Planet of the Humans

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Gob
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Planet of the Humans

Post by Gob »



Scary if true....
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Econoline
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by Econoline »

*IF* true? Yeah, that's the question.

Here's an answer:
Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil
Planet of the Humans deceives viewers about clean energy and climate activists.

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. To celebrate the occasion, filmmaker Michael Moore dropped a new movie he produced, Planet of the Humans. In less than a week, it has racked up over 3 million views on YouTube.

But the film, directed by Jeff Gibbs, a long-time Moore collaborator, is not the climate message we’ve all been waiting for — it’s a nihilistic take, riddled with errors about clean energy and climate activism. With very little evidence, it claims that renewables are disastrous and that environmental groups are corrupt.

What’s more, it has nothing to say about fossil fuel corporations, who have pushed climate denial and blocked progress on climate policy for decades. Given the film’s loose relationship to facts, I’m not even sure it should be classified as a documentary.


There are real tradeoffs in the clean energy transition. As a scholar, I’ve done my fair share of research and writing on those exact issues over the past decade. Renewables have downsides. As do biomass, nuclear, hydropower, batteries, and transmission. There is no perfect solution to our energy challenges.

But this film does not grapple with these thorny questions; it peddles falsehoods.
Films for Action, an online library of free progressive films, agrees with me. It briefly pulled the movie from its site, after documentary filmmaker Josh Fox wrote an open letter, co-signed by climate scientists and energy experts.

“We are disheartened and dismayed to report that the film is full of misinformation — so much so that for half a day we removed the film from the site,” Films for Action’s April 25 statement reads. “Ultimately, we decided to put it back up because we believe media literacy, critique and debate is the best solution to misinformation.”

Here, I will lay out the case for why this film should have stayed on the cutting room floor.

The film has several factual errors about clean energy

It’s not surprising that the film gets basic energy facts wrong and that information included is out of date: There are hardly any climate or energy experts featured.

Early in the film, Gibbs goes to see an electric vehicle demonstration. He concludes they are dirty because they probably run on coal.

Except it’s not true. Two years ago, electric vehicles already had lower emissions than new gas-powered cars across the country. This is because the US electricity system has been slowly getting cleaner over the past decade.

The film’s wind and solar facts are also old. It quotes efficiency for solar PV from more than a decade ago. And it doesn’t mention the fact that solar costs have plummeted since then, and that we’ve learned how to get more wind and solar onto the grid. The film instead acts like this is impossible to do.

The largest share of the movie’s scorn goes to biomass — generally, burning wood — which supplied less than 2 percent of the US electricity mix last year. But the filmmakers obscure that fact, showing graphs that imply biomass is leading to forest destruction across the US.

When Gibbs questions environmental activists about biomass, they tell him it’s complicated. Because, well, it is.

When we burn wood for electricity, we are using carbon that is already moving between our air, oceans, and land. By contrast, when we dig up and burn fossil fuels, we’re bringing carbon up from underground. That is how we got increasing carbon levels in our atmosphere and oceans. Burning fossil fuels, not wood, is the main cause of climate change. It’s a basic fact I teach to my undergraduates. But the filmmakers neglected to learn it.

That said, biomass can be — and often is — done poorly, with significant environmental harms. Scientists have raised concerns over the European Union’s incentives for renewables leading to wood being shipped from North America. Environmental groups, including the ones pilloried in the film, have criticized the industry. But you wouldn’t learn any of these facts from watching Planet of the Humans.

A biased take on the environmental movement

There are critiques that can be made of environmental NGOs. But the way activists are portrayed in this film is inaccurate. One of the film’s main theses is that the climate movement is captured by corporations. As Gibbs puts it, environmentalists are “leading us off the cliff.”

The evidence for this assertion? The Union of Concerned Scientists’ support for electric vehicles. And Sierra Club’s promotion of solar. And the fact that 350.org has received funding from environmental foundations. I fail to see how any of these facts are problematic.

