A Guest Review by
Dan Stormont
Spoiler alert: I am going to analyze the major points made in this latest film from documentary filmmaker Jeff Gibbs and executive producer Michael Moore. I am a firm believer that you should never take someone else's opinion over the source material, so - if you have an hour and forty-one minutes to spare (and it's still playing for free on YouTube) - I would suggest you watch the movie yourself and then return here to see what I have to say about it.
Back already? Great! Let's get started.
To begin with, I should say that I have found Michael Moore to be an entertaining filmmaker, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he is an honest filmmaker. Michael loves the sound bite clip and the "gotcha" moments when he catches one of his victims - excuse me, interviewees - off-guard. He does have a skill at highlighting issues in a visceral, human manner that tends to make you think, laugh, or angry, but he is also continually manipulating you toward the conclusion he wants you to draw, rather than asking a question, presenting supporting evidence, and letting you draw your own conclusion. I am probably more forgiving of his style because I often agree with him, but even when I have agreed, I have been irritated by those parts of the film where I know he is being dishonest - or, at the very least, when he is oversimplifying a complex and nuanced issue. It's obvious that Jeff Gibbs has learned a great deal from his mentor.
The movie starts out with Jeff Gibbs recounting his environmental bona fides: He has been an environmentalist since he was a young boy, back when the first Earth Day was celebrated - a self-proclaimed "tree hugger." He moved into a log cabin with solar panels and a wood-burning stove and reported on environmental issues for a number of environmental magazines and papers. He even had run-ins with security guards at a number of toxic industrial plants while trying to get the inside story on their environmental practices.
Gibbs then shows a clip from a 1958 television movie, produced by Frank Capra, titled The Unchained Goddess in which "Dr. Research," played by Dr. Frank Baxter (an English professor), explains to "Mr. Fiction Writer," played by Richard Carlson (actor and director), that carbon dioxide emissions from our industrial society could cause warming of the planet, leading to the melting of the polar ice and ocean level rise that could submerge much of the southeastern United States. Gibbs points out that we have known about the potential impacts of greenhouse gasses since at least the time of that 1958 film. (Actually, we've known it since Eunice Foote first presented a scientific paper about the heat trapping properties of carbon dioxide and potential impacts on Earth's atmosphere in 1856!) He then goes on to ask a very reasonable question: If we've known about the problem for such a long time and the environmental movement has been working toward solutions since at least the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, why haven't we made more progress? A very good question! At this point, I'm ready for some good insights.
Unfortunately, Jeff Gibbs never provides those insights or answers the question. The rest of the film becomes hyper-focused on "green energy" as the silver bullet of the environmental movement. For Gibbs, environmentalists are limited by the single-minded pursuit of green energy - ignoring many other aspects of dealing with climate change and potential side effects. Contrary to Gibbs' assertion, the United Nations has identified seventeen Sustainable Development Goals that need to be achieved if we are going to create a sustainable, equitable, and just world for us all. Only one of those goals is "Affordable and Clean Energy" (SDG #7, if you were curious). In fact, only one of those goals addresses "Climate Action" (SDG 13). The modern environmental movement recognizes that dealing with the climate crisis will require addressing all aspects of economic, social, and environmental justice to be successful. For Gibbs, it's all just about energy.
We start our green energy road trip when Gibbs goes to an Earth Day festival that claims to be solar powered (at some unidentified time in the past). Everything is going great until it starts to rain. Gibbs heads backstage to find one of the electricians firing up a biodiesel generator. Oh-oh! Solar doesn't work when it's cloudy! Even worse, even the generator's not enough, so they have to flip the breakers to feed in some utility power. Yikes! Total solar fail!
I'm going to take the liberty of skipping ahead in the movie to continue talking about Gibbs on solar energy. In this part of the movie, he jumps around to segments about wind power and electric vehicles, but I'm going to address solar, wind, and EVs one at a time, if you'll indulge me. We next see a solar installation when Gibbs searches out the football field-sized Lansing Water and Light solar demonstration site down the street from the GM plant where they build the Chevy Volt (more about that in a bit). He happens to get there just as a power company rep is giving a tour and showing off the flexible solar cells manufactured right there in Michigan. As Gibbs starts questioning the power company rep, their guide admits that the efficiency of the installed solar cells is 8% and that the whole array could really only power 10 homes during peak hours. Oh no! Another solar fail! Next, we're off to a trade show to talk to a salesman about the lifespan of a solar panel. "Well, some last for only 10 years." 10 years! Imagine the waste!
Now it's time for Gibbs to introduce Ozzie Zehner, Author of Green Illusions. The film neglects to mention that Ozzie is also one of the producers of Planet of the Humans or that he has penned a long series of articles critical of everything from LED light bulbs to solar panels. The article he is best known for was an IEEE Spectrum article in July 2013 called "Unclean at any Speed" in which he asserts that electric vehicles are more damaging to the environment than any fossil-fueled vehicle. The basis of his argument, which gets repeated multiple times in the movie, is that the sunk carbon costs in manufacturing EVs (like the Chevy Volt) and recharging from fossil-fueled utilities makes them more damaging than conventional vehicles. Unsurprisingly, this article drew a near-record number of rebuttals from engineers who pointed out the numerous logical errors and distortions of fact in his article. (By the way, Ozzie, nice product placement with your book in the introductory shot!) Ozzie will be our guide to the environmental evils of the manufacture of green technologies: the rare earth metals that go into the magnets in motors, the aluminum in electric vehicle chassis, the toxic materials in the batteries that power electric vehicles, the carbon impact of concrete bases for wind turbines, the energy that goes into the steel for their supports, the environmental costs of manufacturing the metals in the generators, and - of course - the quartz and coal that goes into the glass for photovoltaic panels. Lots of quartz mined by crying children in pit mines in third world countries and lots and lots of coal. This is followed by a tour of 500 year old yucca being shredded to build solar farms and "mountain top removal" in Vermont to install wind turbines, followed by scenes of the waste left behind by decommissioned and abandoned solar and wind generation facilities.
