Hacker Cinema
Planet of the Humans
2019 · Film · documentary · 100 min
Directed by Jeff Gibbs
Forget all you have heard about how “Renewable Energy” is our salvation. It is all a myth that is very lucrative for some. Feel-good stuff like electric cars, etc. Such vehicles are actually powered by coal, natural gas… or dead salmon in the Northwest.
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37 comments on Hacker News
Michael Moore later executive produced a movie about how wind and solar and EVs weren't green, so maybe he's just a sucker for oil propaganda if they wrap it in unconvincing green credentials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans
Here is an interesting but sad documentary from 2020. (1h40m).
It addresses the concerns about hydrogen.
"Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
? The film 'planet of the humans' went into this in great detail followed by. lot of discussion.
https://planetofthehumans.com/2020/04/29/response-to-the-sierra-club-and-aspiration-about-planet-of-the-humans/
'Planet of the humans' made trenchant points on three issues
1. The global population is exploding in size and the main cause of environmental anxieties https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006502/global-population-ten-thousand-bc-to-2050/
'From 2017 to 2050, it is expected that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia (ordered by their expected contribution to total growth)'. https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-projected-reach-98-billion-2050-and-112-billion-2100
2. Sierra club and other environmental 'non profits' are condoning the burning of astonishing amounts of wood at the altar of electricity worship for questionable reasons, despite their mission being to save forests
3. The EU appear to have abandoned any sort of strategic foresight, betting the farm on unproven and unreliable wind and solar power claims while shutting off energy to the people they serve in the middle of winter, while simultaneously destroying the ability to travel with punitive restrictions on personally owned vehicles. Absolute madness.
The Caliban on the US west coast are the EU's twin organization.
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https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.
I have become pessimistic in the "Planet of the Humans" sense. Part of this is because we are able to take every piece of the problem and minimize it individually. This is what the movie showed. If you question the mining of lithium, you're pointed to the planting of trees. If you question the effectiveness of reforestation projects, you're shown the solar panels. If you ask about storage, you're shown the battery factories. And now we're back to the lithium. Did you see that we're planting trees?
You put up solar panels. You destroy the ecosystem underneath. You dam a river for hydroelectric. You destroy the upstream forest that depended on the undammed river. You switch to electric cars, you still have to produce batteries and cars. You get everyone eating more calories, you get more people demanding more from more desirable sources. As the planet heats up, we install more air conditioning that creates waste heat to move it out of the living space, and eventually leaks high-GWP refrigerant. But don't worry, those air conditioners will be replaced by other ones that use lower-GWP refrigerant...after they have leaked it.
Everything we are doing burns carbon. It's not just too much fossil fuel. It's too much activity.
And then, the shell game. We need to show we're not using carbon. So, we burn forests instead because forests are carbon-neutral if they grow back. But we are mortgaging today's energy carbon over 30 years of forest carbon-capture, which I imagine will just be burned again, along with all of the fossil fuels available in the ground, because alternatives make the fossil fuels cheaper.
Meanwhile, the environmentalists, as represented by the Sierra Club and various green-tech interests, are attacking anyone who says that we have too many people, who travel too much, and eat too much, who live too comfortably, by destroying ecosystems. And they're quiet when confronted by the people you mention, who want to keep the merry-go-round running at any cost, lest the hard times come in their lifetime.
I also think the academic community and environmentalists you refer to are rarely willing to grapple with the actual implications of the data. We really need population decline. We will need new ways of reallocating resources than endless growth. We need to figure out how to make less waste of carbon sources, especially by reducing travel and waste heat generation. And in doing so we need to strictly limit the production of fossil carbon. --
Although you didn't mention the film, it causes strong reactions in people. I have dutifully read the criticism of the film and looked into both sides' claims and my working conclusion is:
1. Jeff Gibbs had some factual inaccuracies, overstatements, and out-of-date imagery.
2. There was no reason to be singling out one person like Bill McKibben and it made the film seem like an attack on him rather than an indictment of the whole green-tech enterprise.
3. His critics are hoping you focus on the above points so that you go back to believing in the bankrupt electric-car, electric-plane, one-billion-Americans, 12-billion-humans, vegan Zymo-veal Soylent vision of individual responsibility and careful technical management that will "maintain our way of life". The fear of the message of the film is very telling.
