Center for Biological Diversity


Media Advisory, December 4, 2015

Contacts:  Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org (San Francisco)
Kassie Siegel, +1 951 961 7972, ksiegel@biologicaldiversity.org (Paris)

'Dear Governor Brown' Screening at Paris Summit Exposes Fracking's Threats to Climate, Health

Film Highlights California Governor's Support of Dangerous Oil Extraction

PARIS— A Saturday screening of Dear Governor Brown in Montreuil, Paris, will expose the California governor’s support for fracking and other dangerous oil extraction techniques. The Dec. 5 screening, sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity and and Food & Water Watch during Gov. Brown’s appearances at the United Nations climate summit, will be followed by a panel of fracking experts, including Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream.

Dear Governor Brown — the latest from celebrated documentarian Jon Bowermaster, maker of Dear Governor Cuomo — uses interviews with climate experts, California farmers, and families living near fracked wells to explore the damage fracking and dangerous drilling cause to the climate, as well as the Golden State’s air, water, food production and public health.

“This powerful film is a stark reminder to Gov. Jerry Brown that climate leaders don’t frack,” said Kassie Siegel, a California resident and director of the Center’s Climate Law Institute. “Fracking and dangerous drilling are making Californians sick, and extreme oil extraction poses a devastating danger to our climate. By backing fracking, Gov. Brown threatens to undermine everything California is doing in the fight against global warming.”

What: Screening of Dear Governor Brown film, created by Jon Bowermaster, followed by a panel discussion of the movement to ban fracking in California. The screening and discussion are presented as part of the Peoples’ Climate Summit, a citizen-based alternative to COP21 climate talks in Paris, sponsored by Coalition Climat 21.

Who: The Dear Governor Brown screening will be followed by a panel of fracking experts, including Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream, and Kassie Siegel, director of the Center’s Climate Law Institute and founding member of Californians Against Fracking, and Wenonah Hauter, founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch.

Where: Peoples’ Climate Summit, Salle/Room 505, Lycée Jean Jaurès, 1 rue Dombasle, 93100 Montreuil.

When: Saturday, Dec. 5. Screening starts at 1430 (2:30 p.m.), event concluding at 1600 (4 p.m.).  

Background
To avoid climate change’s worst dangers, most fossil fuels must stay in the ground. Yet Californians live in the United States’ third-largest oil-producing state. Dear Governor Brown is an invitation to Gov. Jerry Brown to listen to the farmers, families and communities threatened by fracking in California. 

Bowermaster is a noted oceans expert, award-winning journalist, author, filmmaker, adventurer and six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council. He is the author of 11 books and producer of more than a dozen documentary films, including the celebrated New York anti-fracking film Dear Governor Cuomo.

Siegel is director of the Center’s Climate Law Institute. The Center is a founding member of Californians Against Fracking, the statewide coalition of more than 200 groups working for a ban on fracking and other extreme extraction, an immediate end to all oil and gas production near homes, schools, hospitals, and a rapid phaseout of all fossil fuel production in California.

Biologist, author and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., writes about climate change, ecology and the links between human health and the environment. Her highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries, and was adapted for the screen in 2010.

Hauter is founder and executive Director of Food & Water Watch and author of Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America.

Watch the movie trailer here.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of the Earth's biodiversity.


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