ATHENS — The film “Dear President Obama: The Clean Energy Revolution Is Now” calls upon the president to act boldly on climate change during his last months in office, and to cease being a president who also responds to the special interests of big oil and gas corporations.
As outlined in the opening minutes, the president who wants his legacy to include that he was the “climate president” has followed a contradictory path.
While doing positive things such as enacting the automobile fuel efficiency standard, investing in renewable energy like solar and wind, and greatly reducing the burning of coal, Barack Obama has also been an “all of the above” president, one who has bragged that we are “drilling all over this country” and that we “have more working oil and gas rigs than all the rest of the world combined.”
This hasn't been idle boasting, either. During his presidency, Obama has supported a massive expansion of oil and natural-gas drilling, especially the more-dangerous and extreme methods.
Such methods include the 80,000 gas wells from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which the film states will be Obama's “most damaging legacy.”
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“Dear President Obama” then becomes a cogent essay on the fracking phenomenon that has occurred during Obama's eight years in office.
In convincing fashion, the film outlines why fracked natural gas isn't the bridge to a renewable future that the industry and the president have touted it to be.
It does so largely through interviews with the people who live near these wells or have them on their property, and who have suffered dire quality-of-life consequences as a result. Endemic health problems, such as nausea, asthma, and breathing problems, are frequently cited because of the toxic particles emitted into the air.
Perhaps the most calamitous issue cited was the contamination of groundwater due to the toxic chemicals that are injected into the ground as part of the fracking process. Though the connection between this contamination and the fracking process has been denied by the industry, subsequent testing by the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have proved it to be true in four states.
But rather than act on these findings, Obama's EPA halted its investigations and refused to address the problems they found.
The filmmakers pointedly call upon Obama to correct this suggested collusion between the fracking industry and the current administration during his remaining months in office. As one man plaintively says, “I just want my water back.”
The failure of government to respond to the plight of many who were left in harm's way by the fracking boom is underscored throughout the film.
This failure is perhaps best summed up by one woman who says, “Our lives are not valuable. We're disposable. My life is disposable.”
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There are at least two bitter ironies to the fracking story.
One is that, contrary to Obama's claim that the supply of natural gas can last 100 years, the truth is that 60 to 70 percent was exhausted in the first three years and most gas fields are currently in decline.
The other is that, rather than being a bridge to renewable-energy sources, fracking exacerbates global warming because of the great amount of methane - which is 80 to 100 times worse than carbon dioxide over 20 years - that it releases in the process,.
The film ends on positive note, citing the dramatic increase in renewable energy and the example of New York State which has banned fracking because of vigorous citizen activism.