EXCERPT:
"But instead of engaging in a real dialogue, Pennsylvania government and the gas industry have mounted successive attacks against the honest journalism of the film. I and my team have been branded terrorists, extremists, communists, traitors, liars and now, Nazis. Nazis!
Does slandering a documentary filmmaker as a Nazi constitute the level of dialogue the Corbett administration believes is good governance? Do you call someone a Nazi just because they don't agree with you?
Apparently, the whole world knows there is something terribly wrong with hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, except the dark cave of the Corbett administration.
New York has moved into a bi-partisan moratorium on fracking. Quebec has imposed a de-facto moratorium on shale drilling, the Maryland state house is on the verge of passing a similar moratorium; 20,000 protesters marched in France (in early March) against shale drilling. Australian farmers are locking their gates against gas exploration."
March 26, 2011
Times Guest Columnist
(The week of March 16) Teddy Borawski, chief oil and gas geologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and a member of Gov. Tom Corbett's administration, compared my Sundance-award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film "Gasland" to Nazi propaganda, stating, "Goebbels would be proud."
This hateful speech shows contempt for history, for truth, for science and sets a dangerous precedent in our state's government. Such mudslinging has no place in rational or adult debate on any topic, let alone the most important issue facing the state in decades - natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
When one speaks violence, he degrades himself and his fellow man. When that person represents the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he violates the fabric of our civic trust. The Corbett administration has thrown the dialogue on Marcellus drilling into the gutter and it is it up to the Corbett administration to get it out.
I made "Gasland" out of a genuine care and love for the state of Pennsylvania. The film was designed to bring to light the extreme harm and danger of fracking for natural gas, as it was taking place across the nation.....continued....
