Designer, builder and author Ron Jones, introduced by Mike Collignon, responds to the Supreme Court's rollback of EPA authority over power plant emissions. He argues from the collapse of the whale oil and steam eras that energy transitions are driven by better technology and human will, not by exhausting the resource.
00:00:09:10 - 00:00:22:22
Mike Collignon: The letters are thoughts about life as we live it today. And they're sent from high in the Colorado Rockies by Ron Jones, designer, builder, author, and storyteller. And now, here's today's letter.
00:00:22:24 - 00:00:52:20
Ron Jones: On the final day in June, the Supreme Court of the United States punctuated its exaggerated hard right turn by ruling in favor of pollution, politics and corrupt power when it completely ignored virtually the entire worldwide scientific community and rolled back authority of the EPA to regulate deadly, climate destroying emissions from coal fired power plants.
00:00:52:22 - 00:01:27:03
Ron Jones: Coal producers rejoiced, along with numerous other industries who all believe that they are the most overregulated in world history. Within days, the National Association of Homebuilders, for example, added its own flaccid voice to the cheerleading chorus by communicating that its court decision is generally positive toward NBS interests, demonstrating once again that special interests and profit making always supersede environmental stewardship and the common good.
00:01:27:05 - 00:01:56:08
Ron Jones: Perhaps the ruling was a practical matter predicated on favorable timing. Since the barbaric invasion of Ukraine, the Covid pandemic and the daily mass shootings we are witnessing are dominating so much of our collective attention and outrage. But the environmental gut punch took me back immediately to the spring of 2010, when multiple fossil fuel disasters dominated the airwaves, as if it happened yesterday.
00:01:56:09 - 00:02:36:02
Ron Jones: I remembered the funerals in West Virginia coal country, which had barely slipped from the daily headlines and the emotional images of the grieving families. There were only beginning to fade from our collective consciousness when another fossil fuel disaster projected itself onto our computers and television screens. We found ourselves staring into a virtual river of crude oil, spewing from an almost mile deep wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico, as it embarked on its inexorable journey toward our southern coastline, leaving in its wake a trail of death to every living thing it touched.
00:02:36:04 - 00:03:09:15
Ron Jones: The rush of anger and disgust that swept over us was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of helplessness, which came from feeling that all we could do was watch this newest desecration of our environment unfold, while it simultaneously dealt crippling blows to entire economies and communities, and with it, the sickening realization that the only people who could possibly put an end to that ongoing eruption of destruction were those who caused it to happen in the first place.
00:03:09:18 - 00:03:42:16
Ron Jones: In the midst of this debacle, we learned of yet another coal mine disaster, this time in Russia, which not only claimed the lives of miners working their daily shifts, but perhaps even more cruelly, also those of the rescuers who went into that gaping grave in a long shot attempt to save their brothers. The sickening black smoke from the fire still burning in that coal mine and on the surface waters of the gulf, combined to create a perfect backdrop for the farce that was being played out on Capitol Hill.
00:03:42:17 - 00:04:08:16
Ron Jones: As members of Congress beat their chests and perform for the cameras in the latest act of their recurring sitcom. Or is it a tragedy about how they were protecting and serving those who elect them? In that particular episode, a Ribbon we've seen many times. We were treated to a command performance of the industry executives as they rolled out their rendition of Kovel here.
00:04:08:17 - 00:04:51:09
Ron Jones: No evil, speak no evil, although in between the scenes, the excuse making and finger pointing there was more reminiscent of the Three Stooges than serious thespians. The lives of those lost in the rig explosion hardly seemed to merit a footnote, as all sides jostled for the best possible position before the news media. Meanwhile, as if we were playing an endless game of Russian roulette, mindlessly loading another round of fresh bullets, we went about business as usual, repeatedly filling our gas tanks with expensive, volatile liquid that we turned into poisonous exhaust gases, running our lights and appliances.
00:04:51:09 - 00:05:22:01
Ron Jones: With electricity mostly produced at that time by incinerating the dirtiest combustible material around, dutifully paying up our tribute to greedy exploiters, including many who are known to support our sworn enemies with the very profits they milk from us, who have systematically brainwashed us into believing that the world cannot operate without their products. There was nothing original about this charade, simply history repeating itself.
00:05:22:03 - 00:05:52:11
Ron Jones: Let me explain. In the first half of the 19th century, whale oil was the highest quality lamp, fuel and lubricant available. Demands for it were so great that profits from that industry and by the way, the so-called Golden age of American whaling ran roughly from the 1820s up until the start of the Civil War. Our largely recognized as the source of funding that made possible the expansion of the nation into the West.
00:05:52:13 - 00:06:31:20
Ron Jones: The inescapable irony being that the profits from whaling almost resulted in the extinction of the iconic American bison. As the new territories were being civilized. The whaling industry did not meet its decline because all the whales had been slaughtered, although that almost certainly would have occurred if left to the whalers themselves. The average whaling voyage had reached three years in duration at its peak, and one was recorded at an astonishing 11 years, and the American fleet alone once numbered more than 750 oceangoing vessels that literally sailed the seven seas.
