Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Environmental Films Can Be Fun........
Environmental films don’t have to only be “Debbie Downer” environmental documentaries. Environmental activism is time consuming and stressful but it is also fun. Anyone who has ever been involved in a big environmental battle knows how crazy and downright silly things can become when strategizing against opponents who are much more powerful in terms of money and political connections. Friendships are formed among people who may never have connected any other way, lives are transformed, and democracy happens. It can be a joyful process.
Repeating Pattern
There is a repeating pattern where busy law abiding citizens have had to become environmental activists to protect their homes and neighborhoods. Potential industrial polluters often follow the same script. They arrive in a rural and/or economically depressed area, throw around a little cash, make back room deals with naïve/hypo-educated municipal officials, promise jobs and wrap their environmental-devastating industries in an American flag with a mantra like “saving the country from dependence on foreign oil.”
More environmental films will only help the future uninitiated environmental activists by providing a model for success and the will to not be overcome by the often daunting task of battling against deep-pocketed powerful polluters and corrupt and/or clueless politicians.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Enchanting Ethanol
Enchanting Ethanol is all about a community finding out that green is not always green. Veronica and Nick buy a dilapidated cottage in an enchanting Chesapeake Bay community. They imagine spending their weekends hanging on the beach with their two little kids, watching wildlife and drinking beer. But their dream is interrupted when a phony green investor, in cahoots with the local trash mafia, sees the community as an easy target for an ethanol plant.
The phony environmentalists envision collecting green government subsidies when the local bumpkins greet the ethanol plant with open arms, but they are surprised. In a comedic series of town hall meetings, the proud local stewards of the environmentally fragile Chesapeake Bay area are tough and resourceful. This is not some preachy documentary. This is kid-centered adventure that features Veronica and Nick’s young family. Things become dangerous when their boy, enthralled with a bottle picturing a one-eyed man he believes to be a pirate, takes a beer bottle that contains stolen cellulose-eating beetles. The gun-totting trash mafia who own the stolen beetles, they hope to use to produce ethanol, hunt down the family while they are hiking. As the family runs the tension builds each time the bottle which is in the boys backpack is bumped, for if the beetles escape all the Bay woodlands and marshes could be eaten by the bugs. The quirky locals rescue the family and, to protect the Chesapeake Bay, expose the ethanol scam.
Casino Jack
What a great movie!! Some of Abramoff and Delay’s buds from the Alexander Strategy Group, actually a partner and former press secretary for former US Rep Rick Santorum, contacted our environmental activism group in a dark alley. Not kidding-- he approached me in a dark alley outside a tiny rural firehouse and offered to “help” us. He said some of his clients were supportive of our efforts to stop a corn ethanol plant from being built. They continued to contact members of our group via a “Media and Issue Advocacy” firm working for ASG. Whenever I asked who their clients were the names changed. Sometimes it was the “Small Business Survival Committee”, or the “Association of Consumers and Taxpayers” or “Americans For Tax Reform.” The whole thing seemed kind of shady and we never accepted their offers of assistance.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Enchanting Ethanol
Enchanting Ethanol is all about a community finding out that green is not always green. Veronica and Nick buy a dilapidated cottage in an enchanting Chesapeake Bay community. They imagine spending their weekends hanging on the beach with their two little kids, watching wildlife and drinking beer. But their dream is interrupted when a phony green investor, in cahoots with the local trash mafia, sees the community as an easy target for an ethanol plant.
The phony environmentalists envision collecting green government subsidies when the local bumpkins greet the ethanol plant with open arms, but they are surprised. In a comedic series of town hall meetings, the proud local stewards of the environmentally fragile Chesapeake Bay area are tough and resourceful. This is not some preachy documentary. This is kid-centered adventure that features Veronica and Nick’s young family. Things become dangerous when their boy, enthralled with a bottle picturing a one-eyed man he believes to be a pirate, takes a beer bottle that contains stolen cellulose-eating beetles. The gun-totting trash mafia who own the stolen beetles, they hope to use to produce ethanol, hunt down the family while they are hiking. As the family runs the tension builds each time the bottle which is in the boys backpack is bumped, for if the beetles escape all the Bay woodlands and marshes could be eaten by the bugs. The quirky locals rescue the family and, to protect the Chesapeake Bay, expose the ethanol scam.
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