At this point, I should mention that there is a lot I could agree with Gibbs and Zehner about. I don't think utility scale renewable energy plants are a good idea. They take up large swaths of land that could be more productively used (or kept as natural spaces) and any benefits of centralized power generation tend to be offset by power transmission losses and grid complexity. They are a great deal for utilities, who want to make sure that the profits from the rate payers keep coming in, regardless of how the electricity is generated, but aren't as good for the communities they serve. Personally, I also share Zehner's distaste for electric vehicles - not because I think they have a bigger carbon footprint, there is ample evidence that is not the case - but because it means maintaining the infrastructure and sprawl we've built to accommodate the more than 270 million automobiles in the US alone. Like Zehner has stated in many of his articles, I would rather see an emphasis on walkable cities and alternative transit modes than "clean" cars.
Unfortunately, the producers of this film decided to take a sensationalist approach to discussing potential issues with solar, wind, and electric vehicles. In fact, more than just sensationalist, they were intentionally deceptive. The solar panels with 8% efficiency? They were obviously prototypes being used in a demonstration site many years ago. 8% is about the lowest efficiency possible for a photovoltaic cell. Typical commercial PV panels have efficiencies in the range of 18-24%, while very high-efficiency panels have been built with up to 44% efficiency. The average lifespan of a solar panel is estimated at 25-30 years, not 10 years. (I can't imagine how cheap a panel would have to be to only last 10 years.) Even after the estimated lifespan, a panel doesn't stop working (generally), it has just lost enough efficiency that it can no longer provide its rated output. You could keep the panel in service and add additional panels to make up for the lost output or move it to a location where the lower output would be acceptable (perhaps from the main house to a shed, for example). So, the filmmakers cherry-picked the two worst case examples and presented them as though they were typical. A pattern that really does define their approach in this movie.
The last half of the movie was dedicated to intertwining two topics: biomass power generation and the economic corruption of the leading environmental leaders and organizations in the world. Once again, I completely agree with the assertion that biomass power generation isn't really a "green technology." Far too often, biomass means either burning virgin wood or burning garbage. Combustion always releases undesirable emissions, whether carbon dioxide, methane, chemicals, or particulate matter. Far too often, garbage incinerators get pressed into service as power generators, with predictable results of toxins in the air and toxic ash by-products.
So how did a premise that's pretty hard to argue with get used as proof that the environmental movement is corrupt and serving only to line the pockets of the leaders of the movement? Why by interspersing decades-old clips of environmental leaders (like Bill McKibben of 350.org) promoting biomass power generation, of course! The state-level Sierra Club representative Gibbs cornered at the bottom of the stairs couldn't give an answer on the spot about what the Sierra Club's position was on biomass...must be hiding something. Van Jones wasn't even sure what biomass was...definitely hiding something.
And it gets worse. These environmentalists form partnerships with business people. Did you know that Al Gore sold Current TV to Al Jazeera...and they're operated by Kuwait...and Kuwait is an oil-producing nation? Guess he should have sold it to an American company. After all, it's not like we're the top oil-producing nation in the world or anything. And some of these organizations were "promoting" green investment funds that had some not-so-green looking company names in their portfolios. Proof positive that the Sierra Club, NRDC, 350.org, and the Nature Conservancy are all in the bankers' pockets. (Except Bill McKibben of 350.org, as just one example, has stated that they have never promoted any green investment fund.)
Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of times I find myself cussing at some of the big name environmental groups. They're not perfect. Neither are their leaders. (Look at the sponsors for the 2015 Earth Day celebration above - definitely some green-washing happening there!) But the arguments put forward by Gibbs are classic examples of ad hominem fallacies (dismissing the correctness of their positions based on their personal weaknesses).
Michael Moore described this movie as a "wakeup call" for the environmental movement. I wish it had been. The environmental movement could use a critical examination to identify areas where it has moved too slowly, veered off the optimal path, and fragmented into a loose collection of interest groups. This movie could have been a necessary critique to refocus and energize the movement. Instead, by the end of the movie, I really didn't even know what point Gibbs was trying to make, except to advance Zehner's faulty argument that "green technologies" are even more harmful than the status quo, so we should just continue to burn fossil fuels and stop wasting time with renewables. Gibbs also wrapped up with the astute observation that we aren't going to find a technological silver bullet to solve the climate crisis, but that we need to change our economic system, our consumption patterns, and reduce the population of Earth. Again, all very good points, but presented in such a defeating and negative way that no one can walk away from this movie anything other than depressed and demotivated. Maybe that's his plan: if enough people feel hopeless after watching this movie, they'll act on their own to reduce the human population.
If you'd like to read more, here are some more reviews (that link to additional source data) that cover some details I didn't have time for in this review:
Skepticism Is Healthy, but Planet of the Humans Is Toxic - A Critical Review
Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths
Fact check: New Michael Moore-backed documentary full of errors, fundamentally misunderstands electric system
Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change
Bill McKibben's Response to Planet of the Humans Documentary
Skepticism Is Healthy, but Planet of the Humans Is Toxic - A Critical Review
Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths
Fact check: New Michael Moore-backed documentary full of errors, fundamentally misunderstands electric system
Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change
Bill McKibben's Response to Planet of the Humans Documentary
