Review of Promised Land (2012) by Hollyv — 16 Jan 2013

The take away is this. Farm families may not have loads of money but they have land. The land stays with the family for generations... Land is permanent. Fracking doesn't destroy the land, it just makes it no longer suitable for family farming. When this happens? The money is (more often than not) quickly spent. Money is not permanent. The natural gas companies don't live and farm there, so this works for them. For the farm families? They've been there for over 100 years. I know. I grew up in an area now overrun with fracking. In Pennsylvania, these are really family farms... not the thousand acre corn fields of the west, but 100-200 acre dairy farms.

If an energy company wanted to dig for coal on your land, we would assume that the land would be lost for farming. Natural gas is currently just as destructive - in a different way. What we need is a safe way to extract energy from the planet. It's this race to resources that the movie focuses on -- can the energy companies get those leases signed quickly, move in with equipment, remove all the natural gas and get out of town before the locals become politicized. Politics, corporate greed, conspiracy theories and lobbying groups come together in this film. There's also a good twist on this dynamic that will leave you thinking...