Planet of the Humans - an environmental documentary film

Just watched at 2x speed, it is 1 hr 40 min long:

Impressions:

• only building and construction counts
• operational costs and benefits don't

This film only discusses any fossil fuel costs and ignores any generated energy. It also spends a lot of time complaining about the investors. Overall, biases and not helpful.

Bob Wilson

 

This thread and this thread ought to know each other (or be combined even, maybe).

I had a similar reaction. I wanted to think more highly of it, but it really left me wishing I could find information on the same topics in printed form maybe, with less clever cutting and ominous music. Like,

Biomass

Utility-scale solar

Ivanpah solar power facility

 

I've already reported my thread and suggested it be tacked on to this one. My mistake.

I had no interest in the video until I read this:
Climate experts call for 'dangerous' Michael Moore film to be taken down | Climate change | The Guardian

Climate experts call for 'dangerous' Michael Moore film to be taken down

Planet of the Humans, which takes aim at the green movement, is ‘full of misinformation’, says one online library
. . .​

I've had respect for Michael Moore in the past even though he errors on the polemic side. But I have a strong bias towards accurate facts and data and the critics are right:

• only costs are covered - like those to claimed Tesla only lost money while ignoring they had to build factories and train staff. So the startup costs were treated as a "loss" when in fact they were manufacturing investment.
• NO generated power listed - in effect this video claims there is no wind, solar, or biomass energy generated. Not one kWh, Joule, or BTU ever listed. So if you only count the costs and not any benefit, it is at best cheap propaganda.
• claims the author has 'green credential' - ring hollow from the beginning. It isn't attending an event or watching someone else that makes one environmentally aware and efficient. Even building a house (now abandoned?) in a woods doesn't work. A retired engineer, I need accurate facts and data.
• overt hatred of the rich and Al Gore in particular - when it became a hit piece on those who have achieved wealth and use it for projects the author doesn't like, it become a 'troll farm' piece.

When I saw the original posting about the video, I wasn't interested in watching. After spending ~50 minutes playing it at 2x, I agreed with the critics. No, it should not be banned but it should not be praised in any way shape or form. I'm only surprised FOX hasn't picked it up as many of those rich Democrats are on the FOX hit list.

Bob Wilson

 

NOW I have to watch it.
Anything that get's defined as dangerous by experts and urged to be removed, instantly becomes something I have to put on the top of my Que.
Move over "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" there's a new number 1 and it's called "Planet of the Humans".

 

Wait, who wanted to remove Chihuahua?

 

Here is a critical piece from a source I respect:
Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths

. . . Gibbs has been trying to make this documentary for a long, long time.

“He is currently working on a film about the state of the planet and the fate of humanity”, read his bio, in 2012. It is clear, digging into these early posts, that he very passionately loathes the burning of trees to generate energy – a wildly controversial and genuinely problematic thing, for sure.

But as early as 2010, Gibbs was posting HuffPost blogs extending that into wind and solar, too.

This one, for instance, repeats a bog-standard list of anti-wind and anti-solar memes that, back in 2010, were fashionable among climate deniers. The ‘wind and solar are too intermittent’ meme, for instance, is a great hallmark of that era. “How much variable energy can a grid accept? Around ten percent, twenty percent tops it appears”, he wrote back then. I’d include examples of grids with higher percentages operating without a hitch today, but it feels almost cruel.
. . .
This extremely silly concept – that coal-fired power stations run at 100% capacity all the time regardless of how much power they output – is so old it hurts my brain. In fact, it was big in 2012, when I came across it in Australian media. It’s wrong. If the power plant generates less electricity, it uses less coal. Gibbs is putting this eight-year-old meme in the microwave and serving it up in for his audience.
. . .
“One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that alternative technologies like solar and wind are somehow different from fossil fuels”, he tells Gibbs. “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place, instead of playing pretend” .

It is, in fact, possible to scientifically examine the emissions associated with making, transporting and erecting renewable energy, and compare it to the emissions saved by using it. There are just so many studies on this, but here’s the Breakthrough Institute’s Zeke Hausfather.

