On Earth Day 2020, Oscar-winning director Michael Moore premiered a movie that, he promised, would ask all the hard questions regarding the fate of our planet, in the hope of paving the way to a solution. That movie is called Planet of the Humans.
Michael Moore, for all his occasionally- / intentionally-controversial moments, is usually seen as the kind of guy you can always trust to tell you the truth, no matter how painful. Yes, lack of stricter gun control is responsible for the insane number of mass shootings in the U.S. Yes, darling, those jeans do make you look fat, because you are fat.
Moore did not write or direct Planet of the Humans, but he did executive produce it and promoted it heavily ahead of the release. The film is, in fact, called Michael Moore Presents: The Planet of the Humans, and lists longtime collaborator Jeff Gibbs as writer, director and narrator.
Within the week that has passed since the premiere, the film has attained viral status, ranking 3.8 million views on YouTube alone, causing a stink with reputable environmentalists and prompting the distributor to pull it from release, and issue a proper apology for agreeing to sell a movie they did not bother to see – or check for accuracy. For the record though, the PEN America organization, believes calls for boycott for the movie equal censorship: you can't ban something only because you don't agree with it.
However, you can still see the documentary, if you want: you will find it available in full at the bottom of the page.
To sum up the controversy around the film, it would be enough to say that it’s Gibbs’ way of preaching against all renewables and the green industry, including anything from EVs to wind turbines and solar panels, with little evidence or actual numbers to back up his claims. The premise is that not one of these solutions is completely green and, as such, must be discarded at once because they’re just as worst as fossil fuels.
EVs, Gibbs argues, charge from power grids that get electricity from coal. The Tesla Nevada Gigafactory is connected to the local utility power lines. EVs use rare earth metals, and whatever good they do in terms of reduced emissions while in use is offset by emissions along the manufacturing process.
Gibbs’ premise is that, since EVs are not 100 percent green, they’re just as bad as their ICE counterparts. Hence, whatever green credentials they boast are a shameless lie.
He employs the same logic for everything else (biomass, wind power, solar power, battery storage), and calls out known environmentalists Bill McKibben, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Al Gore, Elon Musk and Tesla, Vinod Khosla, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Bloomberg for selling out our planet for a few billions more.
In fact, the largest piece of criticism against the documentary is this presentation of all environmentally-focused efforts as a cover-up by the fossil fuel industry to green-wash itself. Capitalism at its best, in the new and final, faux-environmentally-friendly age of our planet.
There can be little doubt that many companies use “green-washing” as a means to appeal to a new niche of more eco-conscious customers and to dodge existing regulations that are meant to make this planet livable for a few years more. However, to equal electrification and decarbonization efforts to zero is unfair. It’s like saying you shouldn’t try out an experimental treatment on a terminal patient because, well, he’s dying anyway, if you’ll pardon the morbid (but apt) comparison.
As for the supposed solution to the crisis, Gibbs hints massive depopulation could be it. “We humans must accept that infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” he says. “We must accept that our human presence is already far beyond sustainability and all that that implies.” Which is probably the worst kind of message the world needs right now, in the context of the ongoing health crisis.
Here’s Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans. Do check it out and make up your own mind on its message – and its accuracy.
1) I just received notice that the distributor of Michael Moore's #PlanetoftheHumans is taking the film down due to misinformation in the film.
Only in the Trumpian era of gaslighting could a progressive filmmaker produce a polemic premised on the absurd notion that ultra right-wing plutocrats are secretly funding the effort to end our dependence on fossil fuels. And get progressives to actually fall for it.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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