Three Fracking Documentaries

Over the past month I’ve watched three documentaries about fracking–Gasland 1 (2010) & 2 (2013) and Fracknation (2013). Here are a few thoughts.

1) No single documentary tells the whole story. Even two is insufficient. And three… | Neither talked about the toxic waste that must be dealt with (see Michigan).

2) Every documentary maker can sell his or her side by only presenting supporting info, disregarding anything that counters or complicates the preferred views. | Fox (Gasland) only looks at people who have had wells fail. McAleer (Fracknation) disregards the stats of how many wells are known to fail. Each makes it sounds like they are 100 percent right.

3) I’m disappointed that both sides weren’t more forth-coming and open. | Fox should have acknowledged that methane has been in some wells before fracking started. McAleer should have acknowledged that some wells didn’t have methane until fracking started. | Also, Fox could have used a better prop for his “contract,” and McAleer should have realized the prop doesn’t matter; what matters is the truth of whether or not Fox received a bid for drilling (and this is a minor point, but media people making a big deal out of small points bothers me). | Fox didn’t note the many environmental guidelines that control fracking. McAleer didn’t note the exemptions from certain guidelines that fracking does enjoy.

4) Truth can be hard to find (see the cigarette industry’s extended efforts to confuse the public about the health risks of smoking). | McAleer’s summary at the end of Fracknation attempts to discount every aspect of Gasland, but he does this in too broad of strokes and without considering the info shown in Gasland 2, info he could have known before that film was released. Resorting to claims that Putin is behind the anti-fracking movement is mind-boggling.

5) Every source of energy has negative consequences. I think that was one of the most honest statements in the three films (from Gasland 1). | Fox looks at only the negatives of fracking, while McAleer only looks at the positives. Then McAleer shines a light on the negative aspects of other “clean” energy sources, ignoring the negative effects of fracking and other sources of energy like fossil fuels. We must admit that all energy sources have positives and negatives, and we need to do the hard work of honestly accounting for each. We know that only renewable energy will be with us moving forward; as far as we’re able, let us strive to invest in energy that is both clean and renewable. And let us reduce our power usage as much as possible, knowing that every source has negative aspects.

Filmmakers, I expect more of you!

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Environmental Article Round-up

I haven’t posted ecological links in a long time, so my list has grown unruly. Here are some random bits and pieces for contemplation:

• The Ecology of Disease (Robbins, NY Times)
• When Did Republicans Start Hating the Environment? (Mooney, Mother Jones). I think this is a poor title for this article. 
• Insecticides put world food supplies at risk, say scientists (Carrington, The Guardian)  
• Powerful Photos Go Deep Inside America’s Fracking Boom (Seibel, Wired)
• Despite cold wave in US, December 2013 was the third hottest December since records began in 1880 (Richard, Treehugger)
• Just one in five children connected to nature, says study (McGrath, BBC)
• Arab Summer: Warming-Fueled Drought Helped Spark Syria’s Civil War (Romm, Climate Progess)
• Halliburton’s Lethal Crimes Get a Slap on the Wrist While Non-Violent Minority Drug Offenders Get Long Prison Terms (Marcus, Buzzflash)
• The Ghosts in Our Machine (Prana)
• Thread: The Ethics of Fashion Documentary (Prana, trailer)
• Climate Change Impact on Oceans Even Worse Than IPCC Report Claims (Kirby, Adventure Journal)
• Conservation Alliance: {worthWILD} Boulder White Clouds (Prana)
• New International Dark Sky Park Opens in Michigan; Only Nine Others in the World (Kart, Treehugger)
• Study Reveals Dangerous Levels of Radioactivity Near Fracking Waste Sites (The Real News)
• UPDATE: Mi’kmaq Resist! 6 RCMP Cars Torched, Fracking Equipment Confiscated (EarthFirst! Newswire)
• Researchers study 18,000 hours of deep sea footage, find ocean seafloor is covered in trash (Richard, Treehugger)
• Kasich’s turnaround on state-park fracking (Benen, MSNBC)
• Texas Size Hypocrisy: ExxonMobil CEO Opposes Fracking-Related Water Tower Near His Home (Karlin, Buzzflash)
• Bumblebees infected with honeybee diseases (Morelle, BBC)
• See How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Backyard With This Map (Gizmodo)
• The End of Snow? (Fox, NY Times)
• The Pacific Ocean is now warming 15 times faster than it used to (Adler, Grist)
• Graphic: Global surface temperature – yearly average (NASA)
• No, the World Isn’t Cooling (Plait, Slate)
• Glacier Gallery
• Chasing Ice
• 131 Years of Global Warming in 26 Seconds
• Invalid Arguments: Climate Change

Environmental videos at See, Hear, Speak — LINK

Crazy Radical Environmental Fruit-Nuts

In the past month or so I’ve watched two very intriguing documentaries about environmental activists who go to prison for their actions. Readers of this blog know I advocate for nonviolent social action, and I just want to highlight that again in the context of these two films.

