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Drilling In Gasland Film

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The documentary Gasland, directed and narrated by Josh Fox, tells the frightening story of corporate greed and a lack of concern for the negative effects of natural gas drilling called fracking. The story begins with Josh receiving a letter from a natural gas company seeking permission to drill on his family’s Pennsylvania estate in exchange for $100,000. In an effort to decide whether to accept the deal, Josh drives from state to state interviewing scientists, politicians and mostly working class people being affected by this method of natural gas extraction. In areas where people welcomed the additional income and allowed fracking on their property thinking this process was safe, they were now experiencing unclean underground water that is igniting, animals that are losing their hair …show more content…

Josh not only uses numerous interviews of people who have been affected by the extraction of natural gas, but he interviews a wide variety of people: the mayor of Dish; an EPA agent; Dr. Al Armendariz, an air specialist; and, a Halliburton secretary, John Hanger. He gives us background information on how people became more environmentally conscious under President Nixon when he passed the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. But under vice president Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton, the tide turned in favor of the corporations with the Energy Task Force and the Halliburton loophole which gave oil companies the ability to inject known chemicals into the ground near underground drinking water supplies. Another form of evidence the film uses is archived videos. In the beginning and the end of the film there is a video of a congressional sub-committee hearing on energy and minerals where the industry and lobbyists have a chance to express themselves. The film gives us a lot of information on the extraction of natural gas process and its impact on people, animals and the

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