The Spanish Prisoner

Gasland is a documentary about hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”, a process in which water and other chemicals are injected into the ground at very high pressure, in order create or broaden fractures in rock formations, thereby releasing natural gas. Documentary filmmaker, Josh Fox, receives a letter from a gas company offering him a large chunk of money if he agrees to let them do hydraulic fracturing on his property in Pennsylvania. Fox goes to the nearby town of Dimock, where hydraulic fracturing was already going on, to see what effect it might be having on the residents. There he finds people who have poisoned water coming out of their taps, who have health problems. He also meets a family who can set fire to the water coming out of their faucet. Fox then goes to different parts of the country where fracking is going on. He finds people who have the same problems. He observes a creek in Colorado that has been poisoned by dumping from gas wells. He observes man-made storage ponds containing poisoned water from the gas wells. He talks about the enormous amount of energy that is consumed in building and maintaining the wells. In the end, he discusses how the gas companies want to do hydraulic fracturing in a region of New York and Pennsylvania that provides drinking water to New York City.

Instead of developing renewable energy sources, corporations are willing to wreak the environment just to make a profit. Instead of wind farms we have things like the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, now spewing out radiation. So long as we have a system based on profit, we are going to have corporations pursuing their interests at the expense of people.

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