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