So last night I sat down with my wife Maria and did something I have dreaded for over a week: we forced ourselves to watch Planet of the Humans. This is the much talked-about film, executive produced by Michael Moore, which purports to take down renewable energy and expose leading environmental campaigners as self-serving capitalists. It's now had nearly 6m plays on YouTube.
Man it was hard going! That's two hours of my life I'll never get back. It has to be one of the worst documentary films I have ever seen, and I've sat through a few. It was slow, badly organized, voiced in a dull monotone and fundamentally dishonest. The cinematography was dreadful, with long black screens, no obvious narrative and strange old sequences that looked like VHS video from the 1980s. By the end we were just desperate for the credits to roll, to end the pain and misery.
And the content? It starts with a flawed premise, supported by misleading arguments and incorrect data, and reaches a conclusion that is - surprise, surprise - utterly wrong on almost every count. The most obvious reason is that it's all just REALLY OUT OF DATE! All the sequences about how bad wind and solar are have a dated feel about them - and for good reason, as it turns out most of the footage is a decade or more old.
Those solar cells that are 8% efficient? They were installed in 2008. The industry standard is now 20%, and rising all the time. Those picturesquely rusty dead wind turbines? First generation. The electric car run from a coal grid? Shot 10 years ago. (The UK grid is now almost entirely coal-free - back when this film was made it was at 40% coal.) The arguments about needing fossil backup to intermittent renewables? Not borne out by any experience, with renewables now comprising far higher proportions of grids than was ever imagined possible when this film was conceived a decade and a half ago. The only thing it gets right is that burning trees for biofuels is really bad, but anyone with a brain has been saying that for years already.
So what's the truth about renewables? Crunch the figures, and it turns out that with current technology an area of solar PV the size of 8% of Western Australia (or a quarter of Namibia or an equivalent area of hot desert) can supply sufficient energy to replace the entire world's oil industry, all 90 million barrels/day of it. So don't let any attention-seeking film-maker tell you the clean energy transition isn't possible. If they do, they're lying, and you need to ask why.
And who are these people who are set up as environmental 'leaders'? RFK Jr! A man who has so far lost his mental marbles that he's now become a full-time anti-vaccination campaigner. Nothing he says should be taken seriously by anyone, especially in a pandemic. The man is a dangerous lunatic. Who else? Vandana Shiva? She's an Indian eco-guru who has long opposed science. The only genuine leader featured is Bill McKibben, who is framed to look as if he's taking money from bad people - this also is untrue, as is obvious from the flimsiness of the evidence provided.
Now I would count Bill as a friend, but even so I would say this: take down McKibben if you have some evidence of bad faith or foul play, but doorstepping him at a rally and showing out-of-context gotchas about 350.org’s funding is not going to convince me. No wonder the right-wing climate denial lobby is having a ball. Michael Moore, the celebrated lefty, has done their dirty work for them!
It all leads up to a gloomy catastrophist fantasy where various elderly white Americans (and they are all old and white, and mostly male) muse misanthropically about how how the "elephant in the room" - that tired old cliché - is population. I mean degrowthers like Richard Heinberg et al, who are presented as prophets whereas in actual fact they are just lifelong professional pessimists who are as wrong now as they have always been (where's your peak oil now Richard?).
This Malthusian bilge I think is probably the most egregious part of the movie, and has received too little pushback - there are plenty of people out there quite rightly calling out the lies about renewables and defending Bill McKibben, but we need to look carefully at what these population de-growthers are actually saying. Where is population growth highest? Africa, of course. They won't tell you this outright, but basically this comes down to a white nationalist fantasy about stopping black people from breeding. I could correct them on points of fact and tell them how the best way to reduce population fertility rate is actually to lower rates of infant mortality and empower women, but what's the point? There's not a single African voice given airtime in the movie either, not surprisingly.
