Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths

[swag]

https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/04/24/planet-of-the-humans-a-reheated-mess-of-lazy-old-myths/

Ketan Joshi
@KetanJ0
Climate, clean tech and science communicator - currently writing a book on energy justice, policy and tech in Aus, w/
@newsouthbook


Brief excerpt:

. . . It’s tough to look past how popular this has been. The film’s been boosted because many interviews feature the popular and well-known producer Michael Moore, including on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Ludicrously, it received four stars (four. fucking. stars.) in the Guardian, a media outlet normally careful to not boost climate-denier grade misinformation.

All this prominence despite the fact that the film failed to find a distributor, and was dumped onto Youtube instead. “We’ve talked to sales agents. We believe that there will be a tremendous amount of interest in this film… This is going to get distributed. It will be seen”, Moore insisted last year.

It is clear that Gibbs’ starting point was a loathing of biomass, which then turned into a loathing of every single decarbonisation technology (except nuclear power, which isn’t mentioned in the film).

But he ends up at population control – a cruel, evil and racist ideology that you can see coming right from the start of the film. I wish I had the emotional energy to go into it, but I have spent it all. Earther’s Brian Kahn writes:

“There’s a reason that Breitbart and other conservative voices aligned with climate denial and fossil fuel companies have taken a shine to the film. It’s because it ignores the solution of holding power to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle”

The film features a parade of – solely – white Americans, mostly male, insisting the planet has to reduce its population. There is no information provided on which people in the world need to stop fucking, but we can take a guess, based on the demographics of the people doing the asking.

This documentary – particularly the parts on energy, renewables and industry- is extremely bad. It is Jeff Gibb’s 2010 Huffington Post blog drawn out in one hour and forty minutes, which feels like like a decade. I knew it would be lazy, but the magnitude of laziness here is incredible. It it mostly old. It is obviously re-hashing some specific gripes, like its attacks on the nicest guy in the whole of climate activism, Bill McKibben. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and I’m like 2,000 words in. I don’t have the energy to glue together every single fragile thing that this bulldozer has destroyed.

. . . more

[Auggie]

1. Ketan Joshi is a freelance communications consultant for the renewable energy industry

according to https://www.theguardian.com/profile/ketan-joshi

Believable? Not here ...

[Newest Reality]

3. +1000

[Miguelito Loveless]

4. Okay, I have been a green energy advocate

and EV advocate for 16 and 10 years respectively. I am a volunteer, paid by no one, have a solar powered house and EVs. How do you rate my credibility?

I can point you to demonstrably wrong claims from the movie. For example, solar PVs do NOT cost "millions of dollar per square inch", they cost about 10¢ per square inch.

How do we know this? Simple math:

A 72 cell PV is roughly 6' by 4', meaning it has 3,456 square inches of surface area. You can find these panels for $300-350 each. $350/3,456=0.1012¢

Yes, the superefficient 50%+ panels designed for use in space are pretty expensive, but even then I have not been able to find a price in "millions of dollars per square inch" range. Also, the same guy claims his panels are only 8% efficient, which means the panels were installed decades ago, since modern panels are far smaller than those shown, and range in efficiency from 17%-23%.

A man with a sixty panel array claims he can barely power a toaster, which requires 1200 watts of power, I have a 66 panel array and produce and produce up to 18,000 watts of power.

If they are getting those very basic points wrong, demonstrably wrong, then I would say you might wish to pay more attention to people who work with the equipment, know what it does, and how much it costs. Gibbs obviously does not know any of this, or doesn't care to know.

[Auggie]

5. I'd be surprised if there were any of us on DU who were not green energy advocates

The take-away of the film for me is that there is no miracle science or technology that is going to save us at the rate with which we are progressing, and how capitalism pretty much neutralizes our best efforts.

We're not moving the global warming needle much with profiteers in charge.

BTW, your credibility was never ever in doubt because your post followed mine.

-------------------

On a side note (and long after this film was released), it's awesome to witness the environmental changes that have occurred since COVID-19. Air quality, water quality, ecosystems. There was no way in hell most anyone could have imagined shutting everything down as we have the last two months, right? Really amazing nature could rebound so quickly.

In my dreams we employ new behaviors and actions from what we've witnessed.

[Miguelito Loveless]

6. Aside from errors, my major gripe with the movie

is it offers no solutions. It pretty much says this is all hopeless. Renewables are made using fossil fuels, therefore are useless to solve the problem. It ignores the fact that we are transitioning away from fossil fuels, by building power sources that don't require them. Despite one of the claims in the movie that PV is good for about 10 years, then requires replacement, the life expectancy is MUCH longer. Examination of PVs made in the early 80s show them producing 95% of their rated power 30+ years later. No fossil fuel plant has that kind of longevity. My array is warranted for 80% after 25 years, though will likely be higher.

Yes, it currently takes FF to make everything that generates power, but, the amount is falling with each new iteration of the tech and the grid. Again, Gibbs criticizes the Chevy Volt for using electricity which is generated with 95% coal. What he doesn't explain is this was TEN years ago, and even the Michigan power grid has gotten cleaner. Coal use as of 2017 (latest available figures) has fallen to 37%. FF are still 63%, but wind and solar have increased from a fraction of a percent in 2010, to over 8% in 2017. I would guess the number is over 10% now.

But even if you were using 100% coal, EVs come out ahead due to the high efficiency of electric motors compared to ICE. The best ICE engine hits 25% efficiency, versus 90%+ for an electric motor. Each year, the grid is getting greener, and each EV on the road displaces 600-800 gallons of gasoline.

What was disheartening was reading the comments for the movie. People were giving up, pointing out that it was pretty much over for humanity based on what they had just watched. Again, no alternative solution was offered, other than have less people. This is not bad advice, but also can smack of eugenics. Who decides who has children and who doesn't?

Another obvious issue to me was his interviews and information were 3-10 years out of date. In one seen he is talking to battery maker Aqious Energy, who went bankrupt in 2017. The Chevy Volt discussion was from 10 years ago (We owned a Volt, and it cut our gasoline usage from 600-800 gallons a year to less than 50. It's electricity comes from our Solar array, or is offset by our array's production). 3 years may not seem like much, but in the tech driven renewable sector it is 2-3 iterations ago. This make a huge differance in price and performance. 10 year is another era.

While our situation as a civilization is dire due to climate change, it is not hopeless. This movie just undid years of work and gave ammunition to climate deniers, who in recent years have been pushing the narrative that even if we are causing global warming, there is nothing we can do to change the future, so keep on burning and adapt.

I completely agree that the recent pandemic has shown people how much we are polluting our environment, and it was certainly my hope that it would have made things easier for us to preach the gospel of energy transition. Now, however, one flawed documentary has set us back 5-10 years we don't have.

[MicaelS]

2. Reminds me of Richard Pryor in one of his pieces....

"Some rich white man told them they need to stop fucking because he has no place to ride his horsey"