5/29 Promised Land-a Review
Last Summer as we were leaving the farmers market, a lady approached us and asked if we would sign her anti-fracking petition. I almost said no because a year ago, I had no idea what fracking was. In that moment I felt instantly embarrassed because it was evident by the urgency in her tone that all hipsters should know what the hell fracking is. Luckily, I had left Insecurity in the car so I just asked and I am glad I did. 
Fracking is a shortened term for hydraulic fracturing, a process used to extract natural gas. According to the website DontFrackWithNY.com, “Fracking is a drilling technique which involves injecting toxic chemicals, sand, and millions of gallons of water under high pressure directly into the ground to release natural gas in shale deposits. This mixture of toxins and sediment, along with any natural gas released, can leak to the surface and enter rivers and groundwater in the process.”
I had no idea this was even going on. It is happening all over the country, including Michigan. Last week Sandy and I watched a movie called Promised Land. It is a fictional portrayal of the kind of negotiations that are going on in any state across the country that is sitting on significant deposits of natural of gas. It stars Matt Damon and Frances McDormand as closers for a billion dollar natural gas company.
Their job is to go into rural Pennsylvania, befriend the town’s people and convince the land owners to allow their company to drill, to frack on their land. The two are armed with enough money to bully the residents of this financially bereft small town. The farmers in this town have land and not much else until a possible hero shows up in the form of the familiar environmental hippie played by John Krasinski.
This is all I can tell you without ruining the movie. I found Promised Land to be compelling, enraging and maddening in the way that makes you storm away from the television set in order to Google Fracking + insert the name of your own town here. It is now available for rental on DVD and is worth watching. Think of it as enjoyable homework for our ongoing class in Good Citizenship 101.
When I was doing research for this post I came across an article written by Jeff Brady titled “Drilling for Facts Under the Promised Land Fiction.” There were over two hundred comments to his article, so out of curiosity I began to read a few. This comment from John Terry was the first one I read and it blew me away.
“An interesting sidebar to this story is that those of us who live in “fracking country”, as I do in rural West Virginia, find that this film is only being shown in a handful of theaters in WV’s largest cities. I would have to travel over 100 miles or wait for the DVD to see this movie. The local theater near me removed Promised Land from their coming attractions last week. Does this demonstrate the power of the gas industry to limit the discussion among us country folk?”
I just didn’t know what it was before, but now I do and I want you to as well. Being well informed is absolutely critical when it comes to our health and the costs of extracting resources like natural gas from our earth. We deserve it and we deserve to form our own opinions based on having all the knowledge possible.
Here are three links to additional info about fracking and its impact to our health and society.
NPR Special Series; The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers
5 Weird and Frightening Facts About Fracking You May Not Know About
Have an insightful and delicious day.
Tags: fracking, hydraulic fracturing, Promised Land, vegan wannabe