The most egregious attack is made against Bill McKibben, a dedicated and kind environmental leader. As he has said, he has never taken any money for his environmental activism with 350.org. Watching this film, you might mistake him for a robber baron.

McKibben wrote to the filmmakers, to clarify his views. They did not write back. As he put it: “That seems like bad journalism, and bad faith.”

Unlike the uninformed contrarians behind this film, McKibben spent his Earth Day talking with young activists, and pushing banks to stop funding fossil fuels. On April 23, one of those banks, Morgan Stanley committed to not provide financing for drilling in the Arctic refuge. For a “corporate hack,” Bill McKibben sure spends a lot of time taking on corporations. And those corporations in turn spend a lot of time harassing him.

If the corporate capture of the environmental movement is the problem, it’s puzzling why the film has almost nothing to say about corporations themselves. You know, the fossil fuel companies and electric utilities that lied about climate science for 30 years? The climate denial campaign is not mentioned.

Instead, the film denigrates the crucial work of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Led by Mary Anne Hitt, this program helped stop the construction of 200 coal plants, and successfully pushed for the retirement of 300 others.

Rather than recognizing the Sierra Club’s achievement, the filmmakers falsely attribute the growth in natural gas to Beyond Coal. Alas, environmental groups are not in charge of planning new power plants: if they were, we would have a lot less fossil electricity. Utilities propose power plants to regulators, who approve them. Over the past decade, electric utilities have proposed an enormous amount of new gas facilities, which groups like the Sierra Club have opposed.

Perhaps the most insulting thing is that this film comes at a time when the youth climate movement is finally gaining momentum. Young women like Greta Thunberg and Varshini Prakash have helped climate change break into the mainstream. Rather than bolster the work of the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, or Zero Hour, it undermines these activists’ achievements by sowing confusion and doubt.

Why is Michael Moore promoting misinformation on climate change?

Throughout, the filmmakers twist basic facts, misleading the public about who is responsible for the climate crisis. We are used to climate science misinformation campaigns from fossil fuel corporations. But from progressive filmmakers? That’s new.

It’s difficult to understand Michael Moore’s motivations for blaming clean energy and environmental groups instead of fossil fuel companies or electric utilities. His previous films— like Roger & Me, Sicko, and Bowling for Columbine —were centered on holding corporations accountable. More recently, he endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders at the same rally as climate champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Sanders campaign centered on an ambitious 100 percent renewable energy goal.

Yet, the film Moore backed concludes that population control, not clean energy, is the answer. This is a highly questionable solution, which has more in common with anti-immigration hate groups than the progressive movement.

The fact is that wealthy people in the developed world have the largest environmental footprints — and they also have the lowest birthrates. When this message is promoted, it’s implying that poor, people of color should have fewer children.

Not to mention the fact that pushing population control is completely disrespectful of women’s reproductive autonomy. Notably, almost all the “experts” featured in the film are white men.

It is sad to think of the world we are leaving for children. Yet, if we embraced clean energy, then they would not have to grow up in a world tied to dirty fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, many people are taking this film seriously. It got 4 out of 5 stars from The Guardian, normally a paragon of climate reporting. And The Late Show with Stephen Colbert gave Moore precious air time to promote it on Earth Day. I would have rather seen Colbert interview a young climate activist. She would have known more about the subject.

We have already warmed the planet by more than 1°C, and we are running out of time to scale up clean energy. Planet of the Humans has sowed confusion at a time when we need clarity on the climate crisis.

My only hope is that this film will be buried, and few will watch it or remember it. Much like fossil fuels, it would be best left underground.[/size]
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BoSoxGal
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by BoSoxGal »

There is a lot of debate over the accuracy of information contained in the film and I won’t pretend to have dug deep on all those questions - some of the criticisms sound plausible, but a lot of what’s in the film about biomass and such IS accurate, and anyway I think this is the larger point:

The green movement of today is bogged down in incrementalism that won’t get us where we need to go in time enough to stave off the worst of climate change devastation, and our overpopulation and rampant pillaging of natural resources to chase a western lifestyle of gluttonous consumption and wastefulness for more and more of earth’s human population is undermining the planet in ways that are rapidly approaching incompatibility with healthy human species existence and millions of other species, too.

