rain and the rhinoceros

I’ve mentioned this movie before, but P.T. Anderson’s new film There Will Be Blood is really a masterpiece.

I love this quote from the movie:

Ladies and gentlemen? Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for visiting with us this evening. Now, I’ve traveled across half our state to be here and to see about this land. Now, I daresay some of you might have heard some of the more extravagant rumors about what my plans are; I just thought you’d like to hear it from me. This is the face. There’s no great mystery. I’m an oilman, ladies and gentlemen. I have numerous concerns spread across this state. I have many wells flowing at many thousand barrels per day. I like to think of myself as an oilman. As an oilman, I hope that you’ll forgive just good old fashioned plain-speaking. Now, this work that we do is very much a family enterprise- I work side by side with my wonderful son, H.W.- I think one or two of you might have met him already. And I encourage my men to bring their families, as well. Of course it makes for an ever so much more rewarding life for them. Family means children. Children means education. So wherever we set up camp, education is a necessity, and we’re just so happy to take care of that. So let’s build a wonderful school in Little Boston. These children are the future that we strive for and so they should have the very best of things. Now something else, and please don’t be insulted if I speak about this - bread. Let’s talk about bread. Now to my mind, its an abomination to consider that any man, woman or child in this magnificent country of ours should have to look upon a loaf of bread as a luxury. We’re going to dig water wells here. Water wells means irrigation, irrigation means cultivation. We’re going to raise crops here where before it just simply was impossible. You’re going to have more grain than you’ll know what to do with. Bread will be coming right out of your ears, ma’am. New roads. Agriculture. Employment, education. These are just a few of the things we can offer you, and I assure you ladies and gentlemen, that if we do find oil here, and I think there’s a very good chance that we will, this community of yours will not only survive, it will flourish.

Daniel Plainview pitching his oil company to the people of Little Boston in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood.

Last week my wife and I went out to see my favorite director, Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, There Will Be Blood. I have to say I think this my favorite of his films so far and it is profoundly relevant as it exposes the disastrous human costs of capitalism epitomized in the oil rush.

I have been openly critical of some of my friends choices to go to Alberta in order to “cash in” on the great Canadian oil rush. In my criticisms I am not attempting to place myself on some higher moral ground, for I am well aware that I am complicit in the current human destruction of the earth. However, I still strongly discourage my friends to resist the desire to pay off university debt by means of exploiting the earth’s resources. It is my hope that St. Stephen’s University would become a place that fosters the kind of growth in students that would render active participation in economic exploitation, war, and environmental degradation unintelligible.

Recently, an environmental group called Environmental Defense reported that “Canada’s massive oil sands are the most destructive project on earth.”
According to a Reuter’s article the report noted that “excavation of the oil sands in the western province of Alberta — home to the richest petroleum deposits outside the Middle East — is producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases and poisoning local water supplies.” According to the article “The Alberta provincial government says it has issued leases for 4,264 oil sands projects covering 25,065 square miles . New projects costing more than C$100 billion are on the books for the oil sands region and production is expected to triple to 3 million barrels a day by 2015.”