It’s important to be really clear about this: Zehner’s remarks in this film are toxic misinformation, on par with the worst climate change deniers. No matter which way you look at it, there is no chance that these projects lead to a net increase in emissions.
. . .
But the outright lies about wind and solar are serious and extremely harmful. Wind and solar aren’t just technological tools with enormous potential for decarbonisation. They also have massive potential to be owned by communities, deployed at small scales with minimal environmental harm, and removed with far less impact on where they were than large power stations like coal and gas. They do incredible things to electricity bills, they decentralise power (literally and figuratively), and with more work they can be scaled up to properly replace fossil fuels.
. . .
But he ends up at population control – a cruel, evil and racist ideology that you can see coming right from the start of the film. I wish I had the emotional energy to go into it, but I have spent it all. Earther’s Brian Kahn writes:

“There’s a reason that Breitbart and other conservative voices aligned with climate denial and fossil fuel companies have taken a shine to the film. It’s because it ignores the solution of holding power to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle”​

The film features a parade of – solely – white Americans, mostly male, insisting the planet has to reduce its population. There is no information provided on which people in the world need to stop smart, but we can take a guess, based on the demographics of the people doing the asking.
. . .
This documentary – particularly the parts on energy, renewables and industry- is extremely bad. It is Jeff Gibb’s 2010 Huffington Post blog drawn out in one hour and forty minutes, which feels like like a decade. I knew it would be lazy, but the magnitude of laziness here is incredible. It it mostly old. It is obviously re-hashing some specific gripes, like its attacks on the nicest guy in the whole of climate activism, Bill McKibben. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and I’m like 2,000 words in. I don’t have the energy to glue together every single fragile thing that this bulldozer has destroyed.
. . .​

The review points to a lot of inconsistencies and non-current facts and data. Gibbs been collecting these for a long, long time to stitch into this inaccurate video.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob, I really appreciate your post. I am in my 60's and I tire of the "its the people of the world at blame" game. Are we to ignore all the accomplishments humankind has done since the begining? And don't get me started on the population issue! Los Angeles was supposed to be overpopulated by 1980 and a smog haven. And if one really wants to dig into this population stuff, remember Eugenics in the 1930's and 1940's anyone? Remember where that type of thinking lead to? If you don't, I'll give you a hint............think WWII. I really believe in people, that we will always strive in the long run to do what is right. Yeah, history has shown that humankind can really be dumb sometimes, but, we always rise up and do the right thing.

The other issue I hate is when "greed" or "money" comes into play. I like to think of it this way. It isn't money that is bad, its what humankind does with it that tends to create bad situations. Wealth is supposed to create more opportunity, which in turn, creates more wealth. Elon Musk is often dispised, made fun of and even referred to as a bafoon. Yet he has created so many jobs and opportunities. In fact, if you look at history, most of our risk takers were seen as weird and eccentric (Howard Hughs?), but again, they create!

So again Bob, I agree with you. But, I also see a spark of creativity and a search for the truth in you...............which at the end of the day.............we all want.

 

Or as Churchill probably should have said even if he really didn't, you can count on us to do the right thing after we've tried everything else.

The key is to be a little bit careful, while trying everything else, to leave ourselves the option of doing the right thing whenever we get around to it.

That has always worked for us in the past. Some of it may have been luck.

 

Hmmm.....Michael Moore.....a lighting rod who has become what he seems to despise...wealthy

As with everything else in the world, who hates him and who loves him is directly related to the subjects of his "documentaries"...……..
How easy it is, to be a darling one day and a demon the next...……...

 

Michael Moore...

 

Moore has his issues but crossing the line from reality to fiction, we'll have to part ways. His other collaborators are strangers. This is not an auspicious introduction.

Bob Wilson

 

Gibbs seems to have been the prime mover for this one.

I'm just old fashioned, I'd prefer if you want to present documentary information to me, you do so. You don't encode it in your ominous music and the way you slam your cuts together. Making an action flick? Sure, knock yourself out.

My gosh, Bob, what was that keystone-kops-like sequence in the middle like, watched at 2x?

 

I haven't seen everything Michael Moore has made. But starting with "Roger and Me", "Bowling for Columbine", Farenheit 9/11, "Sicko" the problem I have with him, is he is very good at defining a problem, but not very good at offering any answers.
It seems like it's always, I have discovered this injustice, unfairness, problem, and I'm going to expose it, make fun of it, and my very shining a light on it...is a solution.- Well it's not.

My first exposure to Michael Moore was "Roger and Me" which I was young enough to really enjoy. It culminates of course with his confrontation of Roger B. Smith giving the film it's title and a sense of closure.

In Bowling for Columbine I thought Moore, tried to duplicate the ending confrontational interview of Roger and Me, with his interview of Charlton Heston.
But IMO, it didn't work. Watching it, even being far more supportive of Michael Moores viewpoint on the issues of Gun Control, I thought he unfairly led Heston into a trap, and an interview that wasn't conducted in sincerity as anything but a trap. It left me feeling sorry for Heston, and feeling he was misused, I'm sure NOT the intent Michael Moore was trying to create.

