot be trusted with a temperature dial. And have you ever noticed that modern business buildings just don't like windows? I mean, McDonalds loves windows, tall panes of glass are what gives its eating area a pleasant feeling of airiness, but I am pretty sure that these are windows that cannot be opened with anything less than a sledgehammer. Yet McDonalds celebrates Earth Day. They're all about being green - here, have a Shamrock Shake.
After dinner, I watched a recording of NOVA called "Power Surge." It was about how the combined forces of technologies which we have right now (!) can together stop the menace of global warming. It also managed to place more product than Morgan Spurlock(tm) on a sugar fit. It was the first time I had ever heard the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere described as "wrapping a giant layer of Goretex(tm) around the Earth." Power Surge very briefly mentioned the BP Oil spill but spent a good twelve minutes talking about how BP has set up a natural gas refinery in Algeria which pumps the CO2 it creates back into the earth. It mentioned the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan, and rationalized it as the perils of keeping older Nuclear Power Plants online. Power Surge recommends replacing them with newer power plants that are being made as <i>factory prefabrications</i> in China. I don't know about you, but nothing to me says iron-clad safety with lasting quality quite like a factory made prefab from China. No offense to all the Chinese in the world (after all, I suspect you are about as powerless to control your country as we are over here) but I would clean up the messes made by lead laced baby formula and asbestos thick dry wall before trying your hands at cookie cutter nuke plants.
So Happy Media Day!
And if you happen to run into David H. Koch be sure to give him a big sloppy hug from me (and no I won't post your bail), because as long as we keep believing that something is being done about the environment and that we can trust the companies who cause nuclear power disasters, oil spills, and global warming - then we will keep believing that something is being done about the environment and continue to trust the companies who cause nuclear power disasters, oil spills, and global warming.