Don't Frack Our "Promised Land"

[onawah]

Don't Frack Our "Promised Land"
Promised Land, a compelling new movie about natural gas fracking and the costs a community must bear, opens nationwide January 4.

AHQt1NAkhIo

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2013/01/natural-gas-fracking-promised-land.htm


Starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski, this must-see is set in a rural Pennsylvania farming community and shows what happens when the natural gas industry and activists clash over fracking leases. The movie focuses on the struggles many rural communities face across the country over short-term profits versus the protection of their land and quality of life.

Unfortunately, the drama portrayed in Promised Land is very real. But unlike the movies, there is usually no Hollywood ending, especially when communities watch their land turn into industrial zones -- and many communities have no rights to prevent that from happening.

Unlike the town in the film, many communities don’t have the right to decide if fracking is right for them. This is why it is important for people all across the country to challenge the unfair power that has been handed to the oil and gas industry. Communities must be allowed to look at all the facts and determine the best path forward. By removing the right to refuse fracking, communities are prevented from turning to solutions such as clean renewable energy, which can grow an economy without harming the environment.

The oil and gas industry has extraordinary power over local control, and this movie puts that issue front and center. Despite what the natural gas industry claims, fracking significantly impacts people’s air and water. l

[markpierre]

So they made it the community verses the gas company? Who wins? No one, because everyone has already lost too much.
I hope they didn't forget the corrupt legislation that made it all possible.
And the armed paramilitary corporate enforcers that masquerade as the law.

Still surprised and impressed if the topic can be explored without censorship. But that one will go straight to video and obscurity.

[MR Mojo]

Big Hollywood pretty boy lefty stumps for the crushing of our home grown cheap native energy supply.

Doesn't seem contrived to me at all.



So they made it the community verses the gas company? Who wins? No one, because everyone has already lost too much.
I hope they didn't forget the corrupt legislation that made it all possible.
And the armed paramilitary corporate enforcers that masquerade as the law.

Still surprised and impressed that the topic can be explored without censorship. But that one will go straight to video and obscurity.

[onawah]

TruthOut has a review of the movie here:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13757-film-gives-only-partial-picture-of-frackings-negative-consequences

Clearly, this movie doesn't present the whole picture, but there are several documentaries out on fracking that are doing that.
This one at least touches on the behind the scenes sheer criminal aspect of the issue, which will at least reach some people who ordinarily would probably not be paying much attention to fracking.

And the timing is good, as things are heating up in New York State now, with Gov. Cuomo being confronted at every turn by the anti-fracking movement...


"Promised Land" Gives Only Partial Picture of Fracking's Negative Consequences
Monday, 07 January 2013 14:01 By Ted Glick, Grist | Film Review
...in Promised Land Damon is a conflicted, conscience-stricken, corporate hot shot “land man” using bribes and threats, when necessary, to get people in a small, rural town to agree to let their town be fracked.

But the movie in no way presents all, or even most, of the many problems that come with fracking, much less do so in a clear and convincing way. The primary problem it does present is the very real one of contamination of land and water. This happens as a result of the toxic chemicals, mixed with water and sand, that are forced down into the shale under heavy pressure to break the rock and release the gas within it. Some of that toxic mix comes back up, along with methane, the primary ingredient of natural gas, and there are huge numbers of specific instances of plant and animal deaths, human sickness and water poisoning afterwards that are clear proof of this serious problem.

But there are many more that Promised Land doesn’t mention, much less explain:
more here:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13757-film-gives-only-partial-picture-of-frackings-negative-consequences