I guess Heinberg and the population-crash fantasists should be cock-a-hoop right now thanks to the pandemic. Here at last there's a good chance that millions of people will die quickly, in Africa most of all due to its poor healthcare systems and high rates of malnutrition. Yay! It's an ugly vision, and it makes me shudder for the darkness of these peoples' hearts. This is not just a bad film, it's morally repellent. Watch it if you must, but be prepared to feel sick as well as bored by the end. — Mark Lynas
So what's the truth about renewables? Crunch the figures, and it turns out that with current technology an area of solar PV the size of 8% of Western Australia (or a quarter of Namibia or an equivalent area of hot desert) can supply sufficient energy to replace the entire world's oil industry, all 90 million barrels/day of it. So don't let any attention-seeking film-maker tell you the clean energy transition isn't possible. If they do, they're lying, and you need to ask why. — Mark Lynas
The arguments about needing fossil backup to intermittent renewables? Not borne out by any experience, with renewables now comprising far higher proportions of grids than was ever imagined possible when this film was conceived a decade and a half ago. The only thing it gets right is that burning trees for biofuels is really bad, but anyone with a brain has been saying that for years already. — Mark Lynas
This Malthusian bilge I think is probably the most egregious part of the movie, and has received too little pushback - there are plenty of people out there quite rightly calling out the lies about renewables and defending Bill McKibben, but we need to look carefully at what these population de-growthers are actually saying. — Mark Lynas
The clearest, and most effective means of combating climate change is, quite ironically, what many people keep complaining politicians focus too much on ... that is GDP. As GDP rises so does healthcare, education and access to opportunity, whilst malnutrition, disease and child mortality fall. — I like sushi
So is this based on a "we're going to fix things once they're impossible to ignore" attitude, where we'll just scrape by on incremental improvements in both our ability to deal with the problems and reduce their causes? — Echarmion
What is based on that? Sorry, you lost me. You mean ‘resources’? We have enough. The data, ALL the data, indicates that raising the standard of living in developing countries help preserve them environment. — I like sushi
Lots of money pumped into dealing with climate change and environmental issues does little to nothing - usual due to misinformed activist who understand little and don’t bother to look at the bigger picture. — I like sushi
Raise GDP so people can be in a position to give shit, have smaller families and have time to focus on more than finding food to eat that day (poverty results in ravaging the immediate environment. — I like sushi
Money was pumped into biofuels for no good reason. — I like sushi
When in comes to developed countries the US needs to step up. Europe has made some steps that are better than nothing. — I like sushi
It’s a case of whether or not we can prepare and deal with what’s coming. — I like sushi
I agree with your positive attitude that "we can solve these problems" but I disagree with you framing that environmental groups have been somehow counter productive — boethius
This is simply not true. China has had the fastest rise in standard of GDP and living standards (according to our shortsighted metrics), but at large environmental cost.
In the West there was a phase of "getting so rich we can have nice plants around", but this was achieved by simply offshoring all dirty production to mostly China and India and resource extraction to mostly Africa and South America. Furthermore, fracking and tar sands, soil degradation, and insect declines (likely due to poisonous pesticides) are strong clues this phenomenon was short term (lobbies are now strong enough to on-shore environmental destruction), and of course if climate change turns large parts of Europe arid then the recent European net-reforestation doesn't matter in the slightest.
Is your position just denying these environmental costs? — boethius
In terms of distribution of funding, they are. The ‘trendy’ causes that get the limelight and funding tend to be the least effective (short term and long term). — I like sushi
If they’re taking from poorer countries then it goes with what I say (plus in terms of emissions China is comparatively low per capita compared to western and middle eastern nations. China isn’t exactly a ‘poor’ nation). — I like sushi
What you are addressing is the circle of hype that is a side affect of the mainstream media not doing credible journalism and credible analysis. — boethius
I’ve the figures. — I like sushi
What I was actually saying was an international body did a global survey of how environmental issues were being funded and tackled by governing bodies and organizations. I’ll have another look for it later. — I like sushi
The point about biofuels was not that the fuel made couldn’t meet demands it was that due to land clearance and planting the crops the net effect was to raise carbon emissions 6 fold (for this ‘green fuel’). — I like sushi
Gapminder does pretty much show how raising GDP helps everyone in many ways. — I like sushi
To be frank, the earth is unsaveable. Even if we would find a way to create efficient fusion reactors and invent amazing new eco friendly tech, the earth will still crash into the sun eventually. And even if we would create great high tech interstellar space ship to go to a new planet, the whole universe is heading towards a heat death. So, in other words, this world is screwed. — Arvid M
From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, Exxon, one of predecessors of ExxonMobil, had a public reputation as a pioneer in climate change research.[1] Exxon funded internal and university collaborations, broadly in line with the developing public scientific approach, and developed a reputation for expertise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO
2).[2] Between the 1970s and 2015, Exxon and ExxonMobil researchers and academic collaborators published dozens of research papers.[3] ExxonMobil provided a list of over 50 article citations from that period.[4][5]
In July 1977, a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to the company's executives that there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change.[6][7][8] In 1979–1982, Exxon conducted a research program of climate change and climate modeling, including a research project of equipping their largest supertanker Esso Atlantic with a laboratory and sensors to measure the absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans.[9][10] In 1980, Exxon analyzed in one of their documents that if instead of synthetic fuels such as coal liquefaction, oil shale, and oil sands the demand for fuels to be met by petroleum, it delays the atmospheric CO
2 doubling time by about five years to 2065.[11][12] Exxon also studied ways of avoiding CO
2 emissions if the East Natuna gas field (Natuna D-Alpha block) off Indonesia was to be developed.[13]
In 1981, Exxon shifted its research focus to climate modelling.[14] In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."[15]
[...]
In 1989, shortly after the presentation by the Exxon's manager of science and strategy development Duane LeVine to the board of directors which reiterated that introducing public policy to combat climate change "can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps," the company shifted its position on the climate change to publicly questioning it.[1][24] This shift was caused by concerns about the potential impact of the climate policy measures to the oil industry.[1] A study published in Nature Climate Change in 2015 found that ExxonMobil "may have played a particularly important role as corporate benefactors" in the production and diffusion of contrarian information.[25]
— wikipedia - ExxonMobil climate change controversy
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