Planet of the Humans - "renewable energy is ineffectual, wasteful and far from clean"
John Babic
Entrepreneur & Strategic Investor | CEO, Board Chair & Founder | Transforming Businesses & Driving Innovation.
The movie, Planet of the Humans, main claim is that much of what’s currently promoted as "renewable energy is ineffectual, wasteful and far from clean". Produced by Michael Moore and directed by Jeff Gibbs it debuted on YouTube April 21st, 2020, which was the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary.
A summary of the movie’s arguments are as follows:
? Green energy isn't what it's cracked up to be, people who put their trust in the green solutions are sadly misinformed.
? If you drive an electric car, know that it's recharged by energy from a power company that uses coal or natural gas. The battery is manufactured by a company using fossil fuels.
? Solar panels are great, but they mostly don't last more than a decade or so.
? Renewable energy sources such as wind turbines are intermittent, leading to power outages unless they're backed up by power generated by fossil fuels.
?There are no business entities running one hundred percent on solar and wind alone.
? Even at a massive Earth Day concert, it was discovered that energy being provided was almost entirely from conventional diesel generators rather than the solar panels so prominently on display.
? environmental movement heroes as Al Gore, come under fire for, among other things, selling his television network in 2013 to Al-Jazeera, a company funded by the major oil-exporting country of Qatar,
? Bill McKibben, author of such books as The End of Nature, is described as being in bed with corporate interests and sharply criticized for his advocacy of biomass, which involves the mass cutting down of trees.
? Other prominent figures such as Richard Branson, Michael Bloomberg and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are also skewered. Similarly, organizations as the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservatory and the Union of Concerned Scientists are lambasted for such offenses as having investments in non-green companies. "The merger of environmentalism and capitalism is now complete," intones Gibbs
? Planet of the Humans certainly makes many important and illuminating points, especially about the co-opting of environmental causes by corporate interests who use it mainly for positive branding purposes.
? Gibbs tells us near the end of the film, his ultimate solution to what he describes as a "human-caused apocalypse" of climate change - is to stem population growth
Presumably, a global pandemic isn't what he had in mind.