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End Game for Green Utopia
End Game for Green Utopia
Wind Turbines, Tehachapi Pass. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
On these two opposing types of responses to the movie “Planet Of The Humans”:
PRO: “The key, however, is that all these [‘greenish’] energy policies have to be carried out after capitalism has been wiped out and under conditions where production is based strictly on use.“
CON: “This documentary is trashy fake news. It’s Trumpian in its disdain for the facts…, they point away from real climate action solutions (such as renewable energy infrastructure) and peddle fascist snake oil of population growth i.e. advocate ecofascist genocide…Meanwhile, those of us who aren’t raving ecofascist lunatics will continue to fight to change society.”
Dreams of Utopias and illusions of self-importance die hard, even in the face of reality. Nature doesn’t care about how we fantasize; it just keeps on with its grand cycles, which those of global heating, environmental destruction and species extinction are now overstimulated by us, homo sapiens. The fundamental question here is: how good of an equitable world society could we energetically have, and by ‘greening it’ can we limit global warming?
PART 1:
The best we could possibly do would be to equalize the standard of living (Human Development Index) worldwide to HDI=0.862 (the range is from 0.28 for the poorest, to 0.97 for the richest nations), with a per capita electrical energy use of u=4000 kWh/c (kilowatt-hours-per-year/capita). The world average by nation (in 2002, and similar now) was: HDI=0.741 at u=2465 kWh/c. The U.S.A. had HDI=0.944 at u=13,456 kWh/c (a rich highly developed country). Niger had HDI=0.281 at u=40kWh/c (a poor underdeveloped country).
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False Solutions to Climate Change: Real Solutions
False Solutions to Climate Change: Real Solutions
Editorial Note: This is Part 6 of Mary Wildfire’s series on false solutions to climate change. You can read Part 1 on Electricity here, Part 2 on Transportation here, Part 3 on Agriculture here, Part 4 on Buildings here. and Part 5 on Geoengineering here.
It’s become increasingly clear that climate change is not only real but beginning to bite. Now that much of the population is finally feeling the urgency—and during a time when COVID19 has much of our frenetic commerce on hold, giving us a space for thinking and discussion–what can we do to protect the only planet we’ve got? Unfortunately a good many of the solutions on offer seem designed to quiet the increasing concern, the impetus to do something, without challenging the status quo.
Can we get real solutions and still maintain economic growth, population growth, and the growth of inequality? Are we entitled to an ever-rising standard of living? I believe the answer is no; we need some profound transformations if we are to leave our grandchildren a planet that resembles the one we grew up on, rather than a dystopian Hell world. This is the basic theme of the controversial Michael Moore produced film Planet of the Humans. I see that film as seriously flawed, but agree with its basic message—that it’s time for humanity to grow up and accept limits, get over what I call human exceptionalism, or androtheism—the notion that man is God.
A veritable cornucopia of false solutions is being pushed these days, not only by corporations and think tanks but by the UN’s IPCC, the international body responsible for research and action on climate. We could have made a gentle transition if we had begun when we first became aware of this problem decades ago, but for various reasons we did not.
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Planet of the Humans: Reviewing the Film and its Reviews
Planet of the Humans: Reviewing the Film and its Reviews
If you haven’t seen the latest (and arguably the most contentious) documentary on renewable energy, be prepared for an aftertaste of mixed feelings.
Joining hands with the controversial Michael Moore, environmentalist and filmmaker Jeff Gibbs has sent an eerie message that is now somewhat dividing the climate movement—in many ways for the worse, but, in a few others, for the better.
So, at least, one could argue is the case of Planet of the Humans. After engaging briefly with some of the well-deserved criticisms the film has received thus far, there are nevertheless some important aspects brought to our attention by the movie.
Specifically, at one point in the documentary, Gibbs touches upon the religious and existential dimensions underlying our ecological hot waters—aspects that, for what it seems, many of his critics have left unaddressed. Hence the focus towards the end of this review will fall on the cosmic role of religion (or cosmology, if we will) in helping us engage with “the great scheme of things”, to use the phrase of one of the scholars interviewed in the documentary.
But first a sketch of the film and its criticism.
What is the Central Claim of Planet of the Humans?
Drawing implicitly on the legacy of renowned environmentalist Rachel Carson, in essence, Planet of the Humans calls into question the solutions proposed by so-called renewable technologies. Such solutions, Gibbs argues, are to a degree or another an extension-in-disguise of the same problems created by our technological society. For one, solar panels and wind towers still burn fuels to be produced; for another, they rely on copious amounts of minerals and rare earth metals. More worryingly, what Gibbs calls “the narrow solution of green technology” keeps feeding the pockets of a smaller few at the expense of the greater rest, leaving underlying societal problems unattended.
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Movie review of Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”
Movie review of Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”
Preface. This documentary was made by Jeff Gibbs, a writer and environmentalist, with Michael Moore as the executive producer.
