Movie Review Monday: Pump
Welcome to another awesome edition of Movie Review Monday!
This week's movie is the 2014 documentary, Pump, directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell and narrated by Jason Bateman.
Pump explores the story of our nation's addiction to oil as a fuel source, and how it is killing our planet, ruining our economy, and generally needs to be put behind us for smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable fuels.
I enjoyed how this film gave a historical context to the issue, as well as some economic correlations to the toxic nature oil has since it is so deeply ingrained in our society. The fluctuations in oil supplies and prices have a powerful impact on American lives, and we don't have much choice about using it or not, which puts forth obvious problems.
I also liked that the documentary also provides solutions backed up by instances of it working elsewhere. Things such as bio fuels and biomass (which are awesome), electric cars (super cool), and flex vehicles (a simply effective solution) all hold promise for alleviating our reliance on oil and even more so foreign fuel sources that are dirty, expensive, and limited.
Our addiction to oil is a huge societal issue. It has ramifications as a social justice issue in terms of access to jobs, wealth, ease of transportation, and huge environmental impacts with climate change affecting us more each day. We need cleaner, cheaper, and more renewable sources to power our world.
It will take time to dismantle the oil industry on a global scale. A lot of progress has been made, but we still have a lot of work to do. We can get there a lot of different ways, which is nice, so that each country, city, community, can make it work for them. I look forward to the day where the chaos and detrimental effects of a global oil economy are history.
You can stream Pump on Netflix right now. Check it out!