Culture is the air we breathe all around us.
The Safe Drinking Water Act, the safety provisions of the Clean Water Acts, the Clean Air Act, the Superfund Law - the gas industry is exempt from all these basic environmental and worker protections. They don't have to disclose the chemicals they use. They don't have to play by the same rules as anybody else.
The first line in the first 'Gasland' is: 'I'm not a pessimist. I've always had a great deal of faith in people that we won't succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we'll figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love.' I have not lost that sense.
The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows.
Every single dollar spent lobbying a legislator on behalf of oil and gas is a toxic dollar that undermines public health and safety laws that protect Americans. That's contamination of the political system.
I think that the world is in the middle of a huge transition that we have to make to renewable energy. We have to transition away from fossil fuels very, very quickly.
Thousands upon thousands of people across America and many more across the globe are suffering at the hands of the oil and gas industry.
You know, there's a difference between politicians and leaders. Politicians read poll numbers and compromise. Leaders do what's morally right.
When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.
I think 'Gasland' is the doorway for a lot of people to see something happening in their backyard and realize the national and global implications.
According to the oil and gas industry and their proponents, I am a communist, terrorist, Nazi, Russian-sympathizing, anti-American, arsonist, extremist.
Independent documentary isn't beholden to some of the interests that the mainstream media are influenced by. It's a pathway to renegade, independent reporting in an in-depth, investigative fashion, and it can do so with a compassionate lens; it allows people to speak in a way that is more human than the mainstream media approach.
In the U.S. you have a system of lobbying and influence on our policy and law makers which is incredibly pronounced. The gas industry spent $250 million getting an exemption from our Safe Water Act. Every one of those dollars is toxic; a contaminant in our political system. It disrupts the normal flow of justice, science, fact and reporting.
I have to have faith that we're going to succeed in transforming where we get our energy from. The big worry is whether or not we're going to do it before it's too late. And I think nobody knows the answer to that.
I've been arrested three times. I don't like getting arrested, but it's not so bad when it's an organized form of nonviolent disobedience. It's something appealing to a higher law.
We need policy change, and the most important thing people can do is to contribute and participate in the political process. We have to vote climate change deniers and people who will create subsidies for the fossil fuel industry out of office. We have to protest when bad decisions are being made about fracking or tar sands.