Farmhearts Interview with Mark Ruffalo

 

An Interview with Mark Ruffalo: We Can Go Gracefully Into a Green Future, Or We Can Go Kicking and Screaming, But There Is No Choice

Sabrina Artel has traveled the country in her Trailer Talk BeeLine camper talking to people about fracking. She stopped in Yellow Springs, Ohio over Labor Day to share Trailer Talk's Shale Project and create a Bill of Rights for Water with community members fighting back against the industry landmen knocking on doors throughout the area. She writes, "I was reminded of the threat to our farms as I drove past acres of farmland with sunflower fields and beehives with No Fracking signs standing fiercely on the road. Heading west I traveled through tornado-flattened Joplin, drought-desperate Oklahoma and Texas, and a dismantled Route 66, recognizing the desperate economic situation this country is in and how enticing drilling can seem to those barely scraping by."

In this interview, she went to Callicoon, New York, to the Callicoon Youth Center, where she attended Haystock," a benefit for Farmhearts. Mark Ruffalo, actor, director, environmental advocate, and Catskill, New York, resident, joined her at the kitchen table of "Trailer Talk" to talk about Farmhearts, a nonprofit farm advocacy organization he helped found whose mission is to help local family farms by lending assistance in grants, helping to bring added value to a farm's existing products, offering grassroots and Internet support, and opening the door to the next generation of young farmers. They are committed to lending a hand to the hands that feed us, and their mission is to help local family farms survive and thrive.

Mark's story of the assault on our water supply in order to engage in hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking, is a wake-up call to all of us. He tells of how farmers are being bought out with the money provided by oil companies to lease their land for the purposes of fracking, a process whereby toxic chemicals are blasted into the earth to recover oil shale. The toxins then enter the water table and poison the water that everyone relies on.

Mark Ruffalo ends his interview in this way: "There's a movement to try and attain [sustainable communities throughout the world]. There's energy to do it. And I see that happening here. I see it happening everywhere. You know, I see it happening throughout the world. When you topple a 7,000-year-old power structure like they have in Egypt, that's a leaderless movement; that's a movement that comes out of the collective consciousness of the people, of the community, and why they put themselves at risk -- why they exert that amount of energy -- is because they see something better. They believe in something better for themselves and for their children. And it's under that same belief, under those same principles, under that same vision, that I move forward in the world ... and that all of these people move forward in the world, you know? -- that all these people are here tonight. It's tangible. It's doable. We're fortunately at a place where we can realize these dreams."

You can listen to the podcast from that interview at the following link:

http://www.sabrinaartel.com/trailer-talk-shale-project/?powerpress_pinw=1034-podcast