So I've continued to watch "some" of his films, 9/11, Sicko, but I don't know if I lost a lot of respect for him, pretty early on in the game.

You have to do more than just reveal a problem. Usually a problem we all know exists. Give me some fair answers. And the answer has to be more than just smoldering ridicule of those you don't agree with.
I want to like Michael Moore, because he backs a lot of issues I agree with, but overall I think he's a high profile, but very flawed voice.

 

Sorry, I don't need to see it again.

Look, I've never been a 'fan boy' of Moore. Interesting sometimes, in the past he has made insightful videos I agreed with. But each video has to stand on its own. Just when I saw his recent, 2020 'Bernie' advocacy that a hint of 'what the f*ck?' began.

Someone once said, "If you are not a liberal when young, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain." Moore seems to be following that dictate having chosen 'conservative lies' instead of facts and data.

Bob Wilson

 

Just watched "Planet of The Humans".
I have to say I thought it was an interesting documentary, worth watching.
The primary warning, message IMO seems to be, that we should take heed that a lot of our current solutions to create a more environmentally sustainable energy consumption infrastructure, may be more acts of self delusion, that aren't really long term or sustainable answers at all.
I think that's a fair, important concept to look at.
I do think big companies want "Green Cred" but may really care far less about how truly impactful any solution they embrace might really be, in repairing the environment and making the planet a healthier place.
I don't think we have to look any further than the recent VW emissions scandal to realize that with commerce and big companies, what we are being told about what is being done to move towards a better environment and what is actually happening can fall anywhere on the truth spectrum, even as far as being a total lie.
On only one viewing the message seems to be, with a lot of our "solutions" we may all be in a environmental fairy tale version of "The Emperors New Clothes", all happy enough to believe these solutions are working much better than they really are.
Whether or not I agree with the evaluation of these individual solutions, almost isn't as important I think, to the idea of holding our solutions as accountable to the reality of their actual viability as solutions.
Otherwise we are only hearing what we want to hear, seeing what we want to see. Much like, My Owners Manual SAYS it's a clean diesel vehicle, so that soot build up on the tail pipe MUST be perfectly fine.

As far as solutions about the "lack" of real solutions. You have to go until the final minutes of the documentary when you are presented with disturbing images of emaciated dying Orangutans, to the back drop of "Abandon All Hope" music before this monologue is offered:

" I know this all might seem overwhelming, It's the kind of thing we don't normally think about. But by not thinking about it, it stands a good chance of doing us in. I truly believe that the paths of change come from awareness, that awareness alone can begin to create the transformation."

Sadly IMO this falls into the familiar pattern of I've shined a light on the problem, that in of itself is "solution", which I actually think plagues a lot of Michael Moores projects. Awareness of a problem IS an important first step necessary to change, but in an age of information overload, there are so many voices crying out from the wilderness, any singular "awareness" fades into static.

The monologue continues:

" There is a way out of this,we humans must accept that infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide. We must accept that our human presence is already far beyond sustainability and ALL THAT IMPLIES."

So what is being implied here? How do we rationally, and in any way ethically deal with the problem of planet over population? Which is what I believe is being presented here. Over population of this planet may be a toxic path, but again, what's the answer? One family one child? Sterilization? Applying for birth permits? You can easily start to drift into some pretty Draconian areas, of frightening dystopia. I don't have the answer, but once again, illuminating the problem is NOT enough of a solution.

The monologue continues:

"We must take control of our environmental movement and our future from billionaires and their permanent war on planet earth. They are NOT our friends. Less must be the new More and instead of climate change we must at long last accept that it's not the carbon dioxide molecule destroying the planet it's us. It's not one thing, but everything we humans are doing. A human caused apocalypse. If we get ourselves under control all things are possible, and if we don't....." --que mournful apocalyptic montage.

Again I'm willing to be aware of the problem, and at least agree that evaluating the problem and challenges may need to change, but if this final monologue is meant as testament to being a "way out of this" it once again fails to be presentation of any real solution.
Realistically good luck wresting ANYTHING from the billionaires. Battle cries against the rich valiantly rise up through human history, actual change? Well usually takes the cooperation of the powerful and powerful usually equates with the rich.
The concept I think is most realistic an viable is the simple phrase, Less must be the New More. I'd like to see that, I think I kind of have seen that. I'm fascinated in a way by the "Tiny Homes" movement where people are trading in large, good filled homes, for the choice of living "smaller".
The rest of the monlogue? Seems too much like self loathing humanity hating. With the final "solution" being we must "get ourselves under control". Hmm......the solution to apocalypse is "Control Yourself"?

