Crude Impact
Posted by Prof. Goose on February 9, 2007 - 12:00pm
During the airing of the program, there be an online discussion powered by Care2 at http://www.linktv.org/care2 with James Wood, director of the film, and oil experts like Richard Heinberg and Antonia Juhasz. They are going to talk about issues raised by the film and accept questions pertaining to oil depletion. It will take place on Feb. 9 from 9-11 p.m. ET and 6-8 p.m. PT.
They are hoping to get the word out about the discussion to people that might be interested. They are anticipating a lively and engaging discussion, and would love to have knowledgeable people who can contribute to a broader understanding of the topic participate, so if you are so inclined tomorrow night, go over and fly the TOD flag.
Under the fold are a couple of clips from the film and an example of some of what they will be talking about.
You can find Link TV on DIRECTV ch. 375 and DISH Network ch. 9410.
You can also find other pieces of the show/movie at linktv's site or on youtube by following this link.
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Is Link TV pay per view?
Looks like the old Communistic FCC communications act of 1933 is dead in the US, it's pay (and cable's $80 more more a month) and a lot of stuff is censored anyway. The average person in the US, making min. wage, finds a loaf of bread more expensive now than 30 years ago. At least they could get a beat-up old TV and watch stuff for free.
Not any longer!
The movie Why We Fight may be primtime viewing everywhere else in the world, it's contraband inside the US, I treasure my low-res copy downloaded from the BBC and I'm sure not available to Americans any more.
FYI "Why we fight" all 4 parts are viewable for "free" on youtube.
Cool. I hope it stays on there for a while, good movies like that have a way of getting ..... removed..... for some reason or another.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Fight-John-McCain/dp/B000FBH3W2/sr=8-1/qid=...
(It says "john mccain" because he "stars" on the film. The director is Eugene Jarecki.)
I wrote a review of Crude Impact here (TOD:Europe) and we also have a review of Oil Crash at that same link.
looks like it airs from 8-10 P.M. East and 5-7 P.M. West coast.
Is this correct?
http://linktv.org/programming/programDescription.php4?code=end_oil1
Those are the correct air times for the special on LinkTV.
The online discussion is on-going and currently available at linktv.org/care2.
The discussion will be live with experts Richard Heinberg and Antonia Juhasz, and the filmmaker James Wood, at 9pm eastern and 6pm pacific (one hour after the film starts).
Back to "Crude Impact" -- I'd like to see it. I do not have cable TV or Dish.
I do notice that some films like "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Why We Fight" can be rented as DVDs at some movie rental stores. Netflix rents A.I.T.
Is "Crude Impact" mostly another introduction to Peak Oil for those who do not understand it yet?
Not that that would be a bad thing. Coming at it from different perspectives at different times can help to engage more people in this important discussion.
Crude Impact is playing around at several film festivals. You can check the CrudeImpact.com website for the latest showings. It is also available on DVD at the site.
Chris Vernon has an in-depth review of the film here on The Oil Drum.
Chris calls the film "terrific," and then says that one of the keys is, "its accessibility to someone with no prior exposure to the story of oil."
I think it also helps those of us with deeper understanding of oil by helping frame the story in a very broad perspective.
Hello TODers
Long time lurker here. Usually I get to the posts pretty late in the day and everything has been pretty well talked out. So I don't bother to post.
I went and bought Crude Impact a couple months ago. For long-time Peak-aware individuals the movie, while good, seems overly broad. It covers quite a bit of ground and I'm sure a lot got left on the cutting room floor. I have passed it on to my non-peak-aware friends as a good intro to the issue.
On a side note. The green pumping units you see in the in the film are producing from Long Beach Field. One of the first giant fields discovered (in 1922). Today Long Beach Field produces about 3000 bbl/day. I thought it rather poetic to see them in a film about peak oil.
A big green machine next to your house, or McDonalds. Wow! "Oil Donkey" isn't that the term used?
For the ASPO-USA conference in Boston (Oct. 2006) I invited James Wood to present the film to our audience. We had been trying to get "Who Killed the Electric Car" but that was only available on 35mm reels and we weren't set up to show it. It turned out "Crude Impact" was a better fit for the overall theme of our ASPO conference anyway.
James had just arrived home in LA after showing the movie to a New Hampshire film festival audience; he was kind enough to turn around, with very little down time, and come straight back to New England to show the film to the ASPO audience. He did this at his own expense.
After the film showing he (and Richard Heinberg) took questions from the audience. I give James a lot of credit for putting the film together and going through a lot of personal sacrifice of his own time and money to get the word out to the world.
- Dick Lawrence
ASPO-USA
Very cool background, DL! Thank you for letting us know.
Sounds like it might be worth picking up the DVD to share around with family and friends.
My opinion was that Crude Impact was on balance crudely unbalanced and the type of inflamatory show that plays on anger, ignorance, and emotion. While James Wood seemed pretty well schooled on Peak Oil the shrill, repugnant cheap shot artist Antonio Juhasz parading as an oil expert (hawking her new book) was really beyond a bummer. Her incessant pandering to the anti-oil crowd totally destroyed any opportunity to get the P.O. word out to any reasonable soul wanting to hear the truth. I certainly don't take the big oil companies as corporate angels but they aren't always the evil satan either. The show had about 20 minutes of reasonable balanced factual information on P.O. but the majority of the nearly 4 hours was anti oil company propaganda and Link TV hawking any kind of wares to raise a few shekels.
This kind of show plays well to the nut case crowd but few beyond in spite of the Moderator and Woods appearing fairly reasonable. Hienberg was fairly visible, Simmons and Deffeyes make limited appearences. Juhasz was beyond smug throwing out the typical crap used to incite the anti oil crowd. I.e. did you know only 47% of the cost of a gallon of gas is related to the cost of oil!!! OMG! burn the greedy bastards at the stake. Her implication was that consumers are being perpetually raped by the oil companies. What about taxes, transportation, and refining, aren't they important costs too? Take a look at virtually any product sold and you will find damn few with a Cost of Goods sold over 25% much less 47% plus the related taxes, and conversion costs.
I was really looking forward to this show as I hoped it would be a vehicle for promoting both a realistic initiation to Peak Oil as well as platform for an honest discussion of what we should do for mitigation. What I got was a witch hunt by the nut case crowd with just enough P.O. thrown in to bait and switch the viewer into the vortex of Oil Company propanda bashing. If this is supposed to be a rational legitimate offset to the MSM we are in freaking trouble.
I watched Crude Impact. I think Pres Bush almost started laughing at his comments about ANWAR. It was like he couldn't believe how stupid the US public is and he was setting up his buddies to make another pile of money while acting to "care about america". It was like the shear audacity of what he was saying was almost too much for him. Watch it and tell me what you think.