Filed under: Everything Else, Documentary, Film Festivals, Silverdocs
World Premiere of ADDICTED TO OIL: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting, directed by Kenneth Levis followed by a conversation with Thomas Friedman
“We are funding both sides of the war on terror,” Thomas Friedman begins, one side through tax dollars, the other by buying oil. The New York Times opinion columnist touches on all his favorite subjects in this treatise on renewable energy—globalization, the environment, the Middle East. One of his central premises is the theory of the inverse relationship between the price of oil and the pace of freedom, explained using the examples of Bahrain and Lebanon. In Bahrain, when the oil started drying up, democracy began to blossom; Lebanon has never had oil and has always been freer than other Arab nations. The film looks at the various possible sources of renewable energy—solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol—and shows the progress that is being made on each. Government and corporate impediments seem to be a major problem. Friedman points out that Brazil makes enough sugar ethanol to power their own country and sell surplus to the US, but the US government has placed a 100% tariff on it. The tariff on crude oil is 0%. Friedman works to reposition renewable energy as a patriotic, capitalistic issue of geopolitical import, rather than something girly, marginal, and vaguely French. “Green is the new red white and blue,” he concludes.
Thomas Friedman serves as the New York Time’s moderate editorialist, but if you have every wondered about his political loyalties, his speech made it clear that they lie squarely with the Dems. “We can’t give up on Bush,” he said in the Q & A session after the screening, “we don’t have two and a half years to waste.” But, he says later, when asked what individuals can do to help solve the problem, “the most important thing is, we have to elect someone who tells the truth.” “It’s amazing,” he says “what happens when you challenge people to do the impossible, and what doesn’t happen when you tell people to go shopping.”
ADDICTED TO OIL: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting will have its television premiere on the Discovery Times Channel on Saturday, June 24th, at 10 pm EST. If you don’t already have solar panels on your roof and drive a Prius, you better watch.
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Where can we get a copy of the DVD?
Comment by Scotty 06.27.06 @ 3:22 am