PITTSBURGH (AP) — "FrackNation" is a new documentary that
attacks opponents of fracking for oil and gas, but it also raises a
bigger question: Is it possible to criticize environmentalists without
being a tool for big industry?
Fracking is a method of stimulating
oil and gas from deep underground that's led to a historic boom in U.S.
production while also stoking controversy over its possible impact on
the environment and human health. "FrackNation," an independent
documentary produced by Los Angeles-based filmmakers Phelim McAleer and
Ann McElhinney, addresses the issue from an unusual perspective.
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EDITOR'S
NOTE — The author, Kevin Begos, covers the fracking industry in
Pennsylvania for The Associated Press. With "FrackNation" opening
Tuesday, he offers this view from the ground.
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The
release of the documentary now is clearly an attempt to play off a
current Hollywood film on fracking, "Promised Land," which stars Matt
Damon. But the David vs. Goliath roles are turned upside down, since
McAleer's pro-fracking production received thousands of small donations
on the fundraising site Kickstarter, while Damon's film, which has an
anti-fracking angle, had millions of dollars in funding, including some
from the United Arab Emirates.
McAleer says anti-fracking
activists have based their crusade on faulty claims and a disdain for
the actual wishes of many people in the rural communities where land is
drilled. His main target is Josh Fox, the director of "Gasland," the
2010 award-winning, anti-drilling documentary that has inspired many
critics of fracking.
One leading environmentalist welcomed "FrackNation's" take and said he can't wait to see it.
"It's
great this guy's done this documentary. I think it's sort of a second
wave to the more hysterical first reaction" to fracking, said Michael
Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute, a Berkeley,
Calif., nonprofit that argues for new ways to address environmental
problems.
Like a genial Michael Moore with an Irish accent,
McAleer narrates his confrontations with fracking opponents. Though some
of McAleer's questions are simplistic and leading, it's startling to
see how some critics of fracking react.
Fox, himself a journalist,
dodges McAleer's questions, hangs up on him and even uses his lawyers
to try to have trailers for "FrackNation" removed from YouTube and
Vimeo.
Fox said in a statement that he's refused to deal with
McAleer "because he has persistently harassed Josh Fox and represented
his statements in a false light." Fox also said McAleer has a long
history of baiting environmentalists, denying climate change and
spreading misinformation.
In eastern Pennsylvania, a landowner
involved in a lawsuit against gas drilling companies confronts McAleer
on a public highway, threatens to sue him, says she has a license to
carry a pistol and calls 911. A police officer arrives and determines
that McAleer has done nothing wrong.
Shellenberger, who hasn't
seen the film yet, said it's interesting that McAleer used low-budget
counterculture tactics to make a pro-drilling argument. He welcomed the
fact that "FrackNation" also presents the views of numerous people in
rural areas who say gas drilling is a benefit, not a curse.
For
example, Montrose, Pa., farmer Ron White and his son say the royalties
from drilling have helped keep the family farm in business, and that his
water and land haven't been harmed by a nearby gas well.
McAleer also shows a respected cancer researcher some of Fox's claims that the chemicals used in fracking will cause cancer.
"If
people say fracking is causing cancer, they don't know what they're
talking about," University of California at Berkeley scientist Bruce
Ames replies, noting that cabbage and broccoli also contain minute
portions of chemicals that could technically be called carcinogens.
In
strictly visual terms, FrackNation also quietly makes a point by
showing that most of the Pennsylvania countryside in drilling areas is
still beautiful, and not a wasteland. Though drilling is an industrial
process, the iconic wells and fleets of noisy trucks that service the
process disappear from a drilling pad after a few weeks or months.
But
though "FrackNation" discredits some of the most extreme anti-fracking
rhetoric, it also sometimes goes too far in dismissing legitimate
concerns. For example, in tiny Dimock, Pa., where drinking water wells
were tainted with methane, McAleer leaves viewers with the impression
that drilling never caused problems for about a dozen families.
In
fact, state environmental regulators determined that a drilling company
contaminated the aquifer underneath homes there with explosive levels
of methane and issued huge fines. The state later determined the company
had fixed the problems, and most of the families reportedly reached an
out-of-court settlement.
"FrackNation" also doesn't acknowledge
that Texas regulators say there were some problems with leaking gas and
air quality in the early days of the boom there, and The Associated
Press recently found that federal officials did have evidence that gas
drilling may have contaminated some water wells in that region.
On such points, "FrackNation" is guilty of some of the same sins of exaggeration that it criticizes Fox for.
Yet Shellenberger said anti-fracking critics such as Fox and advocates such as McAleer may both be necessary.
"The
radicals often play an important role in these environmental conflicts,
to hold regulators' feet to the fire, to motivate industry. I think the
radicals have played a positive role — but it can go too far,"
Shellenberger said, while adding that the presumption that
environmentalists are all "on the side of all things good" is too
simplistic.
McAleer, a journalist and filmmaker who previously
covered the IRA for England's Sunday Times and other papers, said the
Kickstarter campaign didn't accept money from oil and gas companies or
their top executives. But critics have noted that one of his previous
films attacked Al Gore and global warming, while another touted the
benefits of a mine in a poor region of Romania.
"FrackNation" is scheduled to air Jan. 22 on cable channel AXS.
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Online:
"FrackNation": http://www.fracknation.com
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