The first is If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (PBS, film website, Wikipedia, IMDB, DemocracyNow!) which follows the story of Daniel McGowan. As a member of the ELF, McGowan had participated in arson as a tactic for social and environmental change. The film simultaneously tells the ELF’s story and follows court proceedings against McGowan.

If a Tree Falls is compelling story-telling. It is a provocative look at the sociological, psychological, and political factors that radicalized the local environmental activist community. I appreciated that the filmmakers allowed the activists and the law enforcement personnel to be complex; they weren’t dumbed down to one-dimensional caricatures. These are complex issues with complex actors, and I value that this messiness was allowed to come through.

More recently, I watched Bidder 70, which looks at the actions of Tim DeChristopher relating to conservation and climate change (film website, organization, Facebook, IMBD, Peaceful Uprising). Rather than take a violent or destructive approach like McGowan, DeChristopher interfered with an auction of extraction rights by holding up his bidding number, 70.

I have a deep respect for people who find creative and meaningful ways to live our their values. I respect even more those who dedicate themselves to pursuing this integration of values and living in peaceful or nonviolent ways.

Reflection Questions

1. Am I as committed to my values as these two young men are?
2. To what degree have I integrated my values and actions? What holds me back from doing this more fully?
3. What sacrifices am I willing to make to live what I believe and to promote my values?
4. What role did community play in the lives of these two men? How did community influence them before, during and after the actions noted in these films?
5. In the area of environmental activism, what is needed today? What issues, strategies and tactics are most important at this stage in world history?

BONUS

Want to find more films that address some of these same themes? Check out the follow twelve films on protest and social action:

1. Encounter Point (2006, documentary)
2. Budrus (2009, documentary)
3. 5 Broken Cameras (2011, documentary)
4. The Singing Revolution (2006, documentary)
5. This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000, documentary)
6. Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008, documentary)
7. Rage Against the Machine: Revolution in the Head and the Art of Protest (2010, documentary)
8. 180 South (2010, documentary)
9. A Force More Powerful (1999, documentary)
10. The Edukators (2004, movie)
11. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2004, movie)
12. Amazing Grace (2006, movie)

Friday Web Round-up

Economics

• The End of the Beginning of the End (William Rivers Pitt, Truthout)

Human Rights

• Rev. Steven D. Martin: Senate’s report on torture should be made public (Knox News)
• 3rd Annual 5k Run Against Traffick (Traffic Free)
• NiqaBitch Shakes Paris (Sociological Cinema)
• Pornland, Oregon: Child Prostitution in Portland (Dan Rather, Huffington Post)

War, Peace & Social Change

• Despite Horrific Repression, the U.S. Should Stay Out of Syria (Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus)
• The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did (Ward Wilson, Foreign Policy)
• The Military-Industrial Complex Is Real, and It’s Bigger Than Ever (John Avlon, The Daily Beast)
• How Turks Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Tear Gas (Ozan Varol, Huffington Post)

Psychology

• Cleveland Clinic: “If We Could See Inside Others’ Hearts” (Physician’s Weekly)

Environment

• Global warming: Not too late to rein in climate change, group says (Pete Spotts, Christian Science Monitor)
• Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America (Nathan Vanderklippe, The Globe and Mail)
• Permies
• Rios Libres: Environmental Dispatches – Episode 1, The People (The Cleanest Line)
• Rios Libres: Environmental Dispatches – Episode 2, The History (The Cleanest Line)
• Techno-Fix–Michael Huesemann & Joyce Huesemann believe technology won’t save us or the environment, but rather hastens collapse. (Utne)
• Hemp History Week 2013 (Prana)
• The Fascinating Story Of Hemp (Prana)
• POW! David Letterman’s Epic Rant Against Fracking (Liberals Unite)
• Are GE Potatoes Coming to a Store Near You? (Food & Water Watch)

Religion: List

Random: List

Ashoka: Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility

While watching Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility today from Netflix, these two unrelated quotes stood out to me:

Time & Imagination (13:07)

In 1997, I and my wife, Mara, Decided to take a sabbatical. A year of learning, of traveling, of doing nothing…. At the end of this year…an idea came to create in Brazil Instituto Ethos for business and social responsibility. In fact, practically all the initiatives I’ve taken that have resulted in creating new endeavors, new organizations happened at times of doing absolutely nothing. One of the great risks today, with the issue of stress, with people not having time for themselves, with their full schedules, is that they don’t leave room in their minds. They don’t leave room for their imagination, for their creativity, for anything new to happen. It is essential for anyone who really wants to undertake new things and think about the meaning of things to leave room in their time, in their schedule, so that new things can come.

