Michael Moore's Bullshit Attack On Renewable Energy & The Environmental Movement

('Planet of the Humans' Executive Producer, Michael Moore)

Having just watched the massively and purposely anti-environmental and deceptive joke of a film 'Planet of the Humans' all the way to the end, and after decades of my own full time work on clean energy and the climate crisis, I'm compelled to post this short summary of why this 'documentary' is so cynical and vile. ( Note: For a thorough in depth deconstruction of its falsehoods see Films For Action's detailed debunking at: https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/films-for-actions-statement-on-planet-of-the-humans/#.XqS8nYXbsD4.twitter)

The core tactic of this 'film' is to seek out the worst possible examples of everything it criticizes, in order to demonize excellent climate solutions, as if they are terrible failures.

On a more fundamental level, the film is simply a parade of almost endless ridiculous lies wrapped in a few strong truths to make it believable. Its attacks on solar and wind power are nearly all outrageously and cartoonishly false. For example, the film repeatedly and absurdly claims that solar and wind create more greenhouse gas emissions and pollution than they eliminate. The actual truth is that full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from solar and wind power are orders of magnitude lower than emissions and pollution from fossil fuels. Solar and wind directly and dramatically reduce existing emissions and pollution, and are crucial to reversing the climate crisis.

The 'documentary' also goes after some environmental groups and events that can be credibly outed as coopted by corporate influence. But once it sets that theme it goes on to deceptively attack other organizations which are not coopted (like Sierra Club and 350.org) and then it continues down this falsely established slippery slope to fully snowball into an utterly specious conspiracy-theory narrative claiming that the entire environmental movement is hegemonically controlled by corporations.

(You can read 350.org founder Bill McKibben's response to the film's flimsy and outdated accusations toward both him, and his organization, at https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/bill-mckibbens-response-to-planet-of-the-humans-documentary)

This 'documentary' is, at its center, a purposeful stealth attack on solar and wind power, and an attempt to cow the public into giving up on working to save the Earth, so that corporations can have even more free rein to trash the planet for profit.

Anyone watching it will note that in the entire film, not one solution is put forward, a clear red flag that it is a fake.

The only subject this shameless propaganda film cynically gets right is its attack on biofuels and biomass. (This is the truthful wrapping with which the filmmakers surround their incredibly deceptive film, to give it a sort of George Bush shock-and-awe style believability.) Biofuels and biomass are indeed bad news, and there are indeed some environmentalists who have foolishly drunk the cool-aid on these 'bio' fuels (though the vast majority have not). And the film, as it builds to its conclusion, drumbeats grim, clearly compelling and undeniable realities about biofuels to give the viewer the false sense that everything else that they have just seen is equally true, and bad.

(The film's attacks on Sierra Club around biomass are outright false. Sierra Club has opposed forest biomass for decades - long before the making of the film. The film takes one sentence from several pages of Sierra Club policy on the matter, out of context, to create a completely false narrative.)

Standing in the shadows behind all of this, is Michael Moore, who didn't write or direct the film (he was its executive producer). Planet of the Humans was written and directed by a couple of other filmmakers (who don't even deserve to be named) and can be easily summarized as renewable energy denialism, and environmental movement denialism, just as insidious as climate or tobacco denialism.

For quite some time Michael Moore has been a stealth neoliberal pied piper and not a friend to progressives. (Recall his 2016 election 'documentary' oozing glowing praise for the bank coopted, anti-environmental, global fracking queen, and war monger, Hillary Clinton.) So it is not a surprise that Moore has now gone full rogue from the movement and is openly attacking it.

Unfortunately, as one would expect of a Michael Moore production, this piece of technicolor trash 'Planet of the Humans' is pretty cleverly made and likely to sway a lot of people who aren't well versed in the subjects that it lies about. So eco-warriors, arm yourselves with information and sharpen your arguments, because we are going to have to actively take this sham on and debunk it, whether we want to or not.

Here is a site with lots of links to excellent debunkings of Moore's bs.

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2020/04/25/moores-boorish-planet-of-the-humans-an-annotated-collection