So it's not quite a Daily Show-esque "
senior energy analyst"
credit - not yet - but keen-eyed readers of the
Edmonton Journal (is there
any other kind of reader of the
Edmonton Journal? I'd say Oiler fans, but we
know they don't read too good) . . . ahem . . . keen-eyed readers of the
Edmonton
Journal will notice I'm quoted at
the bottom of an article about
a new
Pembina Institute report recommending my home province switch from coal to renewables inside 20
years.
Snoopy is the world
famous beagle.
(See bottom of post for
further context.)
It always amazes me what sticks from one of
these things where the reporter calls you at 7pm while you're wiping noodles off
your kid's forehead and you babble semi-coherently for 45 minutes in about 20
directions at once, and then the next morning it sounds like you calmly noted
the German experience in switching to renewables and warned readers to be wary
of vested interests in the energy industry. Before retiring to the den with your
pipe and slippers to read a little Proust before bedtime, surely.
Anyway, the real gem in that story is this line from the spokesman for
Alberta energy giant Epcor, which holds the No. 7 spot on
the list of Canada's biggest
corporate emitters of greenhouse gases:
And given our push for environmental, cleaner
power, we're looking at
developing opportunities to utilize that resource in a way that reduces
the environmental footprint.Read it twice. Read it three dozen times. It won't get any
clearer. Here's a sort of schematic to help you parse it. When he says "
that resource"? He means coal. When he says "utilize" ? Burn. "Environmental" and "cleaner" ? A
formidable buzzword bingo entry, but it could've used a random, utterly hollow "green"
or "sustainable" for greater impact. (Or rather it would impact readers more proactively if he'd
utilized key terminology from the vision
statement.) "A way that reduces the environmental footprint" ? Magic clean coal pixie dust (still
in development). "Our push" ? Our reluctant acceptance of scientific reality and consumer demand,
which has thus far manifested itself mainly in empty, newspeaky platitudes like this
one.
Still, full credit to Journal reporter Hanneke Brooymans - she
did a far more thorough job than my local rag does at presenting the full
case for renewables.
And while we're on the topic, I should note
that the
Edmonton Journal is responsible for my first professional
publication. When I was 12 years old and living in Cold Lake (300 km
northeast of Edmonton and aptly named), the
Journal used to publish a
reader-drawn cartoon on the front page of their Sunday Comics section. I
drew one of Snoopy dressed as the Red Baron, holding aloft a bullet-ridden
copy of the Journal and bellowing, "Curses, Red Baron! Now I can't read my
Edmonton Journal Comics!" Or words to that effect. Below the cartoon, they
ran my Grade 7 school photo, in which I looked like quite the cleancut,
bright-eyed youth. I believe the sort of bio that ran alongside noted my
enthusiasm for the heavy metal music of Iron Maiden and Twisted Sister.
Damn, wish I had a scan of that clipping, it was a beaut.)
(Props to
John Hodgman for inspiring this post's title, and props to
my old pal Jason Lapeyre for showing me a picture of an ultra-hip Tokyo teen he once took in which said teen was wearing a t-shirt which read, in giant letters, "
Snoopy is the world famous beagle." No need to parse that - it is unassailably true.)