Gasland (2010) documents multiple ways natural gas drilling causes negative externalities, threatening upper water supplies in the Delaware basin, for example. Documentaries highlight multiple types of negative environmental externalities: Genetically engineered seed has produced resistant super weeds, and carp introduced in the Chicago River are threatening other fish in Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes. Environmental externalities have a global effect negatively impacting water, air, housing, energy production, and quality of human and nonhuman life around the world.
Instead of advocating for the fair use politics associated with the term externality, however, some documentaries and fictional films embrace sustainable development. A fair use model rests on conquest more than conservation. In “The Law of Increasing Returns,” for example, Bailey promotes a fair use model when he asserts, “It is in rich democratic capitalist countries that the air and water are becoming cleaner, forests are expanding, food is abundant, education is universal, and women's rights respected. Whatever slows down economic growth also slows down environmental improvement” (Salon.com). Unfettered economic growth, then, promotes environmental conservation, according to Bailey, so resources should be used as needed to advance economic development and, thus, environmental consciousness.
Wise use and sustainable policies, on the other hand, disagree with Bailey’s premise. According to an article in Environment, “The Brundtland Commission’s brief definition of sustainable development as the `ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ is surely the standard definition when judged by its widespread use and frequency of citation” (Kates et al 10).
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