OCR Text |
Show ; THE ZEPHYR/JUNEJULY 2006 BEELER The Readers Respond... : REMEMBERING DEGLES the ass intellectuals are so few in number and so busy rolling J's and sipping Lattes they Dear Jim Bob Degles and I were friends. The ninth anniversary of his take-out is May 1, 2006. I'm submitting these poems in honor of my friend. Thanks. LAST CALL Degles was the tinest kind of scoundrel, told the truth, banged pots at daybreak couldn't ellect a soccer mom to the school board if you gathered every one of them in a town much larger than Yuma. They are not a factor to the market or to the movement. So here's the real movement. The one that’s happening without a grass roots. The one that never needed a working class, only a free market. Here's the real environmental movement. TV: Television is a big corporate product. TV keeps millions of people content to stay at bellowing “Last call,” passengers asleep, confused, getting a ration of a river day’s abuse before political correctness when Moab men home and rot their brains in front of bad culture instead of driving around in their SUV's looking for something else to do. (I'd like to continue my explanation of this but trust me, studies have been done and television is one of the most pro environment products the were men, as were the women. Local sheep human race has ever developed.) Once we figure out how to completely recycle a broken the Utah stretch of Jim Beam’s amber rivers, point here. Without the technology of TV, human behavior would in some cases have an ill: effect on the environment. Bear with me, Here are some better examples. moved to Nevada while we pursued TV we can sit back and admire ourselves. This example is a bit ludite but I am staging a other-worldly, icy-tooted, wild-eyed, alkaloid-crazed running Rattlesnake, Brown Betty, Boxcar, Capsize, Electronic Data Storage and the Internet: If Things stay on track, we will be able to stop making videotapes and CD's relying only on long term silicon based media storage. I can't tell you what a big deal this is. It's too bad that VCR's were ever invented. All those chemically toxic petroleum based mag tapes are headed to a landfill near you. The only Big Drop, Satan”s Gut; a lot more like we were then than we are now. Oleh Lysiak Moab, Utah argument I know of to counter this one is that Internet technology requires computers and LOCH WADE CLASS CONSCIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM VERSUS NAKED REALITY ‘Dear Jim, Loch Wade has some interesting ideas about environmentalism and | applaud a viewpoint which furthers the effort but I would like to point out that Wade seems less interested in environmentalism and more interested in the phenomenon of "Movements". Especially movements which define struggles of class. Wade suggests that the environmental movement is operating at its best when it favors one economic class over another. I disagree and so do most sociologists and progressive oliticals. if Wade also suggests that we can help the momentum of the environmental movement if we look to engage the working poor and working class and develop their sensitivities towards the topic. Possibly, but the working class and poor can only effect the movement in an evangelistic sense. As a contributor to the environmental course of mankind, the working class is nearly irrelevant and most likely a detriment. : I'll admit, I enjoy Wade's pastime of romanticizing about environmentalism, sitting in the middle of a coffee house, surrounded by hippies and a Huka or two. A filthy 20 something with pierced navel romantically eying me as she scribbles away in her recycled paper sketchbook. Great. Now back to the reality of my mortgage and the cultural wasteland of my country after the fallout of rap music’’s nuclear apocalypse. The lower class defined environmentalism in the seventies and eighties. From the gardens of Texas Co-Ops the hippies put environmental philosophy into the common political dialog. Real change however, measurable stuff like elimination of 1000,0000’’s of tons of solid waste or lawsuits filed by millionaire firms to punish polluters, That stuff happened at the corporate level and big business can take full credit for the lion share of what has and has not been accomplished. Hippies may have evangelized the movement but it was hippies turned C.O.O. who had real effect. It's a bad myth that corporations are anti environment. Corporations are driven by the bottom line. More often than not, the environment suffers no consequence for this. Furthermore, the nineties and the Clinton administration left us the important message that big corporations could grow and make money and make jobs while helping the environment. In today's world of image and PR., Corporations can forward their financial goals by being on the right side of the environmental issues. Technology is the heavy lifter here. Corporations, along with private and public research are where the majority of environmentally useful technology flows from. Not from the lower and middle class. They are the ones who drive out to the middle of the desert, throw away an old refrigerator, drink a few Old E's, change their infants diaper and leave it stuck to a helpless Saguaro. cables which require rare earth metals.... Again, here is another field where recycling is the cottage industry making jobs and profits for the next generation and if we continue our march forward with spectrum reallocation of the VHF frequencies then we can look forward to high bandwidth wireless (1-2mbps) to be ubiquitous. Junk Mail is the new vanishing forest. Corporations along with private and public research are where the majority of environmentally useful technology flows from. Not from the lower or middle class. They are the ones who drive out to the middle of the desert, throw away an old refrigrerator, drink a few Old E's, change their infant's diaper, and leave it stuck to a helpless saguaro. Peter Sills If mail carrier delivered junk mail doesn't upset your environmental sensibilities then find a new cause. Junk mail is not an issue we fix with recycling technology as the solicitors claim, The infrastructure behind it is damaging on multiple levels while the amount of it seems trivial to us with only a few pieces into our recycle bins a day, we must visualize that every home rich and poor receives these deliveries. Ending it through government regulation would be the single most pro environment stroke of a pen to ever occur. Junk Mail is a tree killing, chemical-in-the-river polluting, mail truck polluting, huge factories cranking out the ink and whatnot scourge to the planet. The tree spikes were misdirected. The attack should have been on the printing press responsible for the 100,000,000 3 color department store catalogs and the 4 million requests I have received to refinance my home. As you may gather, for environmentalist reasons, | am opposed to junk mail. I doubt that any elected official will stop it. My best bet is that Google will force them to move their market share to an electronic format or simply a well heeled multinational corporation decides to throw his paper stock wealth on the fire continued on next page... That's what the lower and middle class think of the environmental movement. Indeed, WORDS OF WISDOM FROM UNCLE BEBOP.. ESPRESSO CAFE’ 59 §. Main in McStiff Plaza 259.5551 t SAME GREAT COFFEE PLUS SOME NEW SURPRISES... BREAKFAST ALL DAY... waffles _ paninis a ‘ 2 : COFFEE SHOP : we I#'s_ fact that a good strong cup of JAVA, purchased at a LOCALLY-OWNED & OPERATED a e hop. Three Cheers to one of America’s Bio Engineering / Genetic Engineering: Most environmentalists think of BE/GE as an evil science forwarded by huge corporations with maniacal scientists carelessly playing god for the sake of a buck. It's not that simple. Yes! it's for the buck or it never would have made it out of the University lab. Is it careless and evil? Why would it be? When the Chairman of elitist, low income, masters degree seeking, student loan paid for I-Book and tattoo above e? cl all time biggest corporate giants and the environmentally sound electronic advertising they promote. will drive away those obnoxious BITING MIDGES & GNATSII! whereas it is also a known fact that those same pesky gnats LOVE the taste of STARBUCK’S FLAVORED BLOOD! DRINK LOCAL!!! |