AdamsFilmAnnotation3

The film Split Estate was directed by Debra Anderson and released in 2009.

The film addressed the issue of land rights of Americans where they can own everything above ground, but mineral rights and potential energy located underground are subject to the industry. This film focused on the hydrofracking issue. This separate ownership of land and resources is troubling, yet is unavoidable. This film's central argument was against the use of hydrofracking because of the resulting health problems and environmental degradation associated with it's extraction.

The film uses mostly first hand accounts and footage to display how devastating and bizarre the effect are. Some key interviews and testimonies of indpendent researchers and experts in the field of energy, toxicology, and environmental safety apply sufficient information. This film simply pulls at the viewers heartstrings by showing the crippling health problems that one woman in the film exhibits. This film has the most emotional appeal of any film I've seen all semester.

Political problems associated with the EPA being an ineffective agency and the fact that the industry is protected by politicians. The exemption of U.S. laws becomes a huge sustainable issue. It only takes one bad polluter to ruin everything. Ecological problems associated with hydrofracking are made obvious in this film as it showcases the way in which water sources are contaminated. Political and organizational problems are brought up when discussing future voting on this issue. Technological issues are drawn out of the discussion, mainly because you can see that this industry is simply wasting alot of their efforts by accidently causing gas to enter the water table, along with other agents. This proves that the industry is not very prepared to do this the right way.

The discussion and interviews with the one woman, whose name does not really matter, who has had some extreme nuero disorder and speech problems from breathing the outgasses. To see someone experience excruciating pain from not even moving and to think she never really entered into the extraction companies mind's and have been little to not compensated for her maladies is really disheartening. I believe that her role in the film was probably the most important. Along with the private environmental investigator who testified in front of the U.S. hearing.

When they interviewed the leaders of the gas companies I kind of lost interest becuase of the obvious humor that was added. The film tried to contrast between the activists and the corporate executives. The film also dragged on a bit towards the middle half.

The audience who would benefit the most from watching this film is anyone who lives in an area where hydrofracking is observable. Maybe most of the community who lives in these areas are widely ignorant for the dangers and perhaps those are the ones being fed alot of propaganda. Someone who has an appreciation for sustainability or even a small understanding would also enjoy this film because of where it takes you.

I thought very little could be added to this film to really increase it's educational value, because it contained alot of factual evidence and first accounting of victims and property owners which tells more than numbers anyway. But I would like to have seen more discussion concerning the film's suggestion for activism. There was also no real consideration of the data concerning water availability throughout the U.S. and what could happen if a large enough region of our water table was infiltrated by these chemicals.

The type of response suggested by this film was mainly political activism in terms of reaching out to governors and state representatives to increase the pressure in Washington. The activism is the grassroots movement that starts with voters and turns into a serious debate among leaders.

A recent article written by the Wall Street Journal boasts the new estimates of the Marcellus shale region’s potential for natural gas. They state that there exists, “84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas, far more than thought nearly a decade ago.” This certainly is news. That much gas would be enough to power the northeast for several decades and would do so cheaply and efficiently. For those opposing the use of hydrofracking, proponents say, “’that the Marcellus Shale will continue to lead the way in meeting American's energy needs for years to come,’ said Kathryn Z. Klaber, president and executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an organization of energy companies that says it's committed to the responsible development of natural gas from the shale formation and the enhancement of the region's economy.” This article comes at a promising time for this technology and it becomes hard to argue about the benefits everyone would accrue.

Also, the U.S. DOE released data that suggests there exists a huge potential to rely on these shales, utilized by extraction or the previously untouched quantities throughout America, for storage of the emissions used by the fuels. In other words utilizing hydrofracking technology and use, and proper regulations on emissions and on site recovery of lost GHG’s, we could pump in what we pumped out. Now, this should not be taken as an excuse to allow hydrofracking to continue, but it does represent a potential benefit to climate change. Their data shows, “Estimates using the distribution of gas storage capacity of CO2 from TOC data indicate a sequestration capacity of 6.8 billion tonnes in the five-county area of the Big Sandy Gas Field of eastern Kentucky.” Other estimates allow for an even higher “sinking” capacity of the Devonian shales. This is one future part of the hydrofracking story that may make people think differently about financing technological progress in this area of energy.

2 articles:

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP2d29300efb9c4a59a4a36048b28374d2.html

http://www.uky.edu/KGS/emsweb/devsh/devshseq.html