> Or the cost of maintenance will exceed the value of the car.
How do you measure the value of the used car? In all cases, it's very unlikely that the cost of maintenance will ever exceed the value of a brand new car. If it ever does, it sure is a demonstration of planned obsolescence (voluntary bad engineering to push sales).
> If gas prices are high when the time comes for you to replace your car, then you're more likely to take fuel consumption into consideration and buy a hybrid (or EV).
Not sure about that. Manufacturing cars, whether electric or gasoline-based, takes considerable amounts of fuel from extraction of materials to assembly to distribution. Higher fuel prices means higher parts prices overall, and the reason we have cheap electronics is because they're manufactured in China where energy is cheap and local governments mostly don't care about pollution. I have yet to see a study comparing the amount of fossil fuel necessary to produce electric vs ignition cars, but in the "renewable" energy world the picture isn't as clear cut as you suggest. As much as i dislike the director, "Planet of the humans" documentary has interesting overview of that topic.
> “peak oil” ... It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round.
Are you suggesting that oil is not finite??? Or that we have an easy replacement at hand contrary to the people that says otherwise such as in the "Planet of The humans" documentary?
Is the datacenter disconnected from the electric grid? Does it not have huge tanks of petrol to run backup generators? Was the datacenter built from locally-sourced materials? Those are the easy questions.
What "renewable" energy does it run and how was it produced? What's the carbox/fossil profile of those energy sources? How long do they need to run, and in what conditions, in order to offset this initial fossil energy invested? Those are the medium-difficulty questions. And as i much as i hate Michael Moore's rhetoric, "Planet of the humans" does a pretty good job of explaining why these questions are important.
What is the ecological impact of the cloud? Why do countryside folks have to have their data run across the country just to exchange messages with their neighbors, and what's the impact of that? What's the impact of a song that you downloaded from Youtube (replicated, dedicated centralized infra) instead of Bittorrent (decentralized, already-in-use hardware)? What's the impact of streaming this same song over and over? What's the impact of online advertisement and web trackers? How many people are working in concrete offices in a city in order to maintain that hellish infrastructure? Where does all the sand and minerals come from to build all that infrastructure as well as all the electronics you find in there? Those are the hard questions and when you answer them you'll never fantasize about green capitalism ever again.
In case you're interested in such topics, and what to do about it, but can't stand for Michael Moore, i strongly recommend the "End:Civ" documentary: https://youtube.com/watch?v=L4ccAJJrrjM
I think that debating anything from a PragerU video is just going to cause heated arguments that don't add anything productive. The videos I have seen from them appear to intentionally invoke emotional responses by design. I think it would be more interesting to have a rational discussion about the documentary by Michael Moore Planet of the Humans specifically around the funding sources, environmental impact and incentives. Disclaimer: I support all forms of energy but would like to see less dependency on coal as a matter of national security and health. I also intend to build my own solar/wind/battery system shortly after I move. I am also looking at retiring in a state that depends on coal and oil for ~33% of its tax revenue. This concerns me.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x7UgKfSug0
> Lithium is a mine once, use forever resource
The article goes into why this is incredibly difficult. The vast majority of lithium batteries are in landfills, compressed between all our other garbage because maybe 2% of people on the planet properly dispose of e-waste.
As far as clean energy, have you watched Planet of the Humans (2020)? I want to say, I despise Michael Moore emotional bullshit, but despite his influence on the film's production, the case it makes is solid: the vast majority of "renewables" are actually trees. When you hear "woodchips" .. there is no amount of industrial wood scrap waste that is viable without also cutting down trees. You start burning fast-growing trees (often planted for paper or lumber) for fuel and you get a system of power production that makes no sense over traditional gas or oil.
Solar and wind may have been growing exponentially, but they still require oil/gas standby plants. They also take a lot of resources to make. Wind turbines aren't currently recycled.
The fact of the matter is, we have one real hope left. The ITER. If real fusion power is possible, we'll find out once it's completed. If ITER fails to produce sustainable and efficient power, it's unlikely anyone else will get the funding to build a bigger reactor.
It's not coal that's in terminal decline ... it's everything. No amount of increasing consumption or building "more green" is going to change that. We need to consume less, and let's face it ... that's fucking impossible.