Personal Responsibility (43:55)

Whenever anyone says that the problem is too big to be solved by each one of us, that he feels to small and weak to change the world, I always say, “It doesn’t matter if you will be able to do those things, if they will have any consequence on the world. It is important that you do your part.” It is important that you do everything that must be done in your beliefs, because everything you do will reflect on future generations and will reflect on your children. And it’s awful if one day your child should come to you and say, “You knew the world was in danger. You knew the environment was being destroyed. You knew about social conditions. Why didn’t you do your part?” So it is very important to build an honorable life, a dignified life, and try to do things. Because one day you will have to evaluate your life, and when you have a positive balance, there is no better gratification.

For the Beauty…

Where are we? Steven Bouma-Prediger gives a six-part response to this question by considering Genesis chapter 1. Here are two of his conclusions (For the Beauty of the Earth, chapter 4):

Fourth, creation is good. As intended by God, creation is good. Indeed, it is very good (tob me’od), a judgment that connotes beauty and peace. The universe originates not out of struggle or battle or conflict, as portrayed in so many ancient creation stories, but through a seemingly effortless and struggle-free divine speaking and making. In contrast to other narratives, the biblical narrative testifies to an ontology of peace. Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh put this point especially well:

Rather than begin with conflict amongst the gods, the Scriptures begin with the effortless, joyous calling forth of creation by a sovereign Creator who enters into a relationship of intimacy with his creatures. Therefore creatureliness qua creatureliness is good…. This means that a biblial worldview will grant no ontological standing or priority to evil or violence. Indeed, violence is seen, in this worldview, as an illegitimate alien intruder into God’s good creation. In contrast to an ontology of violence, then, the Scriptures begin with an ontology of peace.[1]

We have, to use Wendell Berry’s phrase, a gift of good land.[2] Where are we? In a world where peace is primordial. (pp. 88-89)

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Sixth, the climax of creation is the Sabbath. Contrary to many readings of the story, the culmination comes not in the creation of humanity…on the sixth day; the climax is, rather, the seventh day. This very day is blessed and hallowed by God….

The Sabbath reminds us, among other things, that the world is in God’s loving hands and, therefore, will not fall to pieces if we cease from our work. As Walter Brueggemann contends: “The celebration of a day of rest was, then, the announcement of trust in this God who is confident enough to rest. It was then and is now an assertion that life does not depend upon our feverish activity of self-securing, but that there can be a pause in which life is given to us simply as a gift.”[3] Where, then, are we? On an earth not of our own making, blessed by God. (p. 89)

[1] Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 153.

[2] The Gift of Good Land (San Francisco: North Point, 1981).

[3] Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 35.

Love and Shopping

Recently, I’ve written two posts on living in such a way as to care for others–Love and Service and Now What?. In the latter article, I wrote this:

I bought chocolate before “enlightenment,” and I will buy it after, but now I look for the Fair Trade stamp of approval. I look for organic food because I know the workers weren’t subjected to pesticides and herbicides in the fields, and I know it is better for the planet.

I decided to write this follow-up post to clarify that I don’t mean to argue that “shopping well” is the central or defining characteristic of “living well.” Temporarily setting aside spiritual issues, this is inadequate even from purely environmental or societal perspectives. Consider the analysis of Annie Leonard in the short video, “The Story of Change.”

This is especially relevant at this time of year when millions of people are ramping up for Christmas binge shopping. For a different Christian perspective on this holiday, check out Advent Conspiracy:

And if you do feel the need to shop this Christmas, might one of these options fit the bill:

• International Justice Mission + IJM Advent Conspiracy
• World Vision
• ADRA
• Heifer

Recommended Reading (and viewing)

Here is your reading assignment for today:

Environment & Health:

• Humans Have Been Responsible for Greenhouse Gases Since the Roman Empire
• Russia Bans Monsanto’s GMO Corn
• Yvon Chouinard & Vincent Stanley at Yale
• Teetering on the Edge
• 10 green retro activities making a comeback
• Russia’s small-scale organic agriculture model may hold the key to feeding the world
• Hotter than Paul Ryan
• Monsanto Roundup weedkiller and GM maize implicated in ‘shocking’ new cancer study
• Germ killer in hand soap may weaken muscles
• Gus Speth: ‘Ultimate insider’ goes radical
• The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater
• Remembering Russell Train
• Steph Davis: Vegan Rockstar

Society & Culture & Life & Activism & Stuff:

