Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog
Dr. Scott Tinker and Switch Energy Alliance have released their second documentary about energy, Switch On. A great film.
Scott’s first documentary, Switch, debuted in 2012, an award-winning film that has now been seen by millions. It sought to educate Americans and the developed world about the sources and uses of energy in the developed world, our challenges and our choices. Scott’s second documentary focuses on the challenges of energy production and consumption for two billion people in the developing the world, and what is happening with energy in those places. Switch Energy Alliance was formed by Scott as a non-profit “dedicated to inspiring an energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible.”
Dr. Tinker is a geologist, educator, energy expert and documentary filmmaker. He is Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin and is the State Geologist of Texas. He holds the Edwin Allday Endowed Chair of Subsurface Geology and is Associate Dean for Research at the BEG. He has a gift for making difficult concepts simple and conveying information in an objective and entertaining way.
In Switch On, Scott travels to Ethiopia, Kenya, Vietnam, Nepal and Columbia to see how people in those countries live without energy and how innovations in delivering energy to impoverished communities change lives. Electricity allows farmers in Ethiopia to irrigate the desert, children in rural Nepal to go to school, tribes in Kenya to listen to a radio for the first time. Distribution of LPG in Nepal allows women to cook without burning wood and suffering the debilitating effects of smoke in their homes. Energy is presented as a solution to poverty and disease.
Switch On can be seen on Switch Energy Alliance’s website, https://switchon.org/ . The original documentary, Switch, can also be viewed there, or on YouTube. The Alliance also produces educational materials for students of all levels, all available for free.
You can also see here a presentation Scott made last December at a conference in Washington D.C.