Off the bat, I’ll say that I am a huge Michael Moore fan. Admittedly, I hadn’t seen his previous two directorial efforts, Where To Invade Next and Fahrenheit 11/9. His career has certainly seemed to follow a bell curve distribution. *
- Roger and Me put him on the map in a big way and drew a lot of controversy by not getting a Best Documentary Oscar nomination
- Bowling for Columbine broke the record for highest grossing documentary ever, won him that Best Documentary Oscar, and made him infamous for his acceptance speech
- Fahrenheit 9/11 made 5 times as much as Bowling for Columbine and drew controversy by not getting a Best Picture (!) nomination
- Sicko made about as much as Bowling for Columbine and did get a Best Documentary Oscar nomination, although it lost
- Capitalism: A Love Story made less money while Where To Invade Next and Fahrenheit 11/9 made virtually nothing. Absolutely no talk of major awards recognition for any of the three.
Yet his online presence remains huge. He has so many followers, myself included, who still gladly look to America’s best progressive voice of the past 30 years for news and guidance. Seeing the posts about Planet of the Humans made me determined to watch it.
However, I stalled for a few weeks. I felt like this film would really trigger me. There isn’t and of course cannot be any issue more important to the world than life on it going extinct. Despite that conservatives obnoxiously won’t budge on it being a serious issue.
They stick to their “Oh look, it’s really cold in this one place” argument, in spite of the temperature of the whole world continuously getting hotter. Even if you wanted to focus on individual places, look at HOW MANY have been recording their highest temperatures in history. Conservatives will also disregard the astonishing increase in violent weather the world over that scientists predicted and rather than thinking that shows the end of the world is coming they simply say “Oh some scientist in the past claimed civilization would already be gone by this time” or even “There was a magazine cover story in the 1970s predicting a new ice age”. Yes, it’s actually possible that 97% of the world’s scientists are wrong, but luckily a bunch of plucky oil executives are fighting on our behalf. </sarcasm>
Surely no one can be dimwitted enough to believe stuff like that, but I don’t think that’s the issue. You actually hear about conservatives deliberately tampering with their own cars to make them more pollute the air they themselves breathe! That’s their way of “owning the libs”, the same way they did when they destroyed their own expensive Keurig coffee makers or Nike footwear…okay maybe some people are that low in brainpower.
To be fair…screw it, there’s no other side. In the same post where I previously talked about climate change deniers not deserving any forum, I mentioned my issues aren’t just with people who flat out hate liberals (and use the term “coastal elite” when faced with facts they don’t like, as if being educated is a bad thing). There are also the “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” people, who are happy with the planet and everyone on it suffering as long as their own pocketbooks are lined. Of course let’s not forget the anti-abortion cult, who will gladly sell every actual human being down the river for the sake of a non-sentient fetus (whose prenatal care they sure as heck won’t pay for). The combined effects of all these people led to the darkest presidential election of all time, when Al Gore, who would have been the best president for the environment since Theodore Roosevelt, got robbed by George W. Bush, who literally took the environment back to a state before Theodore Roosevelt!
All right, I’m stepping off my soapbox now but you understand why, looking for a good time, I wasn’t in a hurry to watch an environmental documentary. When it came time to do so I hoped Moore would offer something uplifting, like Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and add some of his own trademark humor.
Imagine my surprise when the opening narration wasn’t by Moore, even though the logo patterned after the Planet of the Apes one is exactly the sort of thing he’d do. I discovered that this was from a director named Jeff Gibbs, and honestly it seemed like Moore just stuck his name on the film to get it more attention. It worked!
He should probably wish it didn’t. This movie is suddenly turning the longtime hero of the far left into a pariah getting praised by the far right.
Gibbs starts out sharing his eye-popping history of activism for every environmental cause under the sun (no pun about solar energy intended). Then he shares his disillusionment, as he apparently learns that renewable energy is made possible by fossil fuels in the first place, cannot provide us sufficient power without them, and sometimes use more fossil fuels than we would need otherwise. He also attacks Gore, David Blood, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, and other giants of the climate change movement for supposedly getting rich while peddling “green energy” that causes more harm than good. The other major takeaways are that Earth’s finite resources can’t keep supporting a population growing to infinity and that humans need to change their lifestyles (whatever that means – it’s more or less the last line in the movie!)
Let’s be clear though: all this is according to Gibbs. I’ll cut to the chase – although he’s right about population growth and how “biomass” is a harmful source of renewable energy since it’s not worth the trees lost, he’s out-of-date and/or flat-out wrong in his claims about wind and solar energy not being able to entirely replace fossil fuels and not being able to meet all our power needs eventually, Thus he’s certainly wrong about their utilizing more fossil fuels than they’re worth.
Don’t take my word for it. Here is an article from a Pulitzer Prize-nominated organization:
Here is one from a 200-year-old British news organization:
Here’s one from one of America’s most respected sources of news:
https://www.newsweek.com/michael-moore-planet-humans-film-climate-change-1502554
Finally, here is one from a major progressive nonprofit:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/05/real-problem-michael-moores-new-film-planet-humans
While this film mainly treats fossil fuel consumption since the Industrial Revolution and overpopulation in general as the issues, the fact is that consumption has increased at a faster rate than population and the biggest culprits are countries with slower population growth, like the US. In other words, bourgeois people in developed countries are harming the environment with their wastefulness.
One way we can stop that: continue switching to and improving wind and solar technology! One way you’re not helping: peddling information that’s been addressed by improvement in said technology (or was never right in the first place).
I’m not sure who this movie was made for. Maybe some conservatives who’ll laugh “Duh huh huh, ‘dem libtards are fighting each other” but why would they sit through this movie? It doesn’t defend them in any way, shape or form. The movie basically treats all of humanity like the bad guys for reproducing!
Of course Earth can’t keep supporting human population growth for all of eternity, but neither are any of us individuals going to live for all of eternity. Just because we’re going to die eventually doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best to live a happy, healthy life as long as we can, and the same goes on a macro level for our species.
The current state of wind and solar energy, combined with the continued improvements research and development get us, means we should continue that investment in our future and watch as fossil fuels become a relic of history. In the meantime, don’t let movies like this discourage/mislead you.
I’m really disappointed in you Moore (you as well Gibbs, whoever you are). Still, I’m giving this movie as good a rating as I am because it’s well-made, has its heart in the right place (kind of), and does make some good points.
Bottom line: Don’t watch it, but I do encourage an interest in the issues!
Up Next: Something lighthearted (you’ve earned it!)
*I realize I’m ignoring his second documentary The Big One. That was a small enough movie early enough in his career to disregard. I’m also leaving out Canadian Bacon, since that was a feature film instead of a documentary. FWIW, though, I thought the first half of that movie was really funny and overall it was definitely better than the smug and overrated movie with a similar premise, Wag the Dog.
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