I generally have the TV on for background as I write and trawl the Net. Tonight, I went from National Geographic Channel's "Doomsday Preppers," a show about different survivalists and their preparation for their own personal visions of doomsday, to BBC America's "Jamie's American Roadtrip," where chef Jamie Oliver was visiting the Navaho and present at the opening of community greenhouse, a geodesic dome.
There was some good basic information about disaster preparedness in the Doomsday program but precious little Transition Towns or sustainability talk. It was mostly food storage and guns. Seems to me it played on fear and into elite (and populist) panic. Many of the NatGeo Preppers I saw looked to me to be overweight and at least two commented on their extra weight themselves.
Jamie Oliver, who has also done an American TV series on city-wide campaigns for healthy eating, emphasized the community and cultural relevance of growing your own food locally, that it should be a normal part of everyday life, a social and civic activity.
Interesting differences in approach but I'd still like to see a mass market TV series on DIY solar, starting with Solar IS Civil Defense (http://solarray.blogspot.com/...).
Recently looked at the episode descriptions of "This Old House" and, from what I saw, there weren't many solar installations in their 30 year history. There was one in Brookline, MA during the early 1980s and another in Austin, TX in the first decade of the 21st century, the Uh-ohs in my parlance, and there's going to be some solar in their latest season on an ocean-front RI house.
I've been advocating a DIY Solar Show online since at least 2004, it is one of the Three Solar Projects, (http://solarray.blogspot.com/...), with which I started my solar blog, Solarray, and republished here in 2007 (http://www.dailykos.com/...).
In 2009, I did my own abbreviated Youtube version:
http://solarray.blogspot.com/...
http://solarray.blogspot.com/...
Lots of things the media could do if they weren't devoted to promoting fear and panic.
Here's my outline for a DIY Solar Show:
Your Southernmost Window
A series of half hour programs for TV, videotape, DVD and other digital media
What you can do with one south-facing window, or how to live within a solar budget, including designs viewers can replicate at home to provide heat, light, ventilation, and/or stimulate ecological growth.
Program 1. What You can See from a Window - one square foot of sunlight, orientation to the sun, design principles, window types, glazing, heat loss, infiltration, insulation, heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), air purification, breathing
Program 2. Every Window in the House - window types take 2, radiation and convection, caulking and weatherstripping, drafts and infiltration, how to chart your airflows, how to use them, window insulation, whole house HVAC
Program 3. The Electric Window - solar electricity/photovoltaic/PV, small battery charger, solar/dynamo flashlight radio, one window systems, permanent emergency capacity, battery switching and your car
Program 4. Hot and Cold Windows - windowbox heaters, passive and active ventilators, advanced airflow usage, active and passive water heating, your northernmost window, a nod towards refrigerators and low heat differential heat pumps
Program 5. The Greenhouse Window - windowsill gardens, bubbling out/bubbling in, heat storage, aquaculture, vermiculture, and ecological housekeeping, the neighborhood
Program 6. Most Windows in Town -what if everybody did it?, the economics of sunlight, systems thinking from community to region to country to world, globalization of solar physics