Urban Ecoist

Ok, so normally, I am not one to count on celebrities to either a) do something or anything important enough for me to care about or b) tell me how to think about things that I may already care about. However, as this is a site with a focus on all things sustainable, I have made an exception in Mr. Brad Pitt’s and Make It Right NOLA’s case.

So, in my first installment of “green” celebrity news…I bring you…Brad Pitt.

Enough about making grandchildren envious already, and nice shiny suit there, Brad. Oh, and you forgot that top button, too. Ok, I got that out of me…

Visiting D.C. within just a few weeks of his frequent co-star, George Clooney’s visit, Pitt’s star power was kept as secret as humanly possible in the cesspool of Washingtonian politics. But according to the AP story about the visiting “dignitary”, “The Power of Pitt drained entire congressional offices of their female employees and quite a few male aides as well, all of whom could be picked out by the way they suddenly appeared in the Senate’s doorways and halls, nonchalantly cupping cell phones and cameras at their sides and hanging around waiting news crews.”

Pitt was in Washington (Angie is also shooting a movie there, so he was in town already) to talk with the people in power about affordable, sustainable housing. If you didn’t know, Pitt is the starpower behind an effort in New Orleans called Make It Right NOLA (click on that link to read more about Make It Right). MIRNOLA is working to design and build green housing in the Lower Ninth Ward, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and an area home to a predominantly low-income minority population.

While on the Hill, Brad Pitt met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about “nationalizing” Make It Right’s ideas and designs for more American cities that have been afflicted by disasters, both natural and man-made (hello, Detroit, Michigan).

Brad Pitt, NOLA, New Orleans, Make It Right, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Lower Ninth Ward, affordable housing, sustainable housing, George Clooney, green building, green design, low income

This is interesting to me, not because Robert Redford is involved or that gas companies are funding the protesters, but because this exemplifies the contentious relationship between society and wilderness, the urban and the ecoist.

I have tried to bring to your attention to Bush’s attempt to sell off parts of the Utah wildlands to oil and gas companies — well, not sell, but lease at bargain prices, so that the oil and gas companies can make billions off of publicly owned minerals.

Why do poor New Yorkers hate Utah so much?

A group called the Congress of Racial Equality has set up camp in Utah just in time for the Sundance Film Festival in order to call out Robert Redford and his protests of the Bush Landgrab Auction. CoRE’s stance is that by protesting the sale of mineral rights for some of Utah, Robert Redford hates poor urban people.

CoRE believes that by not allowing the natural gas companies drill in Utah, prices will increase for Grandma on Social Security back in New York City. That may seem like a simplified version of the protest, but I have only broke it down into its real merits. Granted, fuel prices will rise this winter season, but not because Robert Redford is helping an environmental group urge Obama to overturn the late lame duck actions that did end up getting passed.

I am all for equality and environmental justice, but I gotta say that CoRE is off its rocker. To even surmise that Robert Redford or any opposition to drilling or mining is what is driving up fuel costs is so unbelievably wrong that it is almost laughable. CoRE would be better serving its members and those it claims to defend by protesting the oil and gas companies for making so much money off the backs of the poor. CoRE should be protesting outgoing (hallelujah and praise the lord) President[sic] Bush for allowing Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal from running rampant during his two ungodly long terms and make all those billions on substances that already lie beneath public lands. Not only that but CoRE should be protesting the whole system of a government that will pump so many dollars of subsidies into the fossil fuel industries so as to skew the cost of those fuels so low that no other fuel source can compete cost-wise — until those fuels start running out after causing catastrophic damage to the ecosystem.

Yeah, maybe you should look at your actions, CoRE. Is it really Redford that is using his fame to preserve Utah so he can “look at the scenery” or is it CoRE that is using Redford’s fame to push the agenda of ExxonMobil, a major funding source for CoRE’s operations?

protests, Utah, lease, mineral rights, wilderness, Robert Redford, Sundance, natural gas, festival, Congress of Racial Equality, Exxon, ExxonMobil, oil, gas, coal, mining, drilling, fossil fuels, heating costs, environmental justice