[Sustain] Please Forward This Critique Of The Petro-Sponsored SWITCH 'Clean' Energy Documentary

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

The film SWITCH, which pretends to promote clean energy solutions while
subtly promoting petroleum and other mined fuels, is suddenly getting a
lot of attention and is unfortunately now even scheduled to run during
the San Francisco Green Film Festival.

Please forward this critique of the film widely:

SWITCH Documentary Is Petroleum Industry Propaganda

It is extremely important in the overwhelming avalanche of news and
documentary sources that we receive on energy issues that we very
carefully scrutinize the sources of that information before we let them
guide our thinking.

The case of the film Switch is a prime example of this.

Do some digging on Switch and you will see that the University
Department managing and promoting the film, the Bureau of Economic
Geology, is focused on oil extraction. And one of the top donors to the
film is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Most of the
other major donors are also geologist organizations, and the core
business of the members of such organizations is oil and mineral extraction.

Most notably, the lead donor to the film is Peter O'Donnell Jr (through
his O'Donnell Foundation). O'Donnell is a high powered Republican from
Texas who used to be the Chair of the Texas Republican Party and began
his political activities supporting the campaign to draft Barry
Goldwater to run for president. O'Donnell has donated massive amounts of
money to Republican candidates, including George Bush. O'Donnell also
heavily funds University research in sciences and engineering,
undoubtedly in order to influence that research.

The film Switch is very sly and effective fossil fuel industry
propaganda pretending to support clean energy while very subtly shifting
the viewer's attention away from truly clean strategies, to instead fool
us into passively accepting that fossil fuels, biofuels, nuclear, and
other harmful sources will inevitably play a role; all in order to slow
down the transition to true clean energy solutions and perpetuate
traditional fuel industry profits as long as possible.

For documentation see:

Funding for the film (near bottom of page at):
http://www.switchenergyproject.com/about/funding-and-content

An example of Bureau of Economic Geology's work on petroleum extraction:
http://www.beg.utexas.edu/resprog/permianbasin/playanalysis.htm

Peter O'Donnell:
http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/philanthropy/21817-godfather-of-texas-gop-comes-out-as-anonymous-ut-donor.html


Eric Brooks
Sustainability Chair
San Francisco Green Party
brookse32 at earthlink.net
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