Articles by Chris Schults

2005 EMA Awards & “The West Wing”

Tomorrow night the Environmental Media Association will be hosting the 2005 EMA Awards in Los Angeles. From the EMA website:

What Is An Environmental Media Award?

First presented by the Environmental Media Association (EMA) in 1991, the Environmental Media Awards honor film and television productions that increase public awareness of environmental issues and inspire personal action on these issues. The Awards recognize writers, producers, directors, actors, and others in the entertainment industry who actively expressed their concern for the environment through their work. The Environmental Media Awards have also honored people in the entertainment industry who have gone above and beyond their peers in consistently including environmental practices, story lines and rolemodeling. Such honorees have included Keely and Pierce Brosnan, Jayni and Chevy Chase, Blythe Danner, Dave Matthews Band, Daryl Hannah, Alanis Morissette, Willie Nelson, Edward Norton, Rob Reiner and John Travolta.

For a list of nominees, check out the EMA press release. (Look for Grist coverage of the event later this week.)

In the "Television Episodic Drama" category, my fav The West Wing has been nominated (along with Boston Legal and House) for the episode titled "The Hubbert Peak." This past Sunday, The West Wing addressed another topic familiar to us here in Gristmill: intelligent design. Candidate for POTUS Matt Santos must have been reading Gristmill, as his reasoning for opposing teaching ID alongside evolution in public schools sounds very similar to Dave's post on the subject.

And apparently, NBC is promoting a "live debate" on Sunday, Nov. 6th for which you can submit questions. So hop to it! Here's mine: "How will your administration address the issue of climate change?" Let's see if they actually answer it, or at least any enviro question, on television.

But if submitting questions to a fictional presidential debate is not your thing, how about a poll:

“We don’t conserve until we’re down to the last roll of toilet paper.”

Over at Current TV, which is the new cable network that I'm obsessed with even though I don't have cable, browsers of the online studio can find out if a video clip has made it on air. So this morning I was pleased to learn that part one of Earth Current "cody" did so.

Earth Current "cody" is a three part series of video shorts, produced by Dharma Dog Pictures, which introduces us to Cody Lundin, founder of Aboriginal Living Skills School and ACES Arizona Center for Environmental Sustainability. In part one, we get a tour of Cody's home, which looks to me like a Hobbit hole in the middle of the desert. In fact we discover it is a eco-designed house.

Part two is an interview with Cody, formerly known as ABO DUDE, where get gems like "we don't conserve until we're down to the last roll of toilet paper" during conversations on global warming, sustainability, and conservation. According to Cody, what is going to get people to "shift" their behavior so that they make less of a footprint is "pain." Not public-education campaigns, but pain. Ouch!

In part three, we learn how one would make fire in a world without matches, lighters, and Swedish Firesteel. The moral of the story: We've lost touch with the basics of nature. (Yeah, but the Swedish Firesteel is so cool!)

So head on over to Current TV, watch the clips, leave some comments, and greenlight parts two and three if you think they deserve to be on air.

And you can check out some other clips from Dharma Dog over at the Current TV studio, including one of my favorites, the Organic Rap.

Lastly, let us know in comments if Cody would make for an interesting InterActivist.

Featuring the faces of over 1,000 JibJab fans

For all you crusaders against Wal-Mart and overconsumption, check out the latest from JibJab.com. Happy Friday.

Jeff Jarvis on Current TV and the new iPod

For a different perspective on Al Gore's recent speech and cable TV network, Current TV, head on over to the BuzzMachine to read what Jeff Jarvis has to say.

While I won't go into his critique of all things Al, other than to say he's critical of the former Veep for not embracing the Internet more, he did make one suggestion I've meant to blog about:

Finally, at the end, Gore returns to the internet.

Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared.

Not to nitpick, but streaming is usually outbound, not inbound. And I find it odd that you still call these people "viewers" if they're supposedly programming the network. Aren't they your journalists and programmers? Aren't you supposed to be the viewer now?

And he still complains about the internet because there's not enough bandwidth for full-motion video. Try Bittorrent, Al. Try video iChat. Try video on those new iPods.

For those who did not hear the latest news, Apple is now selling a video iPod. If you've been toying around with the idea of participatory journalism, your potential audience just got a whole lot bigger.

Now wouldn't it be interesting to have someone make a clip about the iPod's non-replaceable battery, which destines it and its constituent toxic heavy metals for a premature trip to the landfill, to play on said iPods.