I think the Gibbs/Moore film 'planet of the humans' is highly pertinent to this thread.
https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE
Blood & Gore come across very poorly as cynical green capitalists in this 2020 documentary.
https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE?t=4219 The profit motive
Generation investment management/ Blood and Gore https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE?t=4650
> ‘Green’ billionaires behind professional activist network that led suppression of ‘Planet of the Humans’ documentary
> https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
Just an FYI, but that website has Wikipedia's worst reliability rating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#The_Grayzone
Before anyone takes above comment seriously, do some investigation of your own.
That article is nothing more than a damage control and is completely funded by the "green tech" billionaires. Just look at the history log.
If you want to see how far these """green""" tech billionaires have gone to censor and suppress this documentary and what kinds of legal tricks and other pressure they've used, read Max Blumenthal's article.
>‘Green’ billionaires behind professional activist network that led suppression of ‘Planet of the Humans’ documentary
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/
Michael Moore also interviewed Max about this amazing investigation into how these rich people censor things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDIEqHGAveA
Before anyone takes this documentary seriously, please do some research. This[1] Wikipedia article is a good starting point, but there are a lot of sources showing how misleading and inaccurate this documentary is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Factual_accuracy
> Are there serious research about how much this "green" tech is actually greener or not?
The Michael Moore produced documentary Planet of the Humans[0] tries to answer that question. Strongly recommended.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
If you think that "green tech" is "green" or that it somehow eliminates fossil fuels out of the equation, please watch Jeff Gibbs' "Planet of the Humans" documentary. It will open your eyes to how this "green tech" movement really works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q2m_mCIrQY
I recommend that you watch a real documentary, because that doc is filled to the brim with misleading BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Factual_accuracy
https://votetosurvive.org/skepticism-is-healthy-but-planet-of-the-humans-is-toxic/
I recommend that you watch the "Planet of The Humans" documentary to understand why there is no cheap or green energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
> A lot of cheap solar energy, from the best location.
I recommend that you watch the "Planet of the Humans" documentary to understand why there is no cheap solar energy, no so-called "green" energies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
So there will never be any "green" planes, no matter if they use hydrogen or kerosen. Since the minimum required amount of energy to fly from point A to point B with N passengers will always be the same.
> why don't more people use Vimeo?
I believe it's because YouTube is as much a content-discovery platform as a content-delivery platform. If you only use Vimeo, very few people will discover your videos.
I don't know why more people don't upload to both, though.
> whim of the market maker
As I understand it, Vimeo are also far from perfect in this regard.
An interesting anecdote: the recent Michael Moore film, Planet of the Humans, was made freely available on YouTube, but was taken down after a copyright complaint. They moved the video to Vimeo, where it remains. (I can't comment on the legitimacy of the copyright complaint, and this is not an endorsement of the film.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Release
Nuclear's environmental drawbacks are well known numerically but not by the general public. By TWh generated, their overall impact on land use and waste generation is astoundingly small because they leverage nuclear forces and E=MC². 2,000,000x less nuclear fuel is required to make a kWh than chemical fuel (fossil, biofuel, or storage in batteries).
Fossil and biofuel kills 8,000,000 people/yr from air pollution. Add in climate change and who knows. Meanwhile nuclear power stations have caused Chernobyl and Fukushima, which were devastating locally but have had surprisingly little radiological impact [1,2].
[1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
[2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html
The thesis of the recent Michael Moore film "Planet of the Humans" [3] talks about human die-outs and serious trade-offs. I like your perspective of accepting trade-offs. This is very reasonable. Another recent film, Juice [4] is kind of the optimistic mirror of the Moore doco.
[3] Full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
[4] Promo: http://juicethemovie.com/
> made me realize the degree to which society has been mechanized, how our alienation to nature
There is a nice segment about industrialization in Planet of the Humans. I wouldn't mind if they made another full length movie out of it.
>And we have the Michael Moore produced doco on Youtube (Planet of the Humans) that criticized the mainstream green energy narrative and also got temporarily deplatformed due to outcry.
That pseudo-documentary was so dishonest, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Factual_accuracy
As Dana Nucitelli said: "The film's case is akin to arguing that because fruit contains sugar, eating strawberries is no healthier than eating a cheesecake."
