The elevation came in the form of a supercilious warning to put the brakes on the world’s second largest proved oil reserve. It could, he feared, become a curse if not properly managed.  This revelation came upon reflection via a government sponsored helicopter tour and a token chat with a group of not-so disenfranchised First Nations peoples in the area. (In 2009, oil sands companies contracted more than $890 million for goods and services from Aboriginal owned businesses and employed 1600 Aboriginals in permanent jobs).

And with that, Mr. Cameron and the media were able to close the case on the oil sands, as Mr. Cameron purportedly had to jet.  It’s not Mr. Cameron’s fault, completely. The oil complex is just that – complex.  It’s not the kind of business one just picks up as a hobby horse.  Sure, Cameron can regurgitate the technical terminology if he likes. It would be difficult for a techno-geek of titanic proportions to resist a sexy term like steam gravity assisted drainage (SAGD).

Here is where I suggest “putting the brakes on.”  Perhaps a moratorium on incendiary statements by celebutantes or politicians a-la-Pelosi who are not able to, because of their lack of training, do the type of deep comprehensive assessment required for these matters.

There are a few facts that cannot be disputed and you will get those out of Mr. Cameron, the enviro-statist and their press sycophants.  In this case it can be narrowed down to just two: the area containing the deposit and the size of the estimated reserves in Alberta.  Then it’s down the rabbit hole we go.

The oil sands deposit covers an area that would equate to the size of England (54,132 square miles).  For Americans without passports, that is the size of the state of New York.  Of the total 170.4 billion barrels of remaining established reserves, about 80% is considered recoverable through in-situ (no tailings ponds and contrary to what is stated results in significantly lower GHG and energy intensity) the remaining 20% will be mined.  Total estimated reserves are actually 1.7 trillion barrels but at this stage only 10% are recoverable at current technologies and prices.

To put these numbers to reality, to date only 0.3% of the total oil sands area has been disturbed, roughly equal to a small to medium sized city. Even more crucial to understand is that as only 3% of the total surface area could ever be mined (the deposits lie deeper than 75 meters) which leaves 97% of the surface area with some, but not much, industry impact.  Mathematically this scales the land disturbance of oil sands development back to about 0.5% the size of England, and all area that are mined need to have a reclamation plan laid out by producers.  In respect to Alberta’s boreal forest, in 40 years of oil sands activity, a mere 0.02% of the boreal forest has been disturbed.

In 2007 Alberta became the first jurisdiction in North America to legislate GHG reductions for large emitters. However, industry had already vastly mitigated its footprint and has every incentive to do so. Less energy in for every barrel of oil out means increased cash flows.  Strong show of cash flows increases marketability to shareholders and helps shield a company from the inherit volatility of commodity prices.  At current rates of production, 2.6 MMbbls/d, about half bitumen (WCS) and half synthetic light (SCO), the oil sands are responsible for 0.1 percent of total world emissions and that number is doubtful to increase much even if production ramps up to 4MMbbls/d as projected by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

As far as climate change is concerned, the oil sands are not really Alberta’s dirty secret at all.  Environmentalists may still choose to call this resource “tar sands” like the brat at school who won’t let a nickname die, but they would be better served to make their mockumentaries where GHG is unregulated such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, or Venezuela where Hugo Chavez may believe he can bend time and space. And of course there’s no place like home; the GHG from the oil sands equates to only 1% of the emissions of the U.S. power sector where coal happens to be the “King of the World.”

Just like little bit of meat will never do for a vegan, neither will a little bit of oil development for an environmentalist. Therefore there will always be an entire portion of the story that the enviro-statists will obfuscate.  This is the basic social cost/benefit analysis that economists are required to do.

As the leading exporter of crude and petroleum products to the United States, Canada is not only the safest, most secure supplier, but an economic partner.  The North American energy complex is one of the most valuable business chains in the world precisely because every aspect from Main Street to Wall Street is linked and integrated.  Hundreds of thousands of jobs will depend on the oil sands both directly and indirectly in the coming decades. The input goods, materials, and services for oil sands and in the U.S. oil shale – tires, trucks, gauges, pumps, steel, are produced across North America. It is this understanding of the political economy of North American oil, and how it positively impacts the average person, which the enviro-statist circumvents every time.