The film is a bummer because the situation is a bummer. Look at the insanity and ugliness with which millions are responding to the current pandemic, and ask yourself whether humans are capable of getting out of their own way in time to save their environment and thus themselves - the answer of course is no, they aren’t.

It’s not all going to come apart in our lifetimes, but within the next couple of generations human existence on this planet is going to be very bleak and unrecognizable to what we have enjoyed. Humans are a beautiful, hideous and ultimately temporary scourge on this rock.
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Anything with Michael Moore's name on it comes with a very big "if" and an asterisk*


*probably leftie bullshit
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Gob
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by Gob »

Early in the film, Gibbs goes to see an electric vehicle demonstration. He concludes they are dirty because they probably run on coal.

Except it’s not true. Two years ago, electric vehicles already had lower emissions than new gas-powered cars across the country. This is because the US electricity system has been slowly getting cleaner over the past decade.
It then links too...
Even though cleaner energy sources like wind and solar are expanding rapidly, it’s not enough to keep emissions overall from rising: Power sector emissions still grew by 1.9 percent last year. That increase came even though the United States retired 16 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity and saw coal consumption dip to its lowest levels in 39 years. The reason? Energy demand still rose, and natural gas largely filled the void. Natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal, so the emissions intensity — the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of energy — still fell.
So it's part correct, most electric cars are getting their power from a heavy carbon emission source.

ETA
Incredible photos have revealed the final resting place of massive wind turbine blades that cannot be recycled, and are instead heaped up in piles in landfills.

Image

The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the repository of at least 870 discarded blades, and one of the few locations in the country that accepts the massive fiberglass objects.

Built to withstand hurricane winds, the turbine blades cannot easily be crushed or recycled. About 8,000 of the blades are decommissioned in the U.S. every year.

Once they reach the end of their useful life on electricity-generating wind turbines, the blades have to be hacked up with industrial saws into pieces small enough to fit on a flat-bed trailer and hauled to a landfill that accepts them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... fills.html
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Planet of the Humans

Post by RayThom »

All docs are created with a certain amount of built in bias.

Moore is no exception, he just happens to wear his on his sleeve.

I'll probably watch this vid and then make up my own mind as to the message he's trying to convey.
Image
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by Big RR »

“We are disheartened and dismayed to report that the film is full of misinformation — so much so that for half a day we removed the film from the site,”
This surprises them? It is a Michael Moore movie; he's far more concerned with making a point than with being accurate, or even having any concern for the dignity or feelings of the people he includes in his films. Even when I agree with his point of view, I find his films to infuriating to watch (except for Fahrenheit 911, where all the people he mistreated and made distortions/fools of were politicians and their toadies).

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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by BoSoxGal »

I disagree with your assessment of Moore’s films; even critics of Planet of the Humans are saying how his films are usually very well researched and presented. I’d sure like to see a point by point analysis of all the so-called misinformation in Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story, Where To Invade Next, Fahrenheit 11/9, etc.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Econoline
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by Econoline »

Bill McKibbin's statement:
A Youtube video emerged on Earth Day eve making charges about me and about 350.org — namely that I was a supporter of biomass energy, and that 350 and I were beholden to corporate funding, and have misled our supporters on the costs and trade-offs related to decarbonizing our economy. These things aren’t true. Apparently there are lots of other falsehoods and misrepresentations in the film as well, but I’ll let others speak to those.