Is this so great? There was some wind power controversy with the Gibbs documentary Planet of the Humans. As I've understood, there are some concerns also with solar power, especially due to the rare earths needed for the construction of such panels. I mean, sure, I love the thought of being self-sufficient and get off the grid, but why are they then also taxing solar cell panels to death?
Michael Moore's solution to a YouTube takedown (a copyright dispute) was to switch to Vimeo. [0] Seems to have worked in that instance.
Doubtless the film got far fewer views, as YouTube is not only a video-delivery engine but also a video-discovery engine.
(Shouldn't need to be said, but this is not an endorsement of Moore's film. Also I can't comment on the legitimacy of the copyright complaint, it's quite possible it's legitimate in that instance.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Release
Certain interests filed DMCA takedown notices after the movie has accumulated over 8 million views on Youtube.
Michael Moore talks about it in his podcast and you can also read about it on their website:
https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-youtube-michael-moore-jeff-gibbs-censorship-1202942938/
The Wikipedia page[1] has some information on the scientific inaccuracies in the film.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientific_accuracy
> do some fact checking on your own
At a glance, it doesn't look good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientific_accuracy
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/28/climate-dangerous-documentary-planet-of-the-humans-michael-moore-taken-down
Anyone watch the documentary planet of the humans on YouTube? After watching that, I’m no longer sure what renewable energy even means anymore, which no longer gives these accomplishments any meaning. Can someone help with my disillusionment?
None - the documentary is full of half truths, out of date information, pseudoscience and outright lies. It's been absolutely torn apart both by the research community and the environmental movement.
Some examples:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/28/climate-dangerous-documentary-planet-of-the-humans-michael-moore-taken-down
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/05/real-problem-michael-moores-new-film-planet-humans
https://medium.com/@btincq/10-reasons-planet-of-the-humans-gets-everything-wrong-on-climate-and-energy-400f04b3b2ee
I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the writer of the documentary is an environmentalist.
One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 -- to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, then have to ramp them up to feed demand, then later ramp them down -- it's a very inefficient way of running them. Now based on my understanding, it might be more efficient to just run the coal plant (or natural gas planet?) 24x7, in which case you've just added waste with the use of solar/wind. How much truth is there to this?
Good eyes, I definitely glossed over the linkage in the parent article. Nice stance they're taking with all the transparency about their decisions. Pretty level headed public response.
> Ultimately, we decided to put it back up because we believe media literacy, critique and debate is the best solution to the misinformation in the film. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/michael-moore-presents-planet-of-the-humans/
I can't tell if that's the climate experts they refer to but these film advocates breath of freshair response is equal to or more newsworthy than the original article. I'm really digging their tone and open invitation.
From the letter "calling for [the film] to be taken down" that the article is based on: https://twitter.com/joshfoxfilm/status/1253572812591247360
>Summary: The new movie Executive Produced and promoted by Michael Moore, Directed by Jeff Gibbs and distributed by Films for Action, PLANET OF THE HUMANS is unscientific, flies in the face of decades of renewable energy science, engineering and research and is counter productive in the age of urgent need for Climate Action. Because the film is based in misinformation and not in truth, we request that the film be retracted by its creators and distributors and an apology rendered for its misleading content.
I found a more substantial rebuttal to the film than "we need to deplatform this ASAP"
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/skepticism-is-healthy-but-planet-of-the-humans-is-toxic/
> Planet of the Humans is an example of the way the ends of the political spectrum can sometimes wrap around and meet, because many of these same arguments are more commonly found on websites like Breitbart or Natural News. (Praise for the film has already appeared at Breitbart.) Those who reject climate science are eager to scoff at renewable energy with supposed proof that it’s all a scam. The motives here are obviously very different, but the tactic is the same.
I really hope the Gibbs film shakes up the entrenched 'green energy' cabal, they badly need a wakeup call.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans
I haven't watched this episode of Rising yet but looks like a good follow up discussion
https://youtu.be/Bop8x24G_o0
Everyone wanting to really understand what is going on with the new green economy and these platitudes should watch Michael Moore's nee documentary he just released free on YouTube called Planet of the Humans. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE