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PLanet of the Humans is an environmental documentary that angered renewable energy experts and environmentalists, with some apologizing to its high-profile executive producer, Michael Moore.
It was released for free less than two weeks ago, and at the time of writing, it had nearly 5 million views on YouTube.
Throughout its 102 minutes, the film’s producer and narrator, Jeff Gibbs, weaves a disjointed narrative that renewable energy is as bad as fossil fuels, high-profile environmentalists are corrupted by capitalism and the growth of the population is the great unspoken enemy.
“It is truly demoralizing how much damage this film has done at a time when many are poised for profound change.” the Canadian activist said and the journalist Naomi Klein.
“There are important criticisms of an environmentalism that refuses to have unlimited consumption and growth. But this movie is not. “
Moore has continued to defend the film against a strip of critical articles.
Why are so many people so angry? These are some of the key topics, but this is not even close to being an exhaustive list.
Are renewable energies as bad as fossil fuels?
Associate Professor Mark Diesendorf, an expert on energy systems and sustainability at the University of New South Wales, tells Guardian Australia that the film’s comment on renewable energy is “outdated, superficial, simplistic, misleading and very biased.”
He criticizes renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, in part because he needs varying amounts of materials, energy, and metals to make them.
For anyone who has thought for more than a minute about what it takes to build that solar panel or those wind turbines, should not reveal that some materials and energy are needed. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
But the film leaves the viewer thinking that there is no net gain from renewable technologies and, for example, does not analyze any analysis from the cradle to the grave of the technologies that he criticizes.
“The myth that the energy of the life cycle reversed [and carbon emissions] in building renewable energy technologies it is comparable to lifetime power generation is false, “says Diesendorf.
Planet of humans
“Solar panels generate the energy required to be built in one or two years of operation, depending on the type of panel and location, and their useful life is approximately 20 years; large wind turbines in three to 12 months, depending on the size of the turbines and the location, and their lifespan is 25 to 30 years. “
In the film, Gibbs says, “I learned that solar panels don’t last forever either.” One would think that most people would know.
At the beginning of the film, Gibbs walks with an environmental group protesting a plan to install 21 wind turbines at Lowell Mountain in Vermont, a row that developed in 2011 (another clue to the age of the film).
We wanted to start a discussion, and that happened
An unnamed activist tells Gibbs that the power grid must run at rest when the wind blows and that this causes a “bigger footprint” than simply running the grid on fossil fuels.
Gibbs takes the speaker at his word, but Diesendorf says this is an old myth debunked by real-world examples of power grids running on high penetrations of renewable energy, with and without storage, such as batteries and hydropower.
Old ideas and old videos
The pace of change and development in the renewable energy industry is rapid, so a movie that wants to inform viewers should be as up-to-date as possible.
But the film is riddled with images, segments and problems that are more or less a decade old.
Gibbs attends the launch of the Chevy Volt, a car released 10 years ago. He criticizes it for recharging from a coal-dominated Michigan power grid.
Taking a very old example of an electric car operating in one place shouldn’t be the basis for a judgment on the role of electric cars in 2020, but the film does.
Gibbs tours a “football field-sized” solar installation called the Cedar Street solar array in Lansing, Michigan. A power chief tells the chamber that the panels have an efficiency of “just under 8%” and that the array could power only about 10 homes in the city a year.
What the movie doesn’t say is that the array was installed as A pilot project in 2008.
An energy writer who closely examined many of the film’s claims is Australian Ketan Joshi, who says looking at a 12-year-old solar array is “an absolute eternity in the years of solar development.”
Diesendorf says that panels with an efficiency of 8% “were on the market several decades ago” and now most commercial panels have an efficiency of over 20%.
What has happened to the cost of solar panels since 2008? Wood Mackenzie analysts say they fell about 90% between 2010 and 2019.
Biomass
The film spends time looking at biomass energy or, more specifically, a subset of biomass technology that is essentially burning trees and wood chips.
Gibbs has been a critic of biomass for a long time (an old article by him includes a photograph taken while filming images that appear in the film suggesting that a scene showing felled trees is at least 10 years old.)
I wrote to the producer and director to set the record straight, and never heard from them again.
Burning trees for energy is highly problematic, but there are reasons why, in some circumstances, it is not as bad as burning fossil fuels from a greenhouse gas perspective.
One reason is part of climate change 101. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon atoms that were removed from Earth’s active carbon cycle millions of years ago. Burning trees returns CO2 to the biosphere that was sequestered only in recent decades.
To an uninformed viewer, the film could be getting something to buy when it shows high-profile environmentalists, namely author and activist Bill McKibben, supporting wood burning.
McKibben founded his climate group 350.org at Middlebury College, and the film has footage of him opening a biomass gasification plant there, saying that technology like that should be everywhere.
McKibben says he heard about the plans for the documentary last year: “I wrote to the producer and director to clear things up, and I never heard from them again. That seems like bad journalism and bad faith. “
Other than that, Diesendorf says that treating bioenergy film is simplistic because, while some methods, such as corn ethanol, are harmful to the environment, ethanol from residual starch is not.
He says the film creates a false impression that bioenergy, as expected, will make a huge contribution to future energy needs. “The truth is that some see him play a minor role, while almost everyone else rejects him completely. Hardly anyone sees it as an important role. “
“Without solutions”
Planet of the Humans is a film that almost completely lacks solutions to the existential crisis that its producers say they are deeply concerned about.
No wonder it raises questions about rampant consumption and the decline of the planet’s ecosystems. As some of the examples also show, the movie is out of date a long time ago and there is no evidence that an attempt was made to revise its content or its premise as new information became available and presumably the movie remained inactive in various parts for many years.
Gibbs, Moore and fellow producer Ozzie Zehner, who appears prominently, have defended the documentary.
Gibbs says they had “done everything possible” to speak to experts in wind and solar energy.
“We need our environmental leaders, but we are in the wrong story,” he says in an interview with The Hill.
“We are asking questions about what we say is going to save the world, and you should allow yourself to have conversations between people who believe in climate change and who know that the environment is in trouble, about what will work and what will not. to work. ” job.
“That was our intention: to provoke a discussion and ask many questions, but we do not have all the answers.”
Moore adds: “We wanted to start a discussion, and that happened.”
You certainly are right about that.
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