One of two environmental documentaries could walk away with a statuette at the Academy Awards on Sunday. Up for awards in the feature documentary category are "Gasland," which explores the impacts of extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, and "Waste Land," which follows artist Vik Muniz as he creates art with the help of garbage scavengers in a landfill outside Rio de Janeiro. (Gasland was reviewed by our own The Green Life blog. Read the Sierra Club's take on hydraulic fracturing here.)
All that Hollywood bling is nothing to sniff at: An Oscar win in 2006 for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" propelled the issue of global warming into mainstream public consciousness.
--Reed McManus
