Planet of the Humans Coming Film Release

ETA: Here's my actual film review after sitting through it all!

Jeff Gibbs, a close associate of Michael Moore, has directed a new doc about the problems with green solutions to climate change. The doc isn't out yet, but the promotional material suggests it will reveal how solar panels and electric cars are making the situation worse. So NOW what do we do??

There's still cutting back on (or eliminating) beef in our diets. George Monbiot says we need to eat what uses the least land resources possible, and beef uses the most. It doesn't appear that the new film debunks that one.

Based on articles about the film, they take down Bill McKibben for supporting biomass and other environmental groups for getting in bed with corporations. They use as a deterrent to renewables the fact that the Koch brothers are making money off them. But they would be idiots not to invest in all sides of energy, so that's not remotely a good argument. A tie to a corporation isn't necessarily a problem for the earth.

CounterPunch reports (it's really weirdly written) that they say,

"Forget all you have heard about how “Renewable Energy” is our salvation. It is all a myth that is very lucrative for some. Feel-good stuff like electric cars, etc."

They report that all renewable energy sources use fossil fuels in their production: "none of these could exist without fossil fuels". I don't think that's a surprise for anyone. The idea of using solar panels was never to eliminate all fossil fuel use, but to dramatically decrease its use. I'm not sure if they present information that suggests using solar panels is just as bad as burning coal for energy, but the sound bites are making that implication. I've been praising renewables all these years for having less impact from cradle to grave, not zero impact. I look forward to seeing the film (and scrutinizing their sources) to see if I need to change paths.

Non-Fiction Film offers a clearer look at what the film suggests,

The ultimate problem is that there are too many people consuming too much. . . . Gibbs sees climate change as symptomatic of a larger problem - overpopulation and consumption of Earth's resources. . . . putative solutions to our global environmental dilemma, such as switching to renewable sources of energy, building more wind farms and electric cars, offer false hope. . . . the development of "alternative energy" sources like wind, solar and biomass has not, in fact, led to a reduction in consumption of fossil fuels. "Building out an electric car and solar and wind infrastructure and the biomass, biofuel infrastructure, is going to run us off the cliff faster," Gibbs declares. "Because it's an additional round of mining and destruction that does not replace the one [fossil fuels] that's already destroying the planet!" . . . "Environmental groups have been collaborating on the lie of growth by helping us pretend that there will be 'green growth.' As if you can have wealth or stuff that doesn't destroy the planet. News flash: that's an impossibility of physics and biology," the director tells me. "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."

To avoid the potential extinction of the human species, Gibbs believes nothing short of a radical reordering of perspective is needed. "There are too many people consuming too much for a finite planet to support. Infinite economic growth is suicide," he remarks. "We must take back the environmental movement from the corporate interests that have taken it over and we must convene and begin to plan how we're going to humanely, lovingly, sustainably re-vision how we live." . . . "Why don't we provide family planning to everyone in the world? That's not even on the environmental agenda," he states. "Why aren't we sharing our resources here with those people that don't have enough so they don't have to chop down a tree to live?... We need to change the laws in this country and the world so that corporations are not allowed to be addicted to infinite growth. We run the planet, there's no reason they should be allowed to do whatever they want." . . . if you were really worried about climate change you'd be demanding that we have an interstate bus system and an interstate rail system that would plummet our carbon footprint, not more individual electric cars."

I completely agree with population reduction and with the end of growth. We need to buy less and expect individual transportation to be a thing of the past, for sure. And I'm not sure if we will ever do that. GHGs rise every year despite all we try to do to slow it down.

There's a poignant bit at Doom for Dummies, Gail Zawacki writes,

"There is a man who lives on the other side of my village (it is said) who one day, setting out for errands, inadvertently ran over his child as he backed out of the driveway. Ever since I heard this tragic tale, I have thought I can imagine the moment that, thunderstruck with horror and frozen in disbelief, he gazed upon that little mangled body. I think I know the ferocious dread that overcame him when first he realized that the car of which he was so proudly enamored - that quintessential symbol of success, the pinnacle of modern technology and shiny avatar of individual freedom - was the very same mighty instrument of folly that had literally crushed the one thing most important to him - his progeny, his future. 

I suffer his tumultuous and inconsolable grief because that is how I greet every new day since abruptly I came to understand that the splendid, intricate, exquisitely entwined tapestry of life is unraveling."

This bit from Atwood's Oryx and Crake also fits nicely:

 “As a species we’re doomed by hope, then?” By hope? Well, yes. Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism."

h/t Gail

ETA: Here's my actual film review after sitting through it all.