Photo courtesy of Rumble Media
Planet of the Humans (2019)
That familiar jowly face and grubby baseball cap are seen nowhere, yet the ponderous spirit of Michael Moore hovers over Planet of the Humans. Moore is the film’s executive producer, but the execution is left to his confederate, environmental activist-camera shooter Jeff Gibbs. Gibbs is the director and voice of a documentary that seems to say: “Alternative energy is a hoax! Hope is lost! We’re all going to die!”
Although the tone and content owe much to Moore’s oeuvre, Gibbs lacks his mentor’s panache. Sophomorically sardonic, Planet of the Humans aims its shotgun at a serious target—global environmental degradation—and fires wildly. Gibbs’ big epiphany apparently occurred while attending an alt energy fair with sponsor booths and an alt rock band performing on a solar-powered stage. When the band kept playing after the rain began to fall, Gibbs wondered how? His shocking revelation? The roadie showed him a backup generator plugged into “the same electrical grid we all use.” Shocking!
Planet of the Humans continues along those “gotcha!” lines in an effort to show that wind and solar power are an illusion, a bogus solution that causes as much if not more carbon emissions than sticking with those dirty old reliables of coal and natural gas. Gibbs criticizes electric cars because they need recharging, wind turbines because they rust, solar plants because trees are cut down during construction. Since solar panels and wind turbines are inevitably hooked to fossil-fueled backup systems because they are indeterminate—as the technical problem of storing their energy remains unsolved—they are evil delusions.
Problem is, Gibbs is wrong or outdated with many of the assertions he calls facts. No, really, the carbon footprints of solar and wind are far less than those left by coal and natural gas. In most cases, renewable technology does not require more energy to produce than it generates. Electric cars emit less carbon than internal combustion vehicles, even if the ultimate source for their power is a coal-fired plant.
However, Planet of the Humans doesn’t get everything wrong. Gibbs is entirely correct in castigating the over-hyped concept of “biomass,” which involves burning woodchips (aka sliced and diced trees) for energy. Trees are renewable, but the world’s surface is being rapidly denuded—faster than saplings can grow, contributing to catastrophic climate change. He is correct to criticize ethanol, a giant federally supported agro-industry scheme to turn inedible corn into energy in a fossil-fuel powered harvest.
And then there is the core problem Gibbs addresses as his movie opens: “How long does the human race have?” If population and consumption continue to rise at their present rates, technology will be hard pressed to keep pace with an apocalypse of human carelessness. Limits to economic and population growth and curbing consumption will be hard sells in a society where half the population believes it has a constitutional right to not wear masks in a pandemic.
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