source: gaslandthemovie.com
Gasland is a documentary film written and directed by Josh Fox which explores the practice of hydraulic fracturing, a widespread method used in drilling for natural gas in the United States.
Hydraulic fracturing, often referred to as ‘fracking’ (yes, like in Battlestar Galactica), fractures rock in order to get at natural gas deposits in shale reservoirs. Environmental concerns associated with fracking include the contamination of groundwater, issues with air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and areas surrounding sites becoming polluted with natural gas and toxic chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process.
Gasland starts out a bit haphazard, as if Fox doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but after a short while it really picks up. He’s been offered a tidy sum to allow natural gas drilling rights on his property in rural Pennsylvania, but has heard bad things about the process and the affects it has on the environment and on the health of the people who live near the gas wells. So he decides to check it out.
What Fox discovers is that since the Bush-Cheney administration took office in 2001, American land, private and perhaps more shockingly, supposedly protected federal public land has been extensively opened up for fracking, and made exempt from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. The list of complaints is as long as it is shocking: gas clouds hanging over someone’s house, household water that smells like turpentine, highly flammable natural gas coming out of faucets and a variety of serious health complaints.
That’s what you get when you let an industry regulate itself and cut the claws off the Environmental Protection Agency. BP, Exxon and Halliburton make tons of money, ruin environments and destroy lives.
Exemptions from the Clean Water Act, etc. What the hell is going on here?
ReplyDeleteMy late father-in-law was an oil man down in Texas for many years. In his last months, he talked a lot about the damage this method of extraction has done to the water table. He was near tears at times, and said he felt terrible about it. He was a highly intelligent engineer, and said "politically, I'm a little right of Atilla the Hun."
ReplyDeletePeople should pay attention to this. Money rules everything in this world, but truth will come to light.
Yes...and just look at what Japan is facing...wouldn't it have been better for all in the big picture to have just started with solar and wind energy to begin with?
ReplyDeletePeople that think hydraulic fracturing is acceptable make me sick. Clearly it is hurting people and the environment... Why do *already rich* companies have to be so selfish--destroying land for their own personal gain? There is nothing okay about this.
ReplyDeleteSOme of that water in Colorado was not contaminated by the nearby gas drilling. The gas that made the water hazardous, methane, occurs naturally as well. And the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission determined that naturally occurring methane was the problem in a lot of the cases from Colorado mentioned in Gasland
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