Jack Roush, part owner of several NASCAR teams, has announced that he’s going green! Roush Fenway Racing has “announce[d] their pledge to sustainability and environmental protection”.

I’m so relieved. I thought for sure that global warming climate change was going to destroy the earth, but Roush and his organization have saved the day.

I’m sorry, but if you’re concerned about saving the planet, operating auto racing teams is the last thing you need to be doing.

Two of Roush Fenway’s drivers, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, were suckered into are buying “renewable energy credits”. I also am selling renewable energy credits. Send me your money and I’ll go buy a little windmill or maybe some solar cells. Geesh.

Now you may read this and think that I don’t really care about the environment, and you’d be absolutely wrong. But I draw the line at these scams that sell “carbon credits” or whatever so that people can buy them and feel good about themselves.

If you want to invest in renewable energy, then invest in it. Buy stock in a small company that can use the money to figure out how we can be more energy independent. You don’t need a third party to pat you on the back and say “Nice job, you saved the planet (while making me rich off this green scheme)”.

I don’t have a problem with going green per se. But do it for real reasons, not the made up global warming fairy tale. If you want to build a building that takes less energy to heat and cool, great. That’s a perfectly valid reason.

I wonder if there’s any government oversight on these companies that sell “earth shares” or “carbon credits” or “renewable energy credits”? If not, there should be. After all, someone needs to protect idiots from themselves.

I think I have a corollary to that: Give a man enough fish, and you make him dependant on you for fish.

John Stossel did a segment on 20/20 (not sure when) titled “Freeloaders”. The gist of it is that we’re keeping a segment of society from taking responsibility for themselves by continuing to make it easy for them to avoid that responsibility. How? Homeless shelters and church groups who just give handouts without requiring anything in return, like work, are a couple of examples. Motorists giving money to those folks on the street with “will work for food” signs is another.

I’m as compassionate as the next person. I’m also an easy mark. It’s hard to look someone in the eye who’s out on the street, obviously homeless and hungry, and not give them a buck or two. I’ve done it more times than I can know, all the while knowing in the back of my mind that they’d probably use the money for booze.

The point is, there needs to be a way for truly needy people to get the help they need. But they also need to be made to take responsibility for their situation.

Here’s Stossell’s report.

Woody lays the blame on several entities: City Hall (via the Fair Board), the economy, and race fans. I’d add one more group to that list: NASCAR.

Every time NASCAR has a Cup race on Saturday night, it keeps local fans away from the local tracks. NASCAR has been eating its own young for years this way. You can’t really blame a race fan for staying at home and watching a race for free instead of going to a track and spending $20 to get in plus about that much in food. And now with everyone deciding to have a recession, no one is spending money for anything, so that’s going to make the track’s survival that much harder.

I said a few weeks ago that I didn’t think there’d be any weekly racing in 2009. I still think that’s going to be the case. I took a lot of heat over it on one of the local racing forums, but other than some wishful thinking, I didn’t really see anything that would make me change my mind.

I think the best case scenario is that we end up with a year like 1979, where there wasn’t any weekly racing. But they did have about one major race weekend a month. Weekly racing resumed the next year, but by then folks had found other things to do on Saturday nights.

The Fair Board meets tomorrow, and what comes out of that meeting will have a big impact on what happens at the Fairgrounds in 2009. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the meeting (one almost gets the impression that they have them on Tuesday at 8:00 am in order to make it difficult for the general public to attend the meetings).

2008 was the last season ever of weekly racing at the fairgrounds

I say this for a few reasons. Commissioner Varney’s proposal pretty much means that the Board is washing their hands of the Speedway.

The first is that they gave LJ & J a lease for 2009 that no one in their right mind would sign. While the Board voted to extend the lease for one year back in March, LJ & J didn’t get that lease until the middle of October, and only had until the end of October to sign it. Apparently out of the blue in the lease was the fact that LJ & J would not get to handle the concessions, and that Metro had a blanket contract for concessions that would go into effect with the new lease. LJ & J says they didn’t have time to work out the details with the concessionaire so they made a counter offer on October 31. Tonight the board didn’t act on that counter offer, which means that LJ & J’s lease is up on December 31, 2008.

The second reason is that, while ostensibly they’re going to operate the track in 2009, they’re going to “lease it just like Wilson Hall.” So, if you want to put on a Saturday race, just contact the Fair office and lease track for that weekend. Sorry, but I don’t see that happening. And I don’t see the Fair Board hiring someone to run the track operations. Commissioner Varney already complained that in her time on the board, the money they had had shrunk from $6,000,000 to about $2,500,000 (perhaps Ms. Varney should see a correlation there). Spending money that would take away from the Fair just isn’t going to happen.

