Column: Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Landman’ needs less fossil fuel propaganda
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A recent episode of “Landman” — the latest western soap opera dreamed up by “Yellowstone” co-creator Taylor Sheridan — was packed with thrilling interpersonal drama in Texas oil and gas country.
Soft-spoken Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland) challenges bare-knuckled attorney Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), demanding larger settlements for the families of oil field workers who died on the job. Oil kingpin Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), frustrated by the negotiations, has a heart attack. Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), Miller’s loyal lieutenant and Cooper’s dad, confronts his son about the romantic entanglement that led him to get involved.
I was captivated. And then, briefly, I was distracted and confused.
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Continuing a trend that has plagued the Paramount+ streaming series from the start, an otherwise entertaining scene became a vehicle for a random diatribe against renewable energy and climate change activists.
In this episode, Tommy Norris’ teenage daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) goes for a nighttime swim in an oil refinery reservoir with her love interest, Ryder (Mitchell Slaggert), the two of them illuminated by the flame of a methane gas flare. She asks about gas explosions being bad for the environment.
Ryder is dismissive.
“Well, I can promise you all those Chinese lithium mines are bad for the environment,” he tells her. “They say that cattle burp is bad for the environment. Now they want to get rid of all the cattle.”
He quickly pivots to additional criticisms of environmentalists.
“They put solar panels and wind turbines on these lands that kill these birds, disrupt their patterns,” he claims. “Then they stick ‘em in the ocean and kill the whales.”
As with all the most effective misinformation, it was built on kernels of truth.
Lithium mines can in fact cause environmental damage — not that it’s anywhere near as bad as the heat waves, fires and floods of the climate crisis. Cows are indeed major sources of heat-trapping carbon emissions (not that there’s any chance we’ll “get rid of all the cattle”). And yes, solar and wind farms can harm birds — although not nearly as much as global warming, which is why the National Audubon Society supports such projects.
As for offshore wind farms killing whales? It’s an absurd lie spread by President-elect Trump and other fossil fuel supporters, despite being repeatedly debunked by scientists and journalists.
These are just a few of the misleading claims sprinkled throughout “Landman.” They’re emblematic of the show’s biggest flaw: As entertaining as it can be when Sheridan focuses on the riveting characters, he can’t stop getting in his own way with propaganda that serves to lionize the oil industry.
Consider one key scene in which Hamm’s character attends a meeting with other oil executives.
The lies fly fast and furious as they debate how to respond to society’s burgeoning demand for climate-friendly power. One attendee, for instance, insists that wind energy “is twice as expensive as natural gas, and solar four times as expensive.” False: Wind and solar are actually cheaper than gas, according to the investment bank Lazard, which publishes widely cited annual reports on energy costs.
The same dude claims, “On its best day of the year, a solar power plant generates electricity for about 8 hours.” Based on the word “generate,” you could technically say this is true. But batteries that bank power for after dark have changed the equation. L.A.’s newest solar farm will supply electricity for 11 hours a day, on average.
Eventually, Hamm’s character gets impatient and scolds his colleagues for worrying about anything but drilling for oil. He declares: “The world has already convinced itself that you are evil and I am evil for providing them the one f—ing thing they interact with every day. And they will not be convinced otherwise. Stop wasting your time.”
My jaw dropped when I heard that line.
Sure, some left-leaning environmentalists see the oil industry as evil.
But the whole world? What universe is Sheridan living in?
Maybe Hamm’s Monty Miller is so aggravated by climate activists that he really does believe what he’s saying.
But it’s hard not to feel like Sheridan is throwing red meat to conservative viewers when he should be focusing on entertainment. Again and again, his characters interrupt otherwise interesting storylines to emphasize that society couldn’t possibly function with less oil and gas (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary).
At one point, Thornton’s character says there’s “nobody to blame [for oil production and climate change] but the demand that we keep pumping” — a common fossil fuel industry argument, and one that ignores the industry’s role in electing friendly politicians and lobbying to maintain billions of dollars in subsidies.
“Getting oil out of the ground’s the most dangerous job in the world,” Thornton’s character says, making himself and his colleagues out to be heroes. “We don’t do it ‘cause we like it. We do it ‘cause we run out of options.”
No, they do it to get rich.
Look, all the respect in the world to oil field workers who are making good money providing for their families. To its credit, “Landman” tells their stories too. But the real-life equivalents of Tommy Norris and Monty Miller did not get into the fracking business out of a good-hearted desire to make sure the world has energy.