00:06:31:23 - 00:07:13:00
Ron Jones: More than 20,000 seamen were directly engaged in whaling, and over 70,000 people depended on the $70 million industry for their livelihoods. However, in 1859, a Pennsylvania well driller in search of water struck petroleum instead, and that event, along with the outbreak of the Civil War in which the vast majority of the whaling vessels were destroyed, led to the realization that a more plentiful and therefore cheaper type of fuel and lubricant was ripe for the plucking, and soon people began to light their lamps with kerosene and lubricate their machinery with petroleum products.
00:07:13:02 - 00:07:38:25
Ron Jones: Those who run their hands and warned that the economy would collapse if whale oil and the industry built around it should disappear, were soon forgotten. And the rest, as they say, is history. The introduction of the petroleum age fostered another significant advances in technology, which would soon pit one form of fossil fuel against another for a considerable period of time.
00:07:38:28 - 00:08:17:17
Ron Jones: The external combustion engine represented the most efficient and versatile source of mechanical horsepower available in the world. Steam locomotives. Still the darlings of railroad aficionados and nostalgic hobbyists, burn gigantic quantities of coal or wood as they drew the immense loads of commerce back and forth across the continent. While steamships, depending on those same solid fuels, ferried passengers and freight up and down the planet's great rivers and over its vast oceans with speed, endurance and predictability never before imagined, let alone realized.
00:08:17:19 - 00:08:55:21
Ron Jones: External combustion technology even took a victory lap in personal transportation for a time as a version of the renowned Stanley Steamer. By the way, over 200 were produced and sold in 1897 and 98, more than any other car company, set a world speed record for automobiles in 1906. At a blazing and truly amazing 127mph. There were eventually obsolescence came about because they could not compete with the fuel efficiency and power delivery of internal combustion technology.
00:08:55:23 - 00:09:29:11
Ron Jones: Despite their desperate attempts to woo back the car buying public through early fear based advertising campaigns designed to plant confusion and safety, doubts about the internal explosion engine, a strategy which sounds strikingly familiar to those employed by detractors of renewable energy technologies today. The dominance of the steam engines did not fade away because they didn't work. They were simply replaced by more advanced, convenient technologies and efficient energy sources.
00:09:29:12 - 00:10:06:21
Ron Jones: Similarly, the mass use of whale oil for lighting and lubrication did not end because the last remaining whale had been hunted down and brutally harpooned. That act has apparently been left to the modern day whaling industry, which continues to relentlessly harvest this resource, mostly for pet food and use in cosmetics. We won't simply wake up one day and realize that the last trainload of coal has been burned at the last power plant, putting an end to the blackening of the skies and the stockpiling of toxin laden ash in open heaps and lagoons.
00:10:06:27 - 00:10:31:27
Ron Jones: Nor will we switch from petroleum based fuels to propel our implements of transportation and recreation planes, trains, automobiles and the rest. These changes don't happen in the blink of an eye or without the will to make sacrifices. But in the scheme of things, which is more relevant how fast we get there or when we start? There is an irony in the magic of overnight delivery.
00:10:31:27 - 00:11:03:10
Ron Jones: It doesn't provide you with any fewer deadlines, it just lets you postpone them longer. The first step in any journey is the most important. More than three decades after the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, oil that spilled from its hold is still being cleaned up in Prince William Sound and some of the most important environmental and commercial species that were previously found in great abundance there, such as the valuable herring, are no longer residents in that region.
00:11:03:12 - 00:11:34:21
Ron Jones: After many weeks, the oil was still gushing from that BP well on the floor of the Gulf. Can we even begin to imagine how long that disaster will haunt us? On what day do we intend to start demanding the settlement of accounts? Why is it so difficult to get people to admit that we not only have the ability to make intelligent decisions and affect positive change in the way we conduct our lives, but that it is our moral obligation to do so.
00:11:34:23 - 00:12:04:22
Ron Jones: We know how to reduce the environmental and social impacts of our industries, our transportation and our built environment. We're not forced to continue to pass the poison for the sake of profit by robotically going along with this status quo of our own recreation. We continue to finance with our purchases. We not only endanger today's miners, who would make their way into the darkness of the hole, and those who risk their very lives on drilling rigs throughout the world.
00:12:04:27 - 00:12:46:05
Ron Jones: Nor are we just irresponsibly, simply threatening entire species and ecosystems that have taken millions of years to evolve and reach natural balance. No, we are engaged in something far more inexplicable. Our legacy could very well be that we were the first species in the history of the world that knowingly participated in its own extinction. Apparently, we're willing to keep that loaded gun to our own heads, in effect, holding ourselves and future generations hostage to our greed, our stubbornness, and our laziness.
00:12:46:08 - 00:12:58:10
Ron Jones: Regarding what we've learned so far on this subject, at least, it seems we don't have much to report. But we'll keep searching and I'll let you know next time what I find.
00:12:58:12 - 00:13:10:27
Mike Collignon: Be on the lookout for the delivery of more letters from the High country. For now, we leave you with the acoustical sounds of the great Eddie Cleveland in his track A mood to friends. Far away.