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Passive and Active Information

Green interior design and the environmental movement are being subtly and insidiously undermined by vested interest groups largely with the complicit help of the mass media. Despite living in the age of information people still rely on the mass media for information on topics they do not actively pursue an interest in. In other words, we passively accept a lot of information from the TV, magazines and newspapers, because we tend to confine our internet searches to topics that interest us.

Media Representations of Green Interior Design

As a consequence green interior design is widely perceived as being ‘something to do with the green movement’. It is also seen as perhaps a good thing, but also a costly thing. The mass media do nothing to dispel these false ideas. They fail to mention the economic savings to be made from CFLs and LEDs. They fail to mention the case of the passive house that requires virtually no heating in the winter. They fail to enumerate the benefits of green roofs. Nor do they make much content out of the dangers to human health of many household products that contain VOCs. Americans are rarely reminded by the press that radon is the second biggest cause of cancer.

Media discrediting of Solar and Wind Energy

The case of solar power is instructive. After initial success in the US and the UK with UK with subsidies to make solar energy affordable through credit schemes the policies have been largely dropped because of ‘austerity measures’. The press failed to make any content out of this story that seems backwards in the extreme. As reserves of fossil fuels run out and as the prices for such resources continue to increase it should be the case that alternative ways of heating, cooling and powering a house should be of more relevance, not less. Instead the media is continually suggesting that solar power is too expensive.

Wind power fares no better. Whereas many places in Scandinavia now produce a significant amount of their electricity from wind turbines, stories are placed in the British and American press about the dangers of wind turbines, and about local protests to proposed wind turbine projects. I suspect most people would rather live next to a wind farm than a nuclear power plant or coal burning plant that produces mercury pollution. In Japan the nuclear disaster following the Fukushima tsunami on March 11th 2011 resulted in almost silence from the mass media about the possibility of switching to alternative energy sources. You don’t have to be a PHD in media studies to see that monied interests are influencing mass media content.

How GM and Chevron Sabotaged the Electric Vehicle

Look at the car industry. They want us to continue to use oil combustion engines. Even hybrid cars have to use lead-acid or lithium batteries that rely on oil burning combustion engines (phony hybrids). It is the battery in electric cars that limits their range and performance.

Stan and Iris Ovshinsky developed a new type of battery called the NiMH (nickel metal hydride batteries). It was a revolutionary battery that could completely power a car and made it unnecessary to have any type of gasoline internal combustion engine in a vehicle. The NiMH was produced by Panasonic. In 2002 Toyota produced the Toyota RAV4-EV that out performed any current hybrid or electric car available then or now. The RAV4-EV could go 100,000 miles without a change of batteries. Through a piece of chicanery between Chevron, Texaco, Panasonic and GM the rights of the first viable electric vehicle were bought up and shelved indefinitely. Because patents for the NiMH battery are owned by Chevron and GM no one can use this technology.

Thus, no real alternative to the gasoline burning combustion engine that is reasonably priced with good performance has been available to the buying public. Needless to say the fact that the car and oil companies have killed the electric car has never made it onto the 9 o’clock news.

The solar powered road has also been invented that allows cars to plug into the road to recharge creating the greenest possible transport system was bought up by an oil company and assigned to the waste bin of history.

Be Aware of Media Manipulation

When you see yet another piece of propaganda on the news about the problems of wind energy, stop to consider the alternatives: global warming, mercury poisoning, oil slicks and massive energy shortages. And then remember that we already have the technology to prevent this disastrous scenario from happening. Only the patents are owned by the car and oil companies, and the major distributors of content are concealing this vital information.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/ - currently scientists struggle to develop their own NiMH batteries that don’t infringe on copyrights by Ovonics.

Tags:NiMH battery, electric vehicle, wind turbines, media representation, patent blocking