Hot air: a gas rant
On my fourth evening as an Aspenite, I went to a film called “A Land Out of Time” about the West’s current oil and gas boom. As a newly initiated citizen of this rich, progressive place and a native of similarly Green and ritzy Boulder, Colorado, I sought solidarity with other liberal folk in booing the heavy impacts of the booming natural gas industry and the wretched, short-sighted management (read: exploitation) of public lands under the current administration.
The film’s images and interwoven storylines snag the heart—spectacular scenery webbed with roads and well pads, sloppy pits full of toxic drilling fluid, fifth generation ranchers with herds of poisoned cattle roaming a fractured range, High Country News founder Tom Bell walking at sunset through Wyoming’s Red Desert, his professed spiritual home since coming back from the war in 1944 that is now a hotbed for oil and gas development.
The audience was rapt, and so was I. 'Yes, yes, save the land! Fight the man!' cried a wee voice inside me, spurring my head to nod vigorously in agreement like a dashboard bobble head doll. The film felt right; it is right. You should fight for the places you love, Americans should fight for their birthright to healthy public lands. And, as the film points out, that’s just what’s happening—the oil and gas free-for-all has spurred an upwelling of grassroots and local government action from Montana to New Mexico. People from all walks of life are plain pissed off. Nobody wants a gas drill rig popping up in their backyard or beside their favorite hiking trail.
But there is a strangeness to seeing a film like this in a place renowned for its conspicuous consumption. Though local policies are remarkable for their environmental correctness and citizen groundswell is responsible for the spectacular designated wildernesses in the area, expensive impored designer labels prevail in local fashion, along with massive SUVs, Humvees, private jets, and a vast spread of personal holiday castles that Pitkin County commissioner Mike Owsley once called a “landscape of beached cruise ships.” After all, natural gas and other fossil fuels are booming because there’s a market for them.
About 15 minutes into the film, Dick Cheney appears onscreen, pontificating about the backward logic of politicians who, during the perceived energy shortage of the 1970s, asked Americans “to do more with less.” Naturally, many in the audience hissed, because everyone here knows that Cheney is really the arch villain skeletor, and unlike Cheney, most of my compatriots in the theatre probably believe in conservation. But Cheney made me wonder how much any of us here in fat-living Aspen and the West at large are willing to sacrifice to reverse the wholesale destruction of public and private lands for energy.
Sure, we can fight the natural gas well down the street or near that favorite fishing hole, and we ought to. But if we don’t decrease our own demand for fossil fuels and energy in general, from the foods we choose to eat to the ways we make a living to how we entertain ourselves, we’ll just transport the problem elsewhere. For example, our desire to travel quickly to harsh, rugged places like the Aspen area and stay or live there in luxury and comfort contribute to our immense, growing national appetite for these resources, no matter how dearly we love the land.
This contradiction is widespread wherever conflicts over energy development are hot. One of the film’s more (unintentionally) poignant moments occurs as narrator Tom Bell talks about the anti-drilling grassroots efforts of the “just plain folks” of Choteau, Montana on the Rocky Mountain Front: a spanking new maroon Humvee rolls across the screen on Choteau’s main street, presumably driven by “just plain folks.”
As the crowd poured out of the theater after the film, I overheard a woman ahead of me say to her friend, “now we just have to find a way to get the unbelievers to see this.” She clearly meant that showing the film in Aspen was like preaching to the choir. But looking out over the flood of down, fur, and fleece clad folk, I was not altogether sure this was the wrong audience.
The film’s images and interwoven storylines snag the heart—spectacular scenery webbed with roads and well pads, sloppy pits full of toxic drilling fluid, fifth generation ranchers with herds of poisoned cattle roaming a fractured range, High Country News founder Tom Bell walking at sunset through Wyoming’s Red Desert, his professed spiritual home since coming back from the war in 1944 that is now a hotbed for oil and gas development.
The audience was rapt, and so was I. 'Yes, yes, save the land! Fight the man!' cried a wee voice inside me, spurring my head to nod vigorously in agreement like a dashboard bobble head doll. The film felt right; it is right. You should fight for the places you love, Americans should fight for their birthright to healthy public lands. And, as the film points out, that’s just what’s happening—the oil and gas free-for-all has spurred an upwelling of grassroots and local government action from Montana to New Mexico. People from all walks of life are plain pissed off. Nobody wants a gas drill rig popping up in their backyard or beside their favorite hiking trail.
But there is a strangeness to seeing a film like this in a place renowned for its conspicuous consumption. Though local policies are remarkable for their environmental correctness and citizen groundswell is responsible for the spectacular designated wildernesses in the area, expensive impored designer labels prevail in local fashion, along with massive SUVs, Humvees, private jets, and a vast spread of personal holiday castles that Pitkin County commissioner Mike Owsley once called a “landscape of beached cruise ships.” After all, natural gas and other fossil fuels are booming because there’s a market for them.
About 15 minutes into the film, Dick Cheney appears onscreen, pontificating about the backward logic of politicians who, during the perceived energy shortage of the 1970s, asked Americans “to do more with less.” Naturally, many in the audience hissed, because everyone here knows that Cheney is really the arch villain skeletor, and unlike Cheney, most of my compatriots in the theatre probably believe in conservation. But Cheney made me wonder how much any of us here in fat-living Aspen and the West at large are willing to sacrifice to reverse the wholesale destruction of public and private lands for energy.
Sure, we can fight the natural gas well down the street or near that favorite fishing hole, and we ought to. But if we don’t decrease our own demand for fossil fuels and energy in general, from the foods we choose to eat to the ways we make a living to how we entertain ourselves, we’ll just transport the problem elsewhere. For example, our desire to travel quickly to harsh, rugged places like the Aspen area and stay or live there in luxury and comfort contribute to our immense, growing national appetite for these resources, no matter how dearly we love the land.
This contradiction is widespread wherever conflicts over energy development are hot. One of the film’s more (unintentionally) poignant moments occurs as narrator Tom Bell talks about the anti-drilling grassroots efforts of the “just plain folks” of Choteau, Montana on the Rocky Mountain Front: a spanking new maroon Humvee rolls across the screen on Choteau’s main street, presumably driven by “just plain folks.”
As the crowd poured out of the theater after the film, I overheard a woman ahead of me say to her friend, “now we just have to find a way to get the unbelievers to see this.” She clearly meant that showing the film in Aspen was like preaching to the choir. But looking out over the flood of down, fur, and fleece clad folk, I was not altogether sure this was the wrong audience.
posted by gold leader at 11:49 PM
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