As much as I’ve enjoyed “Landman,” it would make for better, more believable TV if it stopped trying to convince us to sympathize with oil bosses and instead let its heroes wrestle with moral ambiguity. Could Norris harbor any resentment at his boss Miller for skirting safety requirements for the sake of profits, putting his son’s life at risk? What if Miller knew climate change posed a serious threat but still didn’t trust renewables to replace oil and gas?
At the very least, Sheridan should cut out the distracting propaganda next season.
John Cook, a climate communication researcher at the University of Melbourne, started watching “Landman” after an anti-wind power rant delivered by Thornton’s character went viral on social media, generating coverage from Fox News and other conservative sources. Cook described the rant as what might happen “if you took the list of renewable [energy] myths debunked on my website and asked ChatGPT to turn it into a monologue.”
The two-minute screed begins as Norris walks through a wind farm, where he tells a colleague who describes wind power as clean that “there’s nothing clean about this.” He says so much fossil fuel is used to manufacture, transport and assemble each turbine that “in its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it.”
Fact check: absolutely false.
I reached out to Garvin Heath, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He pointed me to one study concluding a typical wind turbine has a “carbon payback time” of less than two years. By the time it finishes operating (after 30 years, not 20 years), it will have spent nearly three decades reducing carbon emissions.
Heath also flagged additional research suggesting the carbon payback period may be less than a year.
“You’re getting a lot more energy out than you have to put in,” he said.
Again, “Landman” gives Norris an air of credibility by adding breadcrumbs of truth to his spiel.
When he states, “If the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don’t have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities,” he’s alluding to a real obstacle to replacing oil-powered cars with electric cars.
But then Norris says building enough lines would “take 30 years if we started tomorrow,” which is nonsense. No recent transmission permitting process has lasted longer than 17 years, and that was an extreme case.
“A lot of big new lines can be built in five to eight years,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies LLC.
“Landman” probably won’t persuade liberal viewers to stop supporting climate action. But it could have an “echo chamber effect” among conservatives already skeptical of renewables, Cook said, adding to the polarization that makes solving problems so difficult in the U.S.
And at a moment when Hollywood studios say they’re trying to avoid political bias, it’s strange to see “Landman” embrace fossil fuel propaganda. The renewable energy bashing is going to alienate plenty of viewers, even if it draws in some others.
Worst of all, it’s boring.
That said, I bet Sheridan could turn the climate culture wars into good television — if he wants to.
Texas generates more wind energy than any other state, and it’s building solar farms faster than any other state; what if in Season 2 of “Landman,” Monty Miller got into a lobbying war with renewable energy firms, instead of insisting they posed no threat?
Or, what if a destructive storm similar to 2021’s Winter Storm Uri were to slam the Permian Basin, disrupting oil and gas supplies and forcing Norris and his colleagues to scramble — and maybe even cooperate with wind and solar companies, even as Texas politicians falsely claimed that frozen wind turbines were causing blackouts?
There’s no need to preach about anything. Just tell dramatic stories that reflect the world we’re all living in.
I don’t know what Sheridan has in mind. A Paramount+ spokesperson didn’t respond to my requests to interview him and his “Landman” co-creator Christian Wallace.
But based on the episode before last, it’s possible they’re already planning a change of pace.
As Ainsley and her boyfriend Ryder continue their nighttime swim, his criticisms of environmentalists devolve into conspiracy theories. He warns that “they” are planning more pandemics, because humans are “the worst thing” for the environment. Ainsley says derisively, “You’re one of those.” He responds with a chuckle, “I am.”
Clearly, we’re supposed to think he’s nuts.
Maybe the show will pick up on that thread in Sunday’s season finale. I’ll be watching.
A FEW MORE THINGS
At least in theory, “Landman” was based on an excellent Texas Monthly podcast called Boomtown. In practice, the show doesn’t much resemble the podcast, which offers a fascinating inside look at life in the Permian Basin.
For more on “Landman,” The Times has an interview with Thornton, who is incredibly fun to watch.
Lastly, I’m not the only one who wishes the show were more accurate.
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for oil and gas companies, thinks “Landman” makes fossil fuel drilling look more dangerous for workers than it actually is. So the industry group is spending at least $1 million to correct the record by running a 30-second ad alongside “Landman.” You can watch the ad here.
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