As one final example I will let Mr. Cameron’s own words to MSNBC hit the nail on the head.  “[T]here’s an opportunity for all of North America to be weaned to some extent off of OPEC oil so that’s why it makes me very nervous… we need more science… we have the capacity for ecological disaster here on an unprecedented scale…”

As standards of living and GDP per capita increases worldwide and millions of individuals are lifted out of poverty, the global demand for energy is expected to increase by as much as 40% over the next two decades. Given even the most ambitious outlook for alternatives, biomass, hydro, and nuclear, unconventional oil remains the integral component of non-OPEC supply. There would be no realistic manner to supplant unconventional production other than increasing the call-on OPEC crude.

In reality, the disaster has been averted.  Thankfully, enough people understand the inextricable link between North America’s oil (and gas) resources and economic growth and prosperity for all.

Striving to outdo a rival celebutard at the 2010 Slammy Awards, Flora and Fawna debut a radical new eco-trend: The Booty Blast Blocker which traps CO2 emissions of a decidedly personal kind.  But the ass-blast trapping trend backfires in ways the girls may never be able to live down.

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Note:  This is the original webisode we created which features pretty crude animation.  After seeing this, Asian power house, Cutting Edge Productions, agreed to lend a hand by animating the webisode, Sput Car, which many of you saw the last couple of weeks here on Big Hollywood. More webisodes yet to come if we can find someone crazy enough to support us.  

To follow our progress, please go to www.floraandfawna.com. There, you’ll be able to buy utterly worthless  Flora & Fawna gear, watch all the episodes and donate money for new webisodes.  Help us make fun of these pseudo-green, self-obsessed Hollywood  celebutards.  

Oh, and check out Fawna’s Facebook page here.

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Click above image to play video.

Two more webisodes to come!   Stay tuned for Gasbags Part 1 and Part 2.

Check out our website.

Connect to Fawna on Facebook.

Sign up for Fawna’s tweets: @FloraFawna

**CAUTION FOR SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES:  ‘FLORA & FAWNA’ IS RAUNCHY

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, next week.  More webisodes to come!

Check out our website.

Connect to Fawna on Facebook.

Sign up for Fawna’s tweets: @FloraFawna

Disney is famously apolitical. In fact, it probably prides itself as an anti-political organization. For years its calling card has been producing family oriented fare that would be welcome in any American household.  Indeed it famously declined to distribute Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which Moore managed to turn into a David v. Goliath story about censorship and corporate greed. This allowed the millionaire filmmaker to find another large corporation to distribute the documentary… whilst getting huge publicity railing against large corporations.  Disney managed to survive this potential blow to their non-political reputation and saved their brand.

But tomorrow, it appears, Disney will be suspending those principles and will engage in political programming. To mark Earth Day the channel is carrying a raft of programs which push the Green/Environmental agenda.

Why would the company that stood up to Michael Moore be willing to make such a bait and switch?  My best guess is that these shows will not appear to be political programming.  But this is a fallacy.  One of the great victories for environmentalists in recent memory is that they have been able to portray environmentalism as apolitical.  And this will be on full display tomorrow on Disney Channel.

Banning fossil fuels or pushing recycling or opposing dams or mining projects are deeply, deeply political actions. They damage communities, they chase jobs out of the country and they tell people where and when they can work and even if they can keep their jobs. When the likes of James Cameron flies to an impoverished region to stop a dam, he may feel good about himself but this means many people will suffer without clean water or cheap electricity.

Environmentalism is politics at its most basic.

Disney and America need to understand this

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FROM THE EDITORS: Here are some more details into what is actually going on.  From the fan site Disney Dreaming:

Playhouse Disney will encore green-themed episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “Handy Manny,” “Special Agent Oso,” “Imagination Movers” and “Jungle Junction” (8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., ET/PT).

Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato star in two new Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green spots stressing the importance of protecting the planet’s oceans and waterways (6:25 p.m. and 6:55 p.m., ET/PT). Throughout the evening, Disney Channel will encore Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green anthem, “Make A Wave,” performed by Jonas and Lovato, which will also be featured in the upcoming Disneynature film “OCEANS,” opening in theaters Earth Day 2010.

Disney Channel continues its Earth Day celebration with encore presentations of environmentally-themed episodes of hit series “Phineas and Ferb,” Hannah Montana,” “The Suite Life On Deck” and “Wizards of Waverly Place,” followed by an encore presentation of Disney Channel Original Movie “Minutemen” (6:00-10:00 p.m., ET/PT).

Of course, we haven’t seen any of the shows yet and there is certainly a chance Disney will have managed the politicize our kids’ television programming in a tasteful and educational way, but just in case they let us down, here are where we anticipate landmines:

-Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, 7:30am: Goofy is accidentally cloned.
-Special Agent Oso, 8am: Oso helps Joshua recycle.
-Imagination Movers, 9:30 am: The Movers teach our preschoolers how to save energy.
-Handy Manny, 9am: The Earth Day Challenge; Manny’s truck engine is replaced.
-Jungle Junction, 10 am: When Taxicrab’s cactus begins to wilt, he takes it back to the desert; Carla helps Crocker create a compost heap.

If these programs are political, as we suspect they will be, Disney Channel will be not only be targeting our kids, but our kids too young to attend school.  Only kids kindergarten-age or younger (as well as out elementary schoolers taking a “Mental Health Day”) will be home from school at 10am when Carla teaches The Crocker the importance of composting.

Make sure to keep an eye out for environmentalism in Disney Channel’s prime-time line up as well, as some of the shows that target older audiences might also have some green messaging.  As we learned two years ago, there isn’t anything cooler than “change.”

As always, we trust our readers to help us cover the Disney Channel, so let us know what you saw.

What are the global warming grunts going to do now that the Apostles of the Holy Church of Climatology have been busted for cooking the “truth” (I believe the exact word they used was “tricking” us) so that we the sheeple would step-n-fetch to their Chicken Little crap?

What will chunky Al Gore do seeing that he has officially slammed into a veritable inconvenient truth? I hear that Gore hasn’t been this gauche since he was busted in 2001 by Warren Christopher while lip-synching to “Dancin’ With Myself” in the Lincoln Bedroom wearing only Tipper’s pantyhose, Madonna’s snow cone bra, and Janet Reno’s glasses.

In Jerry Maguire, the key conflict was Jerry’s realization that he was putting a pretty facade on the moral deterioration within his profession, and was in fact complicit in it. It took an injured hockey player’s young son telling him to fuck off and a bad dream for Maguire to realize the true ugliness of who and what he had become, especially when measured against the high standards of his idol and mentor, agent Dicky Fox. Those troubling events created in Maguire a perfect storm of revulsion, introspection and a commitment to reaffirm the basic principles of his profession, which he laid out in his memo “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” In truth, he had me at hello. Tom’s a hottie!

Like Jerry Maguire, I too started out in my chosen profession with the highest of ideals, which were sparked by a boundless love of the great stories, writers and filmmakers that inspired me. Like the best of them, I am totally dedicated to the pure craft of storytelling in film. It is all about The Story, which is bigger than all of us. That treasured craft has been handed down to us throughout human history, from Homer to Shakespeare to General Lew Wallace, Jules Verne and L. Frank Baum.

It is no surprise that epic stories like Wallace’s Ben Hur and Baum’s Wizard of Oz were made into films, or that so many of us treasure those movies like they were our own. Over time the greatest film stories become a part of us, interwoven into the very fabric of our culture and society, even our very personalities. Today in Hollywood that pure craft, though thriving on many fronts, is in deep trouble on many others. Like Jerry Maguire, I am witnessing the progressive corruption of the highest ideal of what my profession should be all about: the pure craft of storytelling in commercial film and TV.

