Gasland 2 Review
(also posted in DU:GD)
Last night, my oldest daughter and I went to see “Gasland 2” in Binghamton, N.Y. The movie, which will be broadcast on HBO in August, is outstanding. In fact, we both felt that it was, if anything, better than the 2010 “Gasland.” More, we agreed that a person should watch the original, in order to fully understand and appreciate the more unsettling sequel.
I’ll start by saying that I think highly of Josh Fox. We first met in January of 2012, at the Capital Building in Albany, N.Y. There was a huge pro-environment, anti-hydro racking rally that day, and I was one of the speakers. It was also what proved to be the last day of my hunger strike; state senator Tom Libous finally met with me, after his aides told him about my speech. (I noted that a growing number of high school students were writing letters-to-the-editors of area newspapers, and were planning demonstrations outside of three of his satellite offices. This upset Libous. No politician wants high school students saying that he is doing what they are learning elected representatives are supposed to be doing -- especially not in the media.)
I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with Josh by way of the computer since then. I’m highly impressed with a young man who is a genius in communicating the truth about what I believe is the most important environmental crisis of this time. Neither the positive nor negative aspects of “fame” have gone to his head. Now, that is hard to prevent: it requires that a person be extremely well-grounded. I found myself thinking of a passage from Erich Fromm:
“Faith in the being mode of existence means to consider the whole process of life as a process of birth, and not to take any stage of life as a final stage. Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.
“The willingness to be born requires courage and faith. Courage to let go of certainties; courage to be different and to stand alone; courage, as the Bible puts it in the story of Abraham, to leave one’s own land and family and to go to a land yet unknown. Courage to be concerned with nothing but the truth, the truth not only in thought but in one’s feelings as well.
“This courage is possible only on the basis of faith. Faith not in the sense in which the word is often used today, as a belief in some idea that cannot be proved scientifically or rationally, but faith in the meaning that it has in the Old Testament, where the word faith (Emunah) means certainty; to be certain of the reality of one’s own experience in thought and feeling, to be able to trust it, to rely on it, this is faith.”
-- Erich Fromm; The Creative Attitude; pages 53-54.
I do not want to “spoil” the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it. I think that I can discuss some aspects of it here, without ruining it.
The film opens with a scene from over the Gulf of Mexico. It’s July 4, 2010, and Josh is able to film close to the BP oil “spill.” It immediately brought back all of the terrible images from that time …..but it was worse, in that it showed what BP had been able to keep off of the corporate news at that time. Josh notes that “no matter how huge the catastrophe, what matters is who tells the story.”
That is true in the case of fracking, as well. Because the mainstream media is owned by large corporations that are invested in things such as “energy” and the “military-industrial complex,” the public is presented with a highly inaccurate picture of fracking. This goes beyond the commercials on television, or the panel discussions on news programs. And I’ll address that in a moment.
The energy corporations are aware that 5% of all wells will leak upon the completion of being drilled. That is, of course, because the casing of one in twenty wells leaks. So when the gas industry tells the public about all of the benefits of 100,000 wells in Pennsylvania, they avoid mentioning that 5,000 will leak on Day One. Or that according to their internal reports, 50% of the wells will fail and leak extremely toxic wastes into the water supply. Nor will they discuss the truth about the more immediate dangers that the millions of gallons of toxic waste-water from “good” wells produces.
The planet Earth is living; it provides a natural filtration system that protects living things, including human beings. But the Earth does not “clean” the poisons used in fracking. Hence, those toxins spread through the water supply, and are absorbed by living things, including human beings. The “master plan” of the energy corporations not only threatens the living environment (parts of which are already seriously damaged), but our living Constitutional Democracy (parts of which are already severely damaged). Let’s take a look at how this man-made disease is being spread.
Some members of this forum would not like much of what I’m about to say. Few of those folks will read this, though …..which is really too bad, because if they really took an objective look at the points I’m going to make, they would find that I’m right (though not because I’m saying it), and would then have to decide between opposing a dangerous threat to our country, or to admit that sheer greed trumps the health and well-being of their community.
The energy corporations are viewing the populations that live upon regions rich in underground gas in the exact same way they view any Third World people who have some natural resources they seek to plunder and exploit. I do not say that lightly, or for shock value. It is the truth. And it goes far, far beyond the gas industry’s hiring the same public relations firm that the tobacco industry employed 60 years ago, to promote “risk free” smoking products.
Indeed, it goes beyond the gas industry’s hiring private intelligence groups, such as the Institute of Terrorism, Research, and Response” to outline -- and execute -- plans to discredit, disrupt, and destroy local grassroots opposition groups. (If that reminds readers of the movie “Promised Land,” or of FBI director Hoover’s infamous March 4, 1968 memorandum, it should.)
The gas industry also makes use of paid puppets to go on the news programs and say, “There is no conclusive scientific evidence that connects fracking to the contamination of even a single water well.” And where is the greatest number of paid liars found, ready and eager to prostitute their fame for money? Why, in the world of politics -- primarily in the “retired” politicians who would walk a mile for a camera.
So it is no surprise that republican Tom Ridge works for the gas pimps. Ridge was the governor of Pennsylvania, before becoming the head of the Office of Homeland Security. It was during his time at OHS that the Pennsylvania grassroots environmental advocates were labeled as “potential eco-terrorists” by that agency. This led to the energy corporations being provided assistance by the U.S. military -- you know, to prevent the terrible threat of eco-terrorism that environmentalists pose.
What services do the energy corporations get from the military? As “Gasland 2” documents, they are the operations known as “psyops” (psychological operations), long part of the military’s “psywar” (psychological warfare) in Third World countries that U.S. corporations seek to exploit.
The film also provides documentation on how democratic politicians are serving as advocates for the gas industry. An ugly example of this is another former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell. (It’s interesting to note that Rendell included Tom Ridge on the list of retired US officials who lobby for the Iranian group MEK, which is on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Groups.) Rendell spoke along with George W. Bush at a gas industry conference, in which grassroots environmentalists were called “eco-terrorists.”
Rendell promoted the gas industry as governor. The amount of damage done to the land, air, and water during his time as governor is obscene. Three of his top aides are now employed by the gas industry. And Rendell is invested in the industry, but does not reveal this financial interest when he lobbies for the industry. (NYS senator Tom Libous was recently exposed for lying about his gas investments; if it’s wrong for a republican slime to do so, it is -- at very least -- equally wrong for a democrat to do so.)
But Rendell is not alone among high-profile democrats in promoting the gas industry. This movie shows that President Obama and then-Secretary of State Clinton strongly advocated for “American” gas corporations to have access to resources in Asia and Europe. Indeed, this is but part of the master plan for gas to be the fuel of the next century, and for corporations like Shell to control that gas supply.
The movie documents many other very important issues. Among them is the utter frustration of the mid-level US EPA workers: they are sincerely motivated to help protect the environment, and people, but are handcuffed by bureaucrats at higher levels. (National security, don’t you know?)
In my opinion, the only way to combat this threat -- and hold the actual environmental terrorists of the Dick Cheney ilk responsible for their crimes against nature -- is found in the grass roots activism that can breath new life into the now decaying Constitutional Democracy that we call the United States of America. We need to become that filtration system that can protect life on Earth. And, by no coincidence, to do so, we need to think and act in the manner described in the Erich Fromm quote.
Keep on fighting the Good Fight!
H2O Man
= new reply since forum marked as read
"In 2012 Ingraffea and colleagues read through 16,017 inspection reports filed over the last four years. What they found was a significant and steady rate of methane leaks at the wellbore or what is known in industry jargon as "bubbling in the cellar."
In 2010, 111 of 1,609 wells drilled and fracked failed and leaked. That's a 6.9 per cent rate of failure. In 2012, 67 out of 1,014 wells leaked -- a seven per cent rate of failure.
"We looked at violations and not comments," adds Ingraffea. Quite often inspectors would note that a well was leaking like a sieve but that violation was pending. As a consequence the seven per cent figure represents a dramatic underestimate of methane leaks, says Ingraffea. "
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/01/09/Leaky-Fracked-Wells/
Get real yourself. 
