Josh Fox: Muckraker or Propagandist?

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Josh Fox at the Academy Awards

Josh Fox is a prominent opponent of natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. His anti-drilling documentary, Gasland, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011.

Fox began filming the movie when drillers approached him about leasing out his family’s northeastern Pennsylvania land.

Gasland has become a rallying point for anti-drilling activists, and energy companies have mounted an aggressive public relations campaign against the film, questioned its factual basis.

Fox has remained at the forefront of the anti-drilling fight, and led a sit-in protest at Governor Corbett’s office in June 2011. He’s reportedly filming a sequel to the film.

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April 10, 2013

Dueling Fracking Films Battle for Pennsylvanian’s Hearts and Minds

courtesy of filmmakers A dairy farmer from Calicoon, NY who is campaigning to lift the moratorium on gas drilling in New York, appears in Fracknation. The pro-fracking answer to “Gasland” is on the road in Pennsylvania and will be screened in hostile territory tonight — the Philadelphia suburbs. “Fracknation,” a film by Phelim McAleer and [...]

November 28, 2012

Hanger Kicks Off Gubernatorial Campaign

A full two years before Pennsylvanians vote on their next governor, former Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger has officially kicked off his campaign. More from the AP on today’s announcement: Hanger vowed to make education the top priority for state funding and to end Pennsylvania’s status as the only major natural gas-producing state [...]

July 25, 2012

EPA to Stop Water Deliveries to Dimock

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has completed its testing of drinking water supplies in Dimock, Susquehanna County. The EPA says it did find hazardous levels of barium, arsenic or manganese in the water supplies of five households. But the Agency says treatment systems could reduce the amount of toxins to safe levels. [...]

July 23, 2012

“Motivated Reasoning” and Fracking

On Sunday, the Associated Press published a story with this headline: “Experts: Some Fracking Critics Use Bad Science.” “In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too. Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air [...]

July 13, 2012

The Energy Industry Strikes Back: New Movie Billed As Rebuttal To “Gasland”

The movie’s premise is simple: a Susquehanna County mom, concerned about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, goes on a cross-country journey to determine whether the warnings raised by Josh Fox’s “Gasland” are legitimate. Except…it’s a bit more complicated than that. During a Harrisburg screening of “Truthland,” star Shelly Depue admitted she was approached by the [...]

June 20, 2012

A New Video Short From Josh Fox

Anti-gas activist Josh Fox has a new eighteen-minute video out, aimed at convincing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo not to allow drilling within the Empire State. The video is Pennsylania-centric. It gets into some media criticism, along with the concerns about hydraulic fracturing and methane migration. Fox is finishing a sequel to Gasland, which is set [...]

January 11, 2012

Polamalu’s Gasland Post Leads To Facebook Frenzy

Steelers safety Troy Polamalu recently learned what we here at StateImpact have known for a long time: the issue of natural gas drilling sparks passionate debate. The Post-Gazette recounts what happened last month, when Polamalu listed the anti-fracking documentary “Gasland” as one of his favorite movies. The Polamalu Facebook page was suddenly home to a [...]

December 19, 2011

Flaming Taps: Methane Migration and the Fracking Debate

One of the most iconic symbols of the fracking debate is the video of a man setting his tap water on fire in Colorado. Fracking, which refers to hydraulic fracturing, is a technique used to extract natural gas, and has become synonymous with all things gas drilling. It involves shooting water, sand and a mix [...]

December 7, 2011

Protests and Counter Protests Come to Dimock

For someone like Ray Kemble, living with a water buffalo means not taking a shower for four days if the water delivery is late. Or keeping the window in his bathroom open while he does take a shower because the level of chlorine is so high. Kemble lives in Dimock, and says he can’t safely [...]

December 6, 2011

The Latest On Dimock Protests

StateImpact’s Susan Phillips spent the day in Dimock, Susquehanna County, covering anti-drilling protests. She spoke to WHYY’s Newsworks Tonight about what happened, when Josh Fox and other “fractivists” arrived with a truck of clean water. The drilling opponents, which also included actor Mark Ruffalo, were there to protest the Department of Environmental Protection’s recent decision [...]