More and more that pure craft is being poisoned by ideology, propaganda and malicious intent to insult or denigrate audience members whom certain creative film artists vehemently dislike. Tells, ideological plot points that are dead giveaways as to exactly where the story is going, ruin the viewing experience by instantly killing all tension and suspension of disbelief. How about taking viewers and audiences where they’ve never been before? It’s called high concept. Look into it.

Be it left or right, politics is artistic and box office poison. The low ratings and receipts bear me out. Bathrooms and kitchens are separate for a reason. It’s not very smart to shit where you eat. In the long and glorious history of storytelling on film in Hollywood, these developments are both modern anomalies and creative pestilences which offend me to my very core as a pure apolitical storyteller dedicated heart and soul to my craft. Who would dare tell Picasso he has to put Green in Guernica?

And the only health care I want to see pushed on film is Nurse Ratched, Dr. Giggles and Batman giving Dr. Crane a dose of his own medicine! Writers are artists, too. So, as a screenwriter, I’ve drafted my own memo. I may not always succeed, but I will do my damndest to uphold the oaths I now put forward to the American people, my fellow creative film artists, and to film fanatics everywhere on 3 Rock. Consider this my Jerry Maguire Mission Statement for Hollywood:

1. I promise to adhere to the finest principles of pure storytelling which have riveted men, women and children around campfires since the dawn of time. Those principles have endured across the years, decades, centuries and millennia for very good reasons. They will endure long after we and Hollywood as we know it are gone. That is our great responsibility to our past, present and future.

2. I promise to proffer the greatest respect to my audiences and fellow film artists regardless of ethnicity, religion, creed, gender, sexuality or belief system. We all want the same thing: great film.

3. I promise to respect the intelligence, dignity and sensibilities of my audiences and fellow creative film artists in my work, regardless of how stupid, misguided or insensitive they may be in real life.

4. I promise to bring the best of my talents and abilities to bear in telling the greatest and most compelling four-quadrant stories with the widest possible appeal for all. Box office tells the tale.

5. I promise I will not write any script or work on any project with the intent to advance any race, creed, religion, ethnicity, belief system or non-violent ideology over any others. Basic moral themes and conflicts are universal. We are all ultimately human on the most basic and visceral of levels.

6. I promise I will not allow my personal ideological or political beliefs to infect my work. The story is bigger than I am. Where the story leads I must follow, irrespective of all other personal political or ideological considerations. It should always be about telling the best possible stories on film.

7. I will not allow others to infect my work or corrupt my pure storytelling with politics, ideology or propaganda, or to maliciously target for insult or denigration certain segments of my audiences.

8. I promise that I will do my utmost to work in harmony with those creative film artists who may not share my most righteous and ultimately correct core personal, political or ideological beliefs, but share in the dream of creating great stories for the screen. The story is bigger than all of us.

9. I will never blackball, or attempt to have blackballed, a fellow creative film artist based on his or her own personal beliefs. Film artists’ creative talents and merits, not their belief systems, should determine their place in film and TV. This is America. Besides, didn’t we go through all this already?

10. I promise I will never blame any audiences if a story I write is produced and bombs at the box office. We creative film artists alone are responsible for our celluloid failures. I will take full personal responsibility and blame only the writers, actors, directors, producers or studios that screwed it up.

These guidelines are not the be-all end-all, but I do believe they are a good start. There are, of course, notable exceptions to some of these rules in the arena of  satirical and political comedy, nonfiction and documentaries. I’m talking straight-up creative TV and feature film production here.

To be clear, I am not trying to impose restrictions here. Just the opposite. I am trying to unbridle creativity to whole new levels. Ideology is a straitjacket which suffocates artistic creativity. It’s killing the craft of storytelling and turning off a whole lot of audiences needlessly. Worst of all, it’s costing millions of viewers and truckloads of money. How self-destructive can you be?

