Morgan Spurlock - no thanks for using us to make your point
As any San Pedran knows, ours is not a town to talk shit about, unless you want a fistfight. Last night on the FX show 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock's post Supersize Me project, San Pedro was used as an example of a "Diesel Death Trap". Upon interviewing a single doctor and presumably one of his patients who has children with asthma, he used our town as an example of how fossil fuels are killing people. Once again Pedro is presented as an industrial wasteland, with our beautiful coastline and quiet middle class community ignored in favour of a more "interesting/depressing" story. He doesn't even bother to do the pretty houses, nice community/industrial hell comparison that most writers fall back on, he just throws it out there as an unverified fact that San Pedro is home to a serious environmental problem that is killing people.
There are places in America where private industry has caused people uncountable pain and disease, but Pedro is not one of them, I'm sorry. I know that there are health problems caused by the Port's activities, but we aren't Love Canal here, and there has been a lot of movement in improving the emissions from the ships, the Port and the trucks and trains that service it. It would be a lot more interesting/probably closer to the truth to see a program talking about how alternative fuels and other efforts ( I know that what they are doing isn't enough, but it's a definite start and a change from the way the Port did business in the past) may make the Port a cleaner place, and how the community has been working both with and against industry to achieve that goal.
This is the sort of thing that pisses me off about documentary filmmaking. I drive around the country a lot and if I am in a region where someone has spotlighted an industry or a place, I'll often detour, sometimes hundreds of miles, to see that place. 90% of the time, I'm get there, only to find that the documentarian has totally misrepresented the place. Example: I went to Greeley, CO to check out the slaughterhouse madness profiled in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, and found little more than a small city with a large cattle industry attached. The town was neither steeped in manure or reeked of anything distinctive. It was like many small cities I've driven through all over the country, there was nothing to write home about. The most shocking thing I saw was the big sign announcing the opening of a new Hot Topic, proving that will ever be unmarketed to anyone, anywhere, ever again.
Anyways, huff...
There are places in America where private industry has caused people uncountable pain and disease, but Pedro is not one of them, I'm sorry. I know that there are health problems caused by the Port's activities, but we aren't Love Canal here, and there has been a lot of movement in improving the emissions from the ships, the Port and the trucks and trains that service it. It would be a lot more interesting/probably closer to the truth to see a program talking about how alternative fuels and other efforts ( I know that what they are doing isn't enough, but it's a definite start and a change from the way the Port did business in the past) may make the Port a cleaner place, and how the community has been working both with and against industry to achieve that goal.
This is the sort of thing that pisses me off about documentary filmmaking. I drive around the country a lot and if I am in a region where someone has spotlighted an industry or a place, I'll often detour, sometimes hundreds of miles, to see that place. 90% of the time, I'm get there, only to find that the documentarian has totally misrepresented the place. Example: I went to Greeley, CO to check out the slaughterhouse madness profiled in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, and found little more than a small city with a large cattle industry attached. The town was neither steeped in manure or reeked of anything distinctive. It was like many small cities I've driven through all over the country, there was nothing to write home about. The most shocking thing I saw was the big sign announcing the opening of a new Hot Topic, proving that will ever be unmarketed to anyone, anywhere, ever again.
Anyways, huff...
9 Comments:
Have you ever considered getting a job as a PR guy or corporate spokesmodel? You've definitely got the chops, son.
"What folks don't understand about this so-called 'port pollution problem' is that there has been a lot of movement, what with the alternative fuels and the whatnots. A lot of movement.
"And as for these so-called 'doctors,' with their wild and unsubstantiated claims about 'particulate matter' in diesel and bunker fuel being supposedly full of 'carcinogens' that are allegedly 'bad for you'--well, look at it this way. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach receive more than 5,000 vessel calls every single year. Would we allow that to happen if the ships' emissions were, quote unquote, 'bad for you'? Next question."
(You'd have to do "air quotes" where I've indicated, in order to really pull this off.)
Both of my main jobs involve heavy PR skills, actually.
I'm not saying that the Port doesn't have a pollution problem, I've got beef with Morgan Spurlock's lack of backup for his claims regarding health conditions caused by heavy industry in the Harbor area. We got used as an example of a "Diesel Death Trap" because their production office is in L.A. and we were convenient and the Port is photogenic for that sort of thing.
I don't know if you saw the show, but the segment on Pedro was very short, without any real explanation about the conditions that Morgan and his lone doctor were ascribing to. I wouldn't have had any problem with him or any other T.V. talking head doing a story on diesel pollution in the Harbor area, but I really felt like we got painted badly.