I watched the movie and then read 20 criticisms of it. None were any good, it is as if the reviewers had watched an entirely different movie. Most yell names at it and call it Bullshit, rather than offer legitimate criticisms as to what was wrong and criticize it for things it never said. A lot of howling can be heard, like an ox who’s been gored. McKibben is super angry that he’s been accused of taking corporate money. If you watch the film, you’ll see that never happens. The Guardian is more reasonable, but accuses the film of not offering a solution, and asks what about nuclear power, which is answered indirectly by the film in that any kind of contraption that needs to be made with fossil fuels is nonrenewable.
The only legitimate criticism, if it is every offered, would need to come from scientists, who understand that you can’t rant, rave, and call a film names, you have to actually state what was wrong and cite peer-reviewed evidence to back it up. You can’t cherry-pick some random fact that makes wind or solar look good. You can’t say a 100 minute film should have covered nuclear and dozens of other topics. If Science, Nature, or other top journals write about this film, then I’ll look at what they have to say and add it to this post.
I’ve been writing about peak oil, the coming energy crisis, and the other death by a thousand cuts that will eventually lead to collapse since 2001. What the movie is saying is the same as this website. I couldn’t find any flaws in it, and it’s worth watching, and an entertaining and quick way to understand why renewables aren’t green at all.
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The Bizarre Blindspot in “Planet of the Humans”
The Bizarre Blindspot in “Planet of the Humans”
So, was the film “Planet of the Humans” a hit job on the environmental movement disguised by the filmmakers’ phony claim to care about Mother Earth? Or was it an honest, get real, exposé of its assertion that, “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete”?
There are two things to consider when considering this question. What were the filmmakers’ motivations and intentions? And what was the film’s actual impact on this movement and the planet the filmmakers claim to care about?
The fact that most large environmental organizations are attacking the new film “Planet of the Humans” as a hit job is understandable. It has the potential to hit them where it hurts—funding, membership, and public support. That’s why their conservative enemies are gleefully praising and touting the film.
Groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council depend on wealthy corporate and foundation donors for much of their operating funds. The rest comes from concerned citizen supporters who really want to believe that they can partake in “green capitalism” and save the planet by sending in their membership dues and buying “sustainable” products, without fundamentally altering their middle class lifestyle.
This leaves these mainstream environmental groups in a double bind. Neither their members nor their corporate funders want to admit that industrial capitalism is as deadly as a cancerous tumor and many green technologies are little more than deceptive placebos.
The film highlights the way major corporations have passed themselves off as “sustainable” by promoting fake-green technologies like biomass, or by falsely claiming that they run on 100% renewable energy. Worse yet they have promoted the lie that “renewable” energy technologies, like solar panels and wind farms, are not heavily dependent on fossil fuels and rare minerals.
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Banana Town: Where Michael Moore Is Censored by the Left and Promoted by the Right (Episode 24 of Crazy Town)
Banana Town: Where Michael Moore Is Censored by the Left and Promoted by the Right (Episode 24 of Crazy Town)
Paying attention to the buzz around Planet of the Humans, the new film by Michael Moore, is like standing in the middle of a three-ring circus. In ring #1 are the filmmakers, who raise critical questions about how renewable sources can power industrial society, but do so with questionable facts and mean-spirited attacks. In ring #2 are the left-wing enviros, who are barfing out lazy accusations of ecofascism and doing all they can to avoid addressing the film’s legitimate questions about population and consumption. In ring #3 are the oil-soaked, right-wing libertarians who think this film will help them keep earning and burning their way to the bank at the end of Armageddon Road. Asher, Rob, and Jason grapple with the cacophony, hash out the good and bad of the film and the response to it, and argue for an honest, messy-middle approach to the transition away from fossil fuels. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.
‘Planet of the Humans,’ Possibly Most Bracing Environmental Documentary Ever Made, Premieres at Traverse City Film Festival
‘Planet of the Humans,’ Possibly Most Bracing Environmental Documentary Ever Made, Premieres at Traverse City Film Festival
Director Jeff Gibbs argues we’re heading toward ‘total human apocalypse’ and green energy is ‘not going to save us, it’s actually going to kill us faster’
Films about environmental issues have long been a staple of the documentary form, a genre that in recent years alone has brought us Before the Flood, Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral and, of course, An Inconvenient Truth. But those documentaries arguably pale in importance to Planet of the Humans, which just held its world premiere at the Traverse City Film Festival.
The film directed by Jeff Gibbs, produced by Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner and executive produced by Michael Moore, makes the deeply disturbing case that unless we reverse course, the human species faces ruin.
“The ultimate problem is that there are too many people consuming too much and we don’t even have a word or a name for what this total human apocalypse is called,” Gibbs told me during an interview in Traverse City. “What is the word for a single species that’s overrun an entire planet and is causing mayhem in every direction?”
There is nothing you will ever have in your life that’s not an extraction from the planet earth. And so we’ve all lost touch with that.
–Planet of the Humans director Jeff Gibbs to Nonfictionfilm.com
Gibbs, an environmentalist, film producer and composer who has worked on several of Moore’s documentaries, describes himself as “worried sick” about climate change. But unlike others who focus solely on the danger presented by global warming, Gibbs sees climate change as symptomatic of a larger problem – overpopulation and consumption of Earth’s resources.
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