Another reason is that they’re going to get Metro Codes to come in and inspect the track facilities. I get the feeling that Codes is going to find a bunch of violations which will keep the track from operating until they’re fixed. As I said above, I don’t see the Board spending any money on the track.

And finally, they’re basically planning on just abandoning the property as a board and giving control of it back to the Mayor after 2009. They don’t want to meet their responsibility as a board and figure out how to use the current Fairgrounds to put on a Fair. Somehow they’re going to come up with a new piece of land somewhere (where there are no neighbors to complain about noise), buy it, build several thousand square feet of exhibit halls, and have the Fair and flea market there.

Now there’s always a chance that someone could offer to buy the property and continue to run the speedway in 2010 and beyond. But they only had one proposal for that, and since they pretty much told that company they no longer wanted to do business with them, I don’t see that happening.

So what will happen is sometime in 2009 the Mayor will make a big announcement about the Fair moving to another place and they’re going to buy the new land from the sale of the current fairgrounds. They’ll sell it to some developer (which probably won’t be anyone who submitted one of those proposals) and they’ll dig up the track and put condos or something on the property.

Nashville Speedway, it’s been a good run. I really hope I’m wrong and that Mr. Dozier comes up with some kind of plan that will allow teams to race on the old track one more year. But I think that’s the best-case scenario. What I’ve outlined above is probably the real-world scenario.

Read my report of what happened at the Fair Board meeting here.

MORE PLATES PLEASE: How about those races from Talladega? Both the NASCAR Cup race and the NASCAR Series races were pretty exciting. We should have more restrictor plate racing.

LESS ESPN PLEASE: In a move that shows why ESPN should never have been given any more NASCAR races, they’re not even broadcasting the NASCAR Series event on Friday night on one of their two main (or three if you count ABC) channels. In a move reminiscent of when they preempted racing to show the football draft, they’ve moved the Friday night Richmond telecast to something called “ESPN Classic”. To lessen the impact, SPEED will be picking up the slack by simulcasting it. I do get both channels, but not in hi-def, which is what I watch all racing in now. Again, ESPN shows their complete disrespect for the racing fan.

SMOKIN’ TIRES: Tony Stewart and Matt Yokum are providing the tires for Morgan Shepherd this weekend. Shepherd had a great run at Talladega last Saturday, and Stewart and Yokum have decided to help him out this week. Good job guys!

POKER RUN: Bobby Hamilton, Jr., himself coming off a great Talladega finish (3rd), will be hosting a poker run on May 10. The proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society. Should be a good ride through the back roads of Robertson County.

SHOW NASCAR WHO’S BOSS: NASCAR again is running a NASCAR Cup race on Saturday night, in direct competition against the local short tracks. In a time when local tracks are threatened with being shut down, I don’t understand why NASCAR continues to do this. They’re putting the local tracks at risk.

Here’s what I propose: don’t watch the Richmond race Saturday night. Tape it, Tivo it, DVR it, or otherwise record it and watch it Sunday. Then go to your local bull ring and watch some great racing. I’m lucky; I live in Nashville where we have the track at the Fairgrounds (its existence too is threatened) that’s spawned so many great drivers like Darrell Waltrip, Sterling Marlin, Bobby Hamilton, Casey Atwood, Jeff Green, and Jeremy Mayfield.

So, show NASCAR you support local racing. Don’t watch the Cup race live Saturday night; pack your local track.

STERLING SUPPORTS LOCAL RACING: Speaking of Sterling Marlin and local racing, Marlin has committed to running several races at Music City Motorplex. May 10^th, June 14^th, July 18^th, August 8^th, August 30^th and October 11^th are the dates Marlin announced he would run. He’s back with Coors Light as a sponsor, both on his car and as sponsor of the events. Looks like he won’t get to run the May 10^th race though. He’s announced that he’ll be replacing Dario Franchitti in the #40 car at Darlington.

During the public meetings last January to kick off the study by the consultant the Tennessee State Fair Board hired to figure out what to do with the track, Sterling was the only big name driver to show up.  I’m glad to see he still remembers where he came from.

DUELING NETWORKS: And finally, seems that both MRN and PRN want to broadcast the New Hampshire races. MRN says they’ve got a contract, and PRN says it’s not valid. I don’t listen to races much on the radio anymore, but the difference between MRN and PRN is like night and day. Here’s hoping MRN prevails.