Pump is a documentary about the United States' almost universal dependency on petroleum. Directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, the film begins with a bit of history and some hard economic facts about its subject matter. Later, Pump points out that the consumption of oil plays a role in climate change—however, this point is made only once. What solution does the doc provide to this very bad situation? It's a very American one: keep cars but use cleaner fuels like methanol and ethanol.

The problem, it claims, is really at the pump. Americans (the animal that loves choices) do not have enough real choices at the pump. The cars we use can easily be converted to run on these other and better fuels, but oil corporations and car corporations and the US government are preventing that from happening anytime soon. They all want us to stick with the bad and dirty stuff. Brazil, on the other hand, does offer its drivers choice at the pump (in the form of ethanol made from sugar cane), and so they have greater energy independence than the United States. (No Brazilian army bombing anything that moves in the Persian Gulf.) The US, the filmmakers argue, should follow Brazil's example. End of story.