Death Path
Some documentaries pack a punch. After watching Gasland (2010) I felt like the wind had been knocked out.
Briefly, for those who haven’t seen it, the movie pursues the story of natural gas extraction, which involves a process called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), which is accomplished by pumping vast amounts of toxic chemicals deep into the earth. The movie focuses on where all that poison goes, after injection.
That sounds bad enough, but the beauty part is what has become known as the “Halliburton Loophole.” Cooked up in the corporate meth lab of Cheney/Bush, this 2005 bill exempts gas companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act, allows them to keep secret the contents of their toxic brew, and completely removes the Environmental Protection Agency from the picture. A greedy devil’s dream come true.
People who live near these wells enjoy showing the filmmaker how they can now light their tap water on fire. No one seems interested in drinking the stuff. How did we come to this? Are we so addicted to energy that we’re willing to sacrifice our ability to live?
After Fukushima, I was amazed to hear people scoff at the dangers of nuclear radiation. They want their electricity, and aren’t willing to consider any notion of possible limits in exchange for safety or sanity. We hear the same attitudes about oil consumption, essentially choosing power over life. Native Americans call this way of thinking the Death Path. Well named.