Whether this mission statement is taken to heart in Tinseltown in the spirit in which I have presented it is not up to me. I can only take the Hollywood horses to water. I can’t make ‘em drink it. But sometimes you just gotta hang your balls out there, because doing nothing is not an option. Just as it wasn’t for Jerry Maguire. Many thanks to Cameron, Tom, Renee and Cuba for showing the way. Hell of a story, Jerry Maguire. Made a ton of dough too! And no politics. Get the Big Picture now?

And who knows? If studios and creative film artists remove politics from the celluloid equation, renew emphasis on the pure craft of compelling human storytelling, and open the doors to all with the brains and talent to be there, it may just spur a new Golden Age of Hollywood. Can’t be bad. Hope Springs Eternal on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I love Hollywood! Show me the money! End memo. Oh, and please don’t politicize SpongeBob and ruin it for me. I’d have to shoot you.

For those of you here at Big Hollywood who think you are playing a whole new game in taking on the Tinseltown establishment in force, I have news for you. Scribe Extraordinaire and futurist iconoclast Harlan Ellison beat you all to the punch by about forty-five years. And if you don’t know who Harlan Ellison is, shame on you! He is a living legend with more Hugos and Nebulas than I care to count, as well as four WGA Awards and an Emmy nod. And all that’s just for starters.

Much of Harlan’s writing defies description or genre. If I had to describe it, I would say that Harlan paints with words like Picasso and Salvador Dali painted with canvas. Even that description is severely lacking. Perhaps Dali on acid would be more apropos. Harlan’s writing does have a peyote-flavored tinge to it than can induce a trippy narcosis in readers, yet Harlan has never touched a drug in his life. Some studio execs, producers and others in the screen trade who have meddled with or lifted Harlan’s work in the past might find that news surprising, given Harlan’s reactions to those mortal offenses resembled a tiger on methamphetamine.

In point of fact, there are two kinds of Harlan Ellison people in Hollywood, and both are foaming-at-the-mouth types. There are those in the studio system who despise Harlan with every atom of their being, and those who would take a firing squad for him. I have a blindfold on standby just in case. Have for about thirty years now. But let us discuss some of the other foaming-at-the-mouth types, why that is, and why he is my Hollywood hero and role model as a writer in that regard.

As noted in the preamble, Harlan does not care who he offends for the sake of pure art. Never has. How about we start at the top with Gene Roddenberry on the set of Star Trek in 1967? Though City on the Edge of Forever won Harlan Hugo and WGA Awards and is considered by many Trekkies to be the finest episode written for that show, Harlan begged to differ at the time. See, Harlan’s original script contained various moral ambiguities (including a drug-addled Enterprise crewman) that countered producer Roddenberry’s less dark and dystopian vision of the Star Trek future.

So Roddenberry rewrote it. Harlan protested vehemently, to the point of trying to replace his own name on the script with that of his oft-used contemptuous pseudonym Cordwainer Bird, which literally translates to “He who makes shoes for birds.” Roddenberry refused to let Harlan make the change, and added insult to injury in later years by proclaiming he had saved the script.

Ten years later, while working as creative consultant and staff writer on the darkly brilliant but highly underrated Twilight Zone reboot in the mid-1980s, Harlan once again came to artistic blows with the show’s producers over his proposed episode titled ‘Nackles,’ a story of good and evil Santas having at it on a Christmas Eve most dark and dystopian. Seeing a trend here? Harlan refused to budge, so the studios canceled ‘Nackles at the last minute, fearing it was too dark for the ‘fragile’ American market. Imagine that. A dark and dystopian Twilight Zone episode. Who’d a-thunk it?

Had the studio forced a rewrite not to Harlan’s liking, Mr. Bird’s name would no doubt be on the credits. Alas, the evil St. Nick was not to be.  And we are all the lesser for it, I can assure you. I guess Bad Santa is as far as the studios will go. Harlan also sued Jim Cameron over the original Terminator film as being derivative of his two scripted Outer Limits TOS episodes Soldier and Demon With a Glass Hand, and won. A settlement was reached, and Harlan is now acknowledged in the film’s credits. Harlan also sued and won over City on the Edge of Forever residuals, and recently settled with Paramount Pictures on the matter.

