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Who knows what ‘fracking’ is? I doubt most people would have ever heard of it. Those that have, probably don’t know much about it. Those that know much about it, don’t do much about it. Those that try, get a lot of money to stay quiet. Oh, the bliss of forced ignorance. This documentary by Josh Fox looks under every unturned stone to find the secret that ‘they’ have been keeping from the public.
Fracking, or Hydraulic Fracturing, is the process by which companies extract gas from underground reservoirs. Gasland seemed to focus on this process in regard to shale gas. To summarise the documentary: a man finds out that his land is on one of these shale reservoirs and will get paid if they are allowed to ‘frack’ it. He does research into this to find out its effects beyond what the companies and the companies’ bought and invested politicians (including Dick Cheney) say about it. What Fox found was that the water pumped down the drilled holes, supposed to crack the plate underground therefore releasing the gas, was loaded with chemicals. Despite ruining the wildlife, landscape and natural beauty of land, these chemicals aren’t the sort that would want to clean your plates with, let alone drink. Fox actually went on a rant (big shock there for a reactive documentary) listing off many of the chemicals involved in the fracking process. Some of these are horrifically dangerous and must be handled with care, others, well… we don’t know yet, they remain undisclosed.
Fox travelled across America-land to find people that have been affected by the fracking companies. Most of those he had encountered had signed settlement contracts that inhibited them from disclosing any information about what happened. Those that could, told about everything that went wrong with their land, their water, their air and their lifestyle. Most of them were ill in some manner of speaking and all of them had contaminated water. A number had developed serious brain damage or cancer from drinking the water or breathing the carcinogens released into the air. Fox travelled the areas, taking water samples to test and lighting their rivers and their water taps. At one point he examined rodents being stored in a woman’s home freezer that she was keeping as evidence. Her father had died of cancer.
Gasland also depicts how the greed of the previous generation has brought such a burden upon us, generally reflecting our current economy. I hate to say it, but we are the age that will have to pay for the mistakes of our forefathers. Let’s try not to mess it up any more than it already has been. Somehow, that message seems uncannily similar to the hippy movement. Fox’s family were such hippies, so, there is a potential for unprecedented bias here.
It was a horrific eye-opening horror film with a PG certificate. If you are ever in the mood to learn about our potential energy future, or if you just need an excuse to convert to solar panels, this documentary will save you. It was an emotional, resonating and harrowing couple hours that exposes the contemporary capitalistic USA; the big kids pissing on the little guy. Except, to expand on that analogy, the urine would be green-house gases and toxic waste products. I will recommend this film to anyone, so long as they can filter out all the biased hippy-crap that Josh Fox seems to get off on. Regardless of the banjo, the film is well constructed and as heartfelt as any good documentary. Let’s all hope that the world foreseen in any of these sort of docu-dramas aren’t actualised.
(At least not in our lifetime.)
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