If you aren’t already sucked into the new TV drama Landman on Paramount+, you should check it out – although fair warning, it is definitely for an adult audience. The show revolves around Tommy Norris (played by Billy Bob Thornton), a rough-cut West Texas landman working for a make-believe oil and gas company operating in the Permian Basin. It is, of course, fiction but in many ways tracks reality – sometimes perhaps too closely.
A recent episode featured commercial wind power development, with Norris delivering a 5-minute monologue on how wind energy relies on fossil fuels. I won’t include a link because the language is absolutely not suitable for work (NSFW), but you can find it on YouTube. Again, this is a TV drama not a documentary – some points made by Tommy have merit, while others may be embellished.
But consider this – if Landman becomes as popular as Yellowstone (both creations of Taylor Sheridan), we may find public opinion on energy being swayed more by a TV drama than facts. The YouTube clip is already going viral and I’ve heard it is being spread as the gospel by right-wing influencers, news outlets and TikTok. Sustainability professionals will have to develop ways to fight pop culture shaping the conversation.
One other thing – why does the rattlesnake always have to die in Hollywood? You’ll understand if you watch the clip. Snakes get a bad rap – can’t they just be left to go on their merry way? When I was bitten by a copperhead a few years ago, I wanted it left alone but the EMS team killed it to verify it was indeed a copperhead. Seems they weren’t willing to trust my 50+ years of snake wrangling experience to properly identify it. So unnecessary…
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