Guest host Paul Roland talks with filmmaker Josh Fox, whose earlier films "Gasland" and "Gasland 2" helped bring the literal and figurative explosion of gas fracking in the past two decades into wider public awareness. He is on tour with his new, absolutely and unreservedly must-see film, "How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change," (http://www.howtoletgomovie.com/), which is showing until Thursday at 7 p.m. at Cinema 21.
The Portland stop of the "Let Go and Love" tour includes musician friend Gabriel Mayers and climate actionist Time DeChristopher. Mayers plays before the show and also after, with Fox on banjo, at the nearby Blue Moon Tavern. There is also an in-depth post-film discussion.
Also on the show in studio is Jasmine Zimmer-StuckySenior Organizer with Columbia Riverkeeper (http://columbiariverkeeper.org/) who have been fighting project after project of fossil fuel infrastructure and export on the Columbia River. Next Tuesday, there will be a hearing on the Draft Environmental Imact Statement for the proposed Longview Coal Export Terminal. https://www.facebook.com/events/923973757715188/ Also calling in will be Les Anderson of Landowners and Citizens for a Safe Community in Longview. The hearing will be on Tuesday, May 24th at the Cowlitz Expo Center 1 to 9 p.m., with a rally at 4 p.m.
"How to Let Go" is, first, a compelling personal journey into the terrible realizations that come with psychically confronting the fossil fuel industry in all its immensity and the resulting, real-time unfolding of climate change. As Fox falls towards despair and withdrawal from the vastness of industrial devastation, he gets a further shock on realizing the hemlock trees all around him in NW Pennsylvania are being stricken by warming-induced insect infestations. Then Hurricane Sandy hit, with unprecedented force and destruction, and Fox filmed in its aftermath, finding inspiration in the strength and creative resilience of people and communities hit by the storm surge.
What ensues is an individual journey back into engagement with the realities of industrial-fossil fuel devastation and the global archipelago of resistance to it. This involves a cinematic guided tour of some remarkable situations and people, from terribly messy and toxic oil extraction in the Peruvian and Ecuadoran Amazon to the delirium of hyper-excavation and export of coal in and fromAustralia, and many stops in between. Everywhere, there have been and continue to be, individuals and communities rising up and confronting, each in their own way, the desecrations and poisonings of the corporate invaders.
What is to be done? "More interesting things," responded Fox in yesterday's post-film Q & A. Like blocking the railroads tracks at Anacortes this past weekend and thousands of Germans blocking a coal mine for more than two days, or like Rev. Billy's new book and CD, both "The Earth Wants You," or---?...the imagination's the limit (perhaps more than we'd like to admit). Fox demonstrates the true DIY spirit in his approach to art and life, and hopefully inspires us all to do more and better as well. Making films, telling the truth, joining with fellow humans in the struggle..."That's all I know to do," said Fox. And well he does.
Me, guess I'm doing a radio show....
For more information on his stops in Portland (and also Kalama, WA Thursday):
- KBOO