DIRTY OIL: On General Release Friday 19th March
The world is a crazy place. Following the biggest faliure of the banking industry in history, we decided to plough the rest of our money back into these institutions to back a capitalist system that encourages nothing but greed. And more crazy, despite numerous calls to curb climate change, we now seem prepared to accept all these years of research and evidence as probably wrong, and move forward with no international agreement to resolve this problem.
These two great issues of our time come together in the new docu-film Dirty Oil. Like John Berlinger’s film Crude before it, Dirty Oil has as its central focus, a struggle for justice between giant oil companies and indigenous tribes from an area that has been polluted beyond repair.
Over the course of the 73 minute film it is argued that oil giants like BP have decimated – and continue to destroy – large areas of Canadian forest. Like Crude, there are arguments for and against the oil comapny, there are tragic stories and images enough to make ones blood boil or heart break.
Now, of course the Canadian people deserve their justice and we all hope they are successful in getting what they want, but what Dirty Oil perhaps best highlights is something that, sadly, runs through all these docu-films to a greater or lesser extent: An undercurrent of inevitablity that the dark side have what it takes to ultimately win.
With their billions of pounds, brainwashed lawyers and unfathomable arguments, it always looks like the big companies will avoid responsibility in the long run because they are up against such a small group of people. And I’m afraid, it leaves the viewer with a dilemma, the onus falls on them to take up the cause or justice will not prevail.
In Dirty Oil, one spokesman defends their environmental record by saying that oil extraction only accounts for 20% of the overall pollution for each barrel of oil. Aside from the fact that this in itself adds up to billions of tonnes of carbon and is over a relativley little area, we have here the reason that these oil companies will never take responsibility. Unless we are willing to give up our cars and our jet set lifestyles why should they stop extracting oil to sell?
OTB would recommend this film but be warned, unless your looking for a cause to get involved in, you’ll think this is about as good as we think someone eating carrot sticks in McDonalds is healthy.
