Movie Review: Tapped

Though we do tire of documentaries, we're often compelled to part with our money when a new film detailing some new horror comes out. Call us sadistic.

So, with that warning, "Tapped" which aired in our community during World Water Week, is worth supporting. It chronicles the inanity of the bottled-water craze and the problems of corporate-exploitation of a resource that ought to be a basic human right. It also, most depressingly, talks about all the plastic in the ocean though, thankfully, doesn't show too many images like this one. Ocean-bound plastic is a major problem, so it's good that "Tapped" focuses in on this end game of bottled beverages.

The movie moves along quite quickly and covers a lot of topics in its pursuit of persuasion. Particularly damning are the clips with the Food and Drug Administration and the Industry representatives, if those can actually be considered distinct groups anymore. After seeing "Tapped," you'll likely have doubts.

"Tapped" covers some of the same ground as the shorter, "Story of Bottled Water," but adds real people to the narrative mix.

At the screening we attended, "Tapped" folks were also giving away Klean Kanteens if attendees signed a pledge to give up bottled water. We're awaiting the documentary that exposes the Story of Stainless Steel.

A thousand words: The effect of fences on wildlife

Shamelessly stolen from Lobos of the Southwest.


And one kindly provided:


These are some of the impacts of livestock grazing operations on our public lands (in this case, wolf territories on the Gila National Forest).

Sage-grouse

We really have nothing more to say, except, once again, we're impressed with Western Watersheds Project and Advocates for the West for grabbing the agencies by the nether regions: Group challenges sage grouse finding

The department announced Friday that federal protection as an endangered or threatened species is warranted but precluded by higher priorities - species deemed in more dire need of protection right now.

Western Watersheds questioned that finding in a supplemental complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Boise, Idaho.

"The sage grouse is, in our judgment, as qualified as any species on the candidate list for the protections of the act," Jon Marvel, director of Western Watersheds, said Monday. "Of course they should be acting on all of these species, and why aren't they?"

The new complaint calls the candidate species list "a black hole from which few species ever emerge, and under which they receive no ESA protection." The decision to put the sage grouse on the list was "arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law," the group claims.

The agencies apparently don't do a goddamn thing their corporate handlers don't approve of. The Court is the only thing keeping species viable, wildernesses intact (sort of), and the process open and transparent.

Thank heaven for lawyers!

Good on ya, WWP. (And, despite all the press releases from myriad conservation groups last week, it was really WWP and the Sagebrush Sea Campaign of WildEarth Guardians that did the heavy-lifting on sage-grouse. It will be their eventual victory. Writing press releases doesn't count as work.)