I know this is Jeff Gibbs documentary, being produced by Michael Moore, but it sure seems to suffer from the same disease I believe a lot of Michael Moor films suffer. That is blinding spotlight illumination of problems...but vague, cliche and really not very realistically applicable solution.
That being said, I think it's worth watching. I think the idea, the reality, that we need to be more critical of environmental solutions that really aren't solutions or viable answers is a real problem of which we do need to be aware.
To me the closest thing to a real solution, is that whether the people in the documentary were right or wrong in their approach, or dancing to music NOT really being powered by the solar panels in the back, isn't as important as the fact that the people were there. I think the positive you can take is that you have a lot of people that WANT a solution.
In short, the negative side as an example, you can point to the horrific truth that VW scammed the world by lying about their Clean Diesel vehicles....BAD. But everyone that bought one, in an effort to perhaps make the world better? GOOD.
Does the Eco-Emperor have no clothes? Maybe. But there is still a lot of people, Rich, Powerful and Rank and File that sincerely want to make this world a better place.
And maybe sadly, that's as close to an answer as I can come.

 

As executive producer, Moore's only input into this film could have just been signing checks.
But his name is on it now.

Do you feel the same way about the news or magazine programs like 60 minutes? The latter are documentries in that they "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record". - Documentary film - Wikipedia The filmmaker is free to inject things like solutions to problems, but it isn't a requirement. I think in the case of Moore's films, the public is already aware of possible solutions to the issue, and the push to pursue it is what is needed.

Also "If you don't have a solution, then shut up," has been used to silence those with complaints and concerns for many topics.

 

Well first of all, maybe read my longer post on the documentary itself?
And NO...the news and magazine programs are NOT documentaries. Entirely different creative environments, entirely different presentation standards, and often entirely different ultimate goals. So NO, I do not evaluate a 1:40 minute documentary by the same standards as a 3 minute news report or a 20 minute 60 minutes segment. Nobody should.
And I never say "Shut Up" if you don't have a solution, but I think both Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs are presenting works where they illuminate problems AND advance some opinion as to solution. So I think evaluation of those presented opinions is fair game in criticism.
IMO...which I'm entitled to have, Michael Moore DOES often go to great work and detail in illuminating his viewpoint in defining a problem, which actually can be great. But also IMO he does often leave it at that. Maybe at best offering some end credit scrolling to groups one can join that have similar concerns about whatever issue.
But I'm not going to apologize for saying, "Not Enough Solution" here, or pointing out what I think are weaknesses in the solutions offered.
Yourself, Moore, Gibbs, can all disagree, but I'm not backing down from doing it. IMO....solution IS a weakness of this documentary.
Gibbs in his own monologue says..."There is a way out of this".....at that point he IS offering solution. I feel then I'm perfectly free to evaluate and YES criticize those presented solutions.

I watch Michael Moore films, I watched this documentary. My second sentence IS- interesting documentary, worth watching.
So I'm clearly not saying "Shut Up" here. What I'm doing is offering opinion and evaluating what IS being SAID.

 

Ask Mr. Google for:

criticism "Planet of the Humans"​

The Google results gives a long list of critics of "Planet of the Humans" by those with more current facts and data based in these technologies. My closest interest to something touched in the video are Tesla "Solar Roofs." Except I didn't buy TSLA because of their solar roof business.

My TSLA interest is because of their EV cars:

• Std Rng Plus Model 3 - Jan 2020 - $2.75/100 miles around town not counting the free charging. On the highway, we see a range from $3.00-$3.50/100 miles depending on route and duration. With an overnight stay at motels with free breakfast and charging, $3.00/100 miles on our Jan 2020, 1,980 mile trip
• 2019 Chevy Cruze Diesel - Jan 2020 - $8.23/100 miles ($3.048/gal, 2.7 gal/100mi)

Since the Moore video does not discuss electric or diesel cars, it doesn't pose a problem with something I care about. For EV car reviews like Robert Llewellyn, they are environmentally concerned and their facts and data about wind and solar are more compelling, current, and accurate than the Moore video. Rather than cut-and-paste their criticism, I recommend using Mr. Google and have fun ... if truth has any merit.

Bob Wilson