Like the film-maker, I previously personally supported burning bio-mass as an alternative to fossil fuels—in my case, when the rural college where I teach replaced its oil furnaces with a wood-chip burner more than a decade ago, I saluted it. But as more scientists studied the consequences of large-scale biomass burning, the math began to show that it would put large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere at precisely the wrong moment: if we break the back of the climate system now, it won’t matter if forests suck it up fifty years hence. And as soon as that became clear I began writing and campaigning on those issues. Here’s a piece of mine from 2016 that couldn’t be much clearer, and another from 2019 in the New Yorker about the fights in the Southeast, and another from 2020 as campaigners fought to affect policy in the Northeast. The other side has definitely noticed—here’s an article from the biomass industry attacking me, 350.org, and others. I’m reasonably sure that most of the valiant people here and in the UK that have been fighting this fight will vouch that I’ve been a help, not a hindrance.

As for taking corporate money, I’ve actually never taken a penny in pay from 350.org, or from any other environmental group. Instead, I’ve donated hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in honoraria and prizes. And 350.org hasn’t taken corporate money, (though it did accept the donation of hundreds of irregular parkas from The North Face in 2009 to warm the hundreds of young people it brought from around the world to the Copenhagen climate conference) 350.org has no financial interest in the campaigns it runs to clean our financial system of dirty fossil fuels, and does not act as financial adviser; it’s untrue to suggest it ever promoted one fund over another or profited from doing so.

I am used to ceaseless harassment and attack from the fossil fuel industry, and I’ve done my best to ignore a lifetime of death threats from right-wing extremists. It does hurt more to be attacked by others who think of themselves as environmentalists. I have spent much of the last ten years doing my best to enlarge the environmental movement in every way I can think of, and to support others in their work; I think that a broad big movement is our best hope. And I have found great joy and satisfaction in that work. I don’t understand the reasoning behind these particular attacks; when I first heard rumors of them last summer I wrote the producer and director to set the record straight, and never heard back from them. That seems like bad journalism, and bad faith.

Obviously there are worse things going on in the world right now, from the pandemic we are all dealing with, to the efforts of the oil industry to use its cover to build new pipelines; they overshadow these attacks, which in any event aren’t on me alone but on lots of others who work, day by day, for change—we’re well aware our victories won’t come all at once, but also that we need to keep pushing. So while you shouldn’t waste any sympathy on me, I am very grateful for the solidarity people have been showing. That feels good.

— Bill McKibben
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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

There's a good takedown of this film by George Monbiot in the Guardian. It makes the point that while there is some truth in some of Moore's allegations - there is, after all a level of cultishness among some environmentalist groups, and what was once common thinking as eco-friendly has been replaced with better ideas - the movie as a whole is laced with inaccuracies and has ben seized on by Big Oil etc as "I told you so."

Monbiot actually knows what he is talking about.

Monbiot has copies of most of his articles on his own website at monbiot.com. He - unusually for a journalist - makes a public a list of his income and assets so that no-one can accuse him of a conflict of interest.

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Re: Planet of the Humans

Post by Econoline »

Gob wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 7:57 am
ETA
Incredible photos have revealed the final resting place of massive wind turbine blades that cannot be recycled, and are instead heaped up in piles in landfills.

The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the repository of at least 870 discarded blades, and one of the few locations in the country that accepts the massive fiberglass objects.

Built to withstand hurricane winds, the turbine blades cannot easily be crushed or recycled. About 8,000 of the blades are decommissioned in the U.S. every year.

Once they reach the end of their useful life on electricity-generating wind turbines, the blades have to be hacked up with industrial saws into pieces small enough to fit on a flat-bed trailer and hauled to a landfill that accepts them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... fills.html
There's at least one U.S. company—Global Fiberglass Solutions, with 2 large U.S. facilities (in TX & IA) already, and looking to expand into Canada, Europe, and Asia—currently recycling these blades into other products.

https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/03/27/company-expands-wind-turbine-recycling-operation/

http://blog.global-fiberglass.com/blog/global-fiberglass-solutions-is-taking-the-wind-industry-one-shade-greener

http://blog.global-fiberglass.com/blog/gfs-recycle-stage-5-closing-the-loop


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