As to port "movement" on diesel pollution. Yeah, given various efforts to bring biodiesel online for vehicles at the Port, are you going to say that there aren't efforts underway to convert many of the thousands of vehicles that service the port to biodiesel and alternative fuels? Are the "plug into the dock" efforts not removing tons of pollutants from the air that were there only 3 years ago? No, I don't think the port would be doing these things without the heavy activism that both the professional community and the public have been engaged in. But look back 10 years. Was the Port doing anything about their impact? Not that I know of.
If anything the Port of LA would make a good example of a major industry that is facing up to the responsiblity of its environmental impact, and is taking steps (with the agressive pushing of the community) to be a more efficient operation. So much of the episode focused on biodiesl, and how it's going to save us from so much pollution, who do you think uses the majority of biodiesel in the US? A handful of back to the land hippies with a VW they drive once a month to get supplies in town? Or heavy industry, municipal bus lines, fleet vehicles, etc...? Who will be buying the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? It's not going to be poor twentysomething environmental activists. Fuel cells are high tech toys, with a big price tag. The first folks to embrace that technology are going to be major industries, who will convert whole fleets of vehicles at a time.
I'm not saying that diesel pollution isn't a serious issue locally, I'm saying that it's a serious issue that is being addressed, where positive things are happening, and the show failed or refused to present that. I've tried to follow the diesel related health issues in Pedro for years, and I just don't see the kind of "illnes cluster" pattern that has devestated other communities. That's not to say that we aren't being impacted, health-wise, by the Port. I jusy don't like my town being used, being portayed as some one-sided wastland of fumes and sickness, when that's only a small part of the picture.
Jeez, dude. You didn't have to give me ten thousand words on why capitalism will save the world. I'm just saying, I work down there, and I'm somebody whom you are going to have an extremely difficult time convincing--even with your mad PR skillz--that anything meaningful is being done to reduce pollution in the port. Shall I tell you about the time I had a dock UTR job at berth 126 (Yang Ming, adjacent to the China yard, run by the same stevedoring company and connected by a service road for free flow of cargo and equipment between the two yards), and I was told specifically that I could NOT use one of the propane UTRs from the China terminal that day? Even though there was no ship in at the China berth?
You read that right. I was forbidden to use a propane UTR to do my work. It was MTC policy that the "green" UTRs had to stay on the China side at all times. So I was forced, along with some fifteen other yard UTR drivers, to use an old-fangled smoky petrodiesel semitractor for nine hours while the propane-burning trucks sat idle all day.
Why? Well, because they're concerned that if yard drivers use UTRs from the China side, they'll forget to take them back at the end of the shift, causing them to lose several minutes of their precious, precious production at the beginning of the shift when a ship finally does in on the China side (where they're mandated to use them by the NRDC settlement).
In other words, MTC and China Shipping are making damned sure that they don't do one bit more than they absolutely have to, under the terms of the settlement, to "face up to the responsibility of their environmental impact." Indeed, it could be argued that they're doing less than they have to under those terms, since a portion of the work day of a Berth 126 dock UTR driver is spent over on the China side moving and rearranging chassis and cargo either discharged from, or intended for, China Shipping vessels.
Hey, but I just work down there, see what happens every day, and keep abreast (for obvious reasons) of the various changes in the cargo-handling industry in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, so what do I know? :)
Erm...in other news, I saw the Einstein truck on Miner St. last night during my bike ride, and again tonight. That guy must spend a lot of time on his boat.
you guys' conversations are so facinating. i really can not add anything of use. but i saw the spurlock show and it scared the pee out of me. then i convinced myself i had nothing to worry about living at the point (because we aint movin'). so now i just hold my breath when i get onto the freeway up there. i let go in time to smell that wonderful stink down past the carson street exit off the 110.
Jeez, dude. You didn't have to give me ten thousand words on why capitalism will save the world.
it was only 517 words. 427 words in your reply.
if you multiply those numbers you get 220,759 words.
now divide that by (berth) 126 and you get 1752.0555555555555555555555555556.
see all those fives? add those 27 fives and you get 135.
add 1+3+5 and you get 9.
add the numbers in berth 126 and you get --- 9!
coincidence?
i don't think so.
Add 2, and you get...11. Now, do you think it's a so-called, quote-unquote, "coincidence" that there were NO MTC OFFICIALS IN THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ON SEPTEMBER 11? HMM? HMM?
Snoopy wrote:
you guys' conversations are so facinating. i really can not add anything of use.
It's kind of like the Odd Couple, isn't it? (I'm Oscar.)
Yeah, you should be fine out there on the Point, as far as air pollution is concerned. Just remember that the wind changes directions sometimes at night, so make sure you do all your breathing during the day.
How come you get to be Klugman? I wanted to be Klugman...
Matthau, actually. I'm thinking of the movie, not the TV show (or the play). And I get to be him because I called it first. It's like "shotgun," man. You gotta be quick, or you get rolled the fuck over.
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