Editorial 5.5, June 2003, by Deirdre Helfferich Sunflowers, Smoke, and Mirrors I planted a lot of sunflowers this spring, and they’re coming up faster than I can give them away. They cheer me in this dark political climate, because sunflowers are not only potent emblems of summer, to me they represent a hopeful world future. I’m just sorry that the United States, and Alaska, too, will probably be left behind in a tarry dark, unable to see through the fossil fuel smoke and the reflections from the funhouse mirror of our "patriotically" distorted laws, while summertime comes to the rest of the world. Summer’s recently near-perfect weather hasn’t prevented the political brouhaha from getting louder and messier and more unbelievably farcical. Silly or not, it is decidedly dangerous. The continuing trend toward the fusion of business and government was recently furthered by the Federal Communication Commission’s extremely unwise decision to allow cross-media ownership of news outlets and to expand the limit on national television audience share by one company to forty-five percent. This simply continues the FCC’s record of pandering to corporate desire for ownership of the once-public airwaves. The commons, including the electromagnetic spectrum with which we communicate, needs to be protected from private ownership, not parceled out to the best briber. Does anyone remember the movie and short-lived TV series Max Headroom? The setting was "twenty minutes into the future," and it was a marvelous satire of the modern corporate media world—and a warning of what was just around the corner. Welcome to the future of news, where the TVs are everywhere, and always on. And you don’t own them. A drive for petroleum seems to be behind much of our recent foreign policy, with obvious benefits to the medium-sized oil companies that haven’t invested giant sums into alternative energy research. Combine administrations whose members benefit from control and sale of oil resources, policies hostile to conservation and alternative energy follow naturally. Resource wars cloaked in the guise of virtue to maintain the primacy of a fossil fuel economy are the result. Although everybody’s keeping mighty quiet about Afghanistan, where nothing seems to be going right, the war in Iraq is touted as a success—we’ve clearly won, which is no surprise, and good riddance to Hussein—but is it really successful? We seem to have been ill-prepared for the victory, and we can’t seem to keep order. We won in Afghanistan, too, but apparently we haven’t learned anything from the Russians or from our own errors there. Yet, the Bush Administration burns with moralistic and imperialistic fervor, scolding and snubbing our allies and threatening evildoers Cuba, Korea, Iran, Syria, and others with more of what Afghanistan and Iraq got. Back at home, the administration is writing legislation for Congress to pass that curtails our constitutional rights (in the name of freedom, of course), and is pushing for expansion of our nuclear weapons program. Gotta love this destabilization effort—it sure gets the old adrenalin moving, and distracts the public from the tidy removal of their freedoms and the lifing of their collective wallet (that’s "tax breaks" in the language of those doing the pickpocketing). Still, it is encouraging to note creeping signs of sensibleness in the American consciousness. Even Bill O’Reily, conservative talk show host, is saying that it is unpatriotic to drive gas-guzzling automobiles if you don’t need to—no SUVs, man, not unless you have a gaggle of kids. Cut down on oil consumption, reduce dependence on foreign suppliers, increase American security thereby. Right, exactly—it’s what those dratted environmentalists have been saying for decades. Conservation is a good thing—good for one’s personal health, good for the national health. And there are the increasing grumbles about the nowhere-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Voices are also being raised in concern over the tons of depleted uranium left behind in both Iraq and Afghanistant. It seems that more and more people are beginning to question the Bush Administration’s probity. I’m surprised it has taken so long for the public to notice. I’m surprised it has taken Congress so long to notice. I suppose that all the smoke from the fossil fuel-burning boys up top has clouded the matter a bit. Oil is a big deal in Alaska, but it isn’t the wave of the future. By clinging to what some hope will give us jobs, we may actually be fatally shooting our chance at a stable and prosperous future. Jeremy Rifkin and others advocate converting to a hydrogen economy, using renewable energy sources to produce it. The Bush Administration politely listened when this idea was brought to them, and the State of the Union Address Bush gave reflected it—in part. Sure, a hydrogen economy looks grand, and the Freedom Car makes a nice if propagandistic sound bite, but a hydrogen economy that is not based on renewable energy to produce that hydrogen is still a dirty and vulnerable one. Unfortunately, many in positions of power in this country have deep ties to the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries, industries that produce a lot of energy per pound of fuel, but which still leave us dependent on dangerous and polluting technologies. While Washington is looking to the moneymakers of the past, new ecological industries are creating jobs for the future. Hawaii and Iceland, places with bountiful geothermal energy, are working concertedly toward developing a hydrogen power base. Europe has a distinct advantage over the US on this—they’ve already implemented changes we have yet to make, in mass transit, alternative fuels, conservation, and realistic pricing on fossil fuels. The US would do better to learn from European countries rather than try to pressure them into oil-economy entwined war. Putting all one’s energy eggs into one basket is a grave error. Alternative energy industries include a variety of approaches, with fuels like hydrogen, methane, natural gas (this is still really a fossil fuel), electricity from wind, tidal movements, solar cells, or fuel cells, and vegetable oil, which brings me back to sunflowers. Sunflowers are not only pretty, they are amazingly useful plants: you get tasty seeds and healthful cooking oil, and you can eat the sprouts and flower buds. They produce natural latex, as do several other plants, in sufficient amount that they can be used to produce rubber. That cooking oil can be used for running tractors. And guess what else? They grow beautifully in Alaska. So when I look at sunflowers, I don’t see just a bloom in my garden, I see a world that isn’t dependent on nasty little dictators and kings for energy. I see a future where to produce electricity is to clean the environment, not dirty it. I see flowers grown to power cars and make bicycle tires. I see a state that fosters renewable energy and job-producing eco-industries with a future. I see a country where my freedoms aren’t whittled away by successive legislatures and presidents in the name of fattening already-wealthy oilmen’s bank accounts. I see an economy where local, small-scale efforts like my garden are what bring wealth and happiness to me and my neighbors and stability and prosperity to our state and our country. I see a lot of bright potential when I look at the sprouts I’ve readied for transplanting. I see a real future, not a false one based on the repetition of our past mistakes. | ||
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