Game changer - Movie Review Example

The quest for energy as we human beings continue to consume when there is, as we all know, little to none being produced to sustain people’s needs is an important endeavor. The fact of the matter is that the population only continues to increase and with it comes the simultaneous increase in energy consumption. Many countries, not only limited to the United States although particularly so, are fettered to this area of concern in its own people’s convenient day-to-day existence. There are even those who believe that wars, predominantly recent ones, have been waged on the basis of oil.

The call for the need for diverting to renewable energy has been advocated for decades. But it seems as human nature goes, it is the principle of carpe diem or what matters at this moment that counts without consideration for the future. In this scheme of things, it is always the common people along with the viability of nature that is compromised. The video upholds the reality of the conflict between the need to protect the environment along with the health of the people in exchange for the more ephemeral and the voracity for money.

The calculations of Terry Engelder in his conservative calculation of finding out the 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale and Conrad ‘Dan’ Volz’s calculation of river strontium and barium pollution makes this its central concern. What Engelder was able to stumble upon is at the outset an answer to what seems nothing less than a prayer to an ailing economy. The need for energy, and the country needs lots of it, is easily solved by the natural gas that will be exhumed from the Marcellus Shale.

While what Volz was able to calculate posed a threat on the environment and how this affects the health of people, something inversely proportional to the positive effects of Engelder’s discovery. Among the main concerns that is apparent in the whole of the video is the seemingly encompassing influence of the gas industry on the bedrock of society, the academic institutions. ‘This American Life’ cites that there is a symbiosis between the gas industry and the Pennsylvania State University.

The findings of Engelder were regarded as a major breakthrough that was given much acclaim because of the money that will be saved and the amount of employment that will be realized because of it. Much more, what it means to the funds that will be donated to the university. Among the most obvious effects that frakking will yield is the dispensability of gas importation that could last for decades. The 800,000 pounds of solids dumped by 13 or more wastewater treatment facilities is a major cause for concern that Volz was quick to pass on to the Pennsylvania Environment Protection Agency on the other hand was easily dismissed.

When he was told by a superior, “you’re an advocate, you’re not a scientist,” Volz resigned. Engelder, for his part, maintains that he wants to continue to find and believes in a cleaner way to extract natural gas from the Shale and basks in the glory of a rockstar (This American Life, 2011). It is again the people who get the worse part of the deal while there will always be the privileged few who will greatly be benefited from all of these. What we know yet again is limited to what we have been told.

Penn State University may be justified in its approach to reject the findings of Volz and in magnifying the positive effects of Engelder’s findings or the conflict in Mt. Pleasant. This reminds of a Buddhist maxim that dictates that everything must be in moderation. These issues are not two repelling poles but opposite sides of a coin. They are in fact consistent at a very profound way. The most compelling test to determine the extent of what is permissible and what is not is the amount of greed that all these undertakings present.

It is ostensible that the existence of gas and its profitability as an industry is tantamount to the advancement of people. But there is also the concept that people should protect not only the present but also the welfare of the next generations. For all that it is the middle ground sounds to be the best route to take. Bibliography Glass, I. (2011, July 8). Game Changer. Retrieved July 16, 2011, from This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=440&podcast=1