If you’re looking for a little distraction from the news of the pandemic — something a little gossipy, but with a point at the end about how change happens in the world — this essay may soak up a few minutes.
I’ll tell the story chronologically, starting a couple of weeks ago on the eve of the 50th Earth Day. I’d already recorded my part for the Earth Day Live webcast, interviewing the great indigenous activists Joye Braum and Tara Houska about their pipeline battles. And then the news arrived that Oxford University — the most prestigious educational institution on planet earth — had decided to divest from fossil fuels. It was one of the great victories in that grinding eight-year campaign, which has become by some measures the biggest anti-corporate fight in history, and I wrote a quick email to Naomi Klein, who helped me cook it up, so that we could gloat together just a bit. I was, it must be said, feeling pleased with myself.
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — 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.
There is a lot of truth in this film - as much as people want to denounce it. Green energy isn't as green as it's proponents make it seem. Before you reject the film, I encourage you to catch the film in it's entirety and give it a lot of thought.
The wildly, uniquely popular, documentary “Planet of the Humans” has been viewed over 2 million times in less that four days – likely 100s of thousands more by the time you read this.
Highly-compensated, thoroughly-compromised Climate warriors (and “renewable” energy entrepreneurs) who have nothing but pie-in-the-sky “renewable” energy myths to show for 13 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, respond to the documentary – certainly not to the damning facts presented by someone finally pointing out their ineptness and ties to bad actors and weak Democrats – but with Trumpian level denials and personal attacks. No wonder Fossil Fuel use is at all-time highs and rising and we are at 420 parts per million (ppm) Carbon in the atmosphere which is also rising and has never dropped* after all their useless efforts.”
This sounds like a very interesting film even if it is a tough critique of environmental movement. I'll have to see if I can download it the next time I I'm at the library.
“I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
Depending on who you ask, biomass is either worse than fossil fuels and helps to destroy our forests, or it is a climate friendly substitute for fossil energy. Both views, of course, cannot be true. We need to get off fossil fuels and move to protect and grow our forests. Is it possible to have a forest biomass policy approach that is good for forests and helps combat climate change? We think so.