• Dole wants corporations to get away with murder. Literally.
• How to Help End Human Trafficking
• Inner City Adventist Family Shows Real Courage in the Face of Tragedy
• Is the bus “cool”? This ad sure is!
• Opinion: Kate’s breasts, Pussy Riot, virginity tests and our attitude on women’s bodies
• Who Taught You to Fear?
• Take a stand against mental illness discrimination with this great PSA
• Young Persons Called to Private Grand Jury for Owning Books
• Pussy Riot’s Lawyers: In Jail, Rape Is Only the Least of the Dangers

Off-center Religion and Politics and Government:

• The Long Journey of a Christian Pacifist
• Getting Beyond Presidential Politics
• Barry Bussey’s Critical Question
• TRUST: On Mission and Chavez
• Staying “On Message” for Jesus
• Pussy Riot and the Temple Incident
• Ignorance and Apathy: A Reflection on Social Justice in the Church
• Should I Help the Empire with My Hand?
• Caring for the Poor is Government’s Biblical Role

Coffee:

• Why does coffee never taste as good as it smells?
• Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Emotional Intelligence
• Top 10 tips to alkalize your body and detox naturally

Prana’s Wisdom:

• 12 Things Happy People Do Differently
• Handbook For Life 2012.2
• 50 Yoga Poses To Cure Any Problem

Economics:

• Poverty Tourism Taxonomy 2.0
• No Recession Here! – U.S. Arms Sales Set Global Record
• What Does it Mean to Be Poor? [related to next link]
• Should Anything Be Done To Integrate Schools?
• Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It’s Barack Obama?
• Journalist Evaluates Obama, Romney Economic Plans
• How big is our big deficit?
• COALITION OF SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTORS URGE HOUSE LEADERS TO ACT ON BUSINESS TRANSPARENCY ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING BILL

Selected Canadian Views on US Politics and Economy:

• Hardheaded Socialism Makes Canada Richer Than U.S.
• U.S. election campaign enters ‘Dali phase’

Against Democrats:

• Democrats Retreat on Civil Liberties in 2012 Platform
• Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises
• Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
• We Won—for Now
• John Cusack & Jonathan Turley on Obama’s Constitution
• Hope and Change 2 – The Party of Inclusion

Against Republicans:

• The Geography of Nope
• SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters
• Unpopular Mandate
• Everything you know about Paul Ryan’s budget is (probably) wrong
• Romney Vows Immediate Approval of Keystone XL on First Day in White House
• Women’s Issues Once Had GOP Support, Democratic Lawmakers Say
• Ron Sider on the Proposed Republican Budget
• Romney’s Death Squad Ties
• Tutu demands Hague trial for Bush‚ Blair

What’s an Independent to Do?

• Why vote? When your vote counts for nothing
• Electing Not to Vote

Random bits for the unemployed:

• Bible Versus for Job Seekers and Career Transitions
• #152 Being Embarrassed About Their IKEA Furniture
• Belt Shelves

BONUS 1: Three Classic Articles on Christian Social Ethics

• I believe in… (Peter Rollins)
• The state is still the state (David C)
• Christian nonviolence (Walter Wink)
  

BONUS 2: I AM

Dirt!

Last night I watched Dirt!, a documentary that considers many perspectives on the uses for and value of dirt. Some parts felt far-fetched (e.g., I’m sure some other planets have dirt; we’ve analyzed so few to know), but most parts were thought-provoking. Even some sections that seemed pointless (paving dirt on the Indian floor every day) actually speak to ways of life that I believe will outlast modern industrial farming and all that goes with it.

You can watch it on Hulu for free or stream it “instantly” on Netflix.

Some of the topics in the film reminded me of three articles I’ve read recently:

• Debating the Local Food Movement (Emily Badger, The Atlantic, 3 July 2012)
• Brazilian City Offers Vegetables in Exchange for Trash (Stephen Messenger, TreeHugger, 16 July 2012)
• The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise (Lester Brown, Guardian, 24 July 2012)

Thoughtful Bits on a Screen

In the past week or so, I’ve watched the following:

(1) Budrus. “The film is about non-violent demonstrations conducted by the residents of Budrus (a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate) during the early 2000s to protest against the building of the Israeli West Bank barrier inside of the village” (Wiki).

(2) No Impact Man. “The film, which premiered September 4, 2009, follows Colin Beavan and his family during their year-long experiment to have sustainable zero impact on the environment” (Wiki).

(3) Finding Your Roots — Samuel L. Jackson, Condoleezza Rice, and Ruth Simmons. “The ancestral pasts of actor Samuel L. Jackson, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Brown University President Ruth Simmons.” My wife thinks there’s a chance I’m related to one of the three. You can infer how that would work.