For me, the toppings on the Harlan Ellison Hollywood Rebel cake are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, Harlan’s two collections of scathing essays on television’s moral and intellectual vacuity, previously published in the Los Angeles Free Press in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even today they are enthralling reads, and are required reading in many college media classrooms. Example. Harlan thought the concept of Hogan’s Heroes, i.e. a comedy set in a German POW camp, was offensive in the extreme given the real-life brutality in those settings. In response, Harlan asked the pressing question, “What next for a studio sitcom? Bernie Goes To Auschwitz?”

Love him or hate him, Harlan Ellison cannot and will not be denied. Yet Harlan’s approach to screenwriting and storytelling as a pure art form is as relevant to Hollywood today as it was forty years ago. I can guaran-damn-tee you, even if Harlan thinks Al Gore doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in his alarmism on Global Warming, God have mercy on the poor studio bastard who would try to compel Harlan to inject An Inconvenient Truth into his scripts. I’m thinking a response less Academy Awards and more tiger on meth.

And that is what is truly disappointing to me in Hollywood today: that so many great studio writers are so willing to pervert their art and God-given storytelling talent just to keep working a show. Or worse, to corrupt it willingly for the sake of propaganda. I understand their real world concerns, but I wish at least one WGA writer would toss up a Cordwainer Bird-like pseudonym to let us all know there’s at least one ghost in Jeffrey Immelt’s Big NBC Green Machine. At the very least, lay down some wood here in the comments section. I’m 99.9% sure Harlan would. Hollywood could use a few good rebels right now. Rebels that may sell their work to make a living, but draw the line at prostitution.

And Harlan, if I’m wrong on any of this, please feel free to give me Hell. Even if you do, that get-out-of-a-firing-squad-free card will always be good with me. I would also be greatly interested in hearing from any other creative film artists tossed into the political mud pits at NBC and elsewhere who could not be more offended if they were Harlan Ellison. Your secrets are safe with us. Trust me.

Be a Hollywood Rebel! Let ‘er rip! Fight The Power! Do it for Harlan

NBC, which is last place in network ratings, has decided to double down on their green propaganda push this week by putting environmentalist messages in five of its shows: 30 Rock, Heroes, Community, The Office and The Biggest Loser. NBC is owned by GE. GE has positioned itself to make loads of money if “green technology” becomes dominant, so they’ve not only invested a lot of capital in the Obama administration, they’re trying to get everyone on their bandwagon.

It seems none of them remember junior high and the way students reacted to all those anti-drug scare films because that sure worked out well. The people who didn’t approve of drugs weren’t going to do them anyway and the rest laughed at the videos they were shown. People in general don’t like scolds. They don’t like being preached to unless they asked for it. And certainly, when people tune in for entertainment, they do not want a lecture.

They have seen advertising in all its forms and certainly propaganda. They either agree with it or they don’t.

It’s bad enough we get a sermon from many shows already, or that we’re lectured everywhere we turn. But the fact is, most of what they’re trying to say is inaccurate or just plan wrong in many cases. There is no solid evidence that human beings are causing global warming. More and more scientists are speaking out against that theory all the time. More people are feeling that the whole thing has been exaggerated.

But of course, that’s not stopping NBC from lecturing us. I guess ratings aren’t an issue over there.

There was a time when Hollywood used to fill TV shows with propaganda from their sponsors. Now the spam comes from the Obama administration and their buddies at GE who want expensive windmills and solar cells to replace cheaper energy sources we already use. And to do that they want to pound on our heads until we scream uncle.

A better idea is to change the channel.

As for that Kurt Vonnegut quote above, it should be stated over and over again that the reason we have technology is to protect us from the environment, not to destroy it. All those green scolds should give back their inoculations, dental work and factory-made clothes and go live in some country like the Congo with no electricity and/or indoor plumbing. After they’ve really “gone green” for awhile they can talk about it. But never try to force it on the rest of us. We’re not interested.

Climate change is a part of nature, and it’s a good thing we have the means to survive it when it comes. What they want is for us to disarm ourselves.

No thanks.