Planet of the Apes?

“Planet of the Humans,” directed by Jeff Gibbs, 2020 (Youtube)

This documentary has come under fire for taking aim at capital and the Big Green organizations that collaborate with them.  In a way, it is a 'more inconvenient truth.'  Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! quoted the attacks but did not contact Gibbs or Michael Moore, who produced it, to respond.  The Guardian highlights how right-wingers are attempting to embrace Moore.  Naomi Klein demanded it be taken down, as she thought it echoed right-wing attacks on environmentalism.  Klein should know better, as she herself in her book This Changes Everything – Capitalism Versus the Climate, attacked many Big Green groups for green-washing.  She even exposed billionaire Richard Branson’s fake ‘green’ credentials, just as this documentary does.  What she omitted was the profit forces also driving so-called ‘renewable' energy - people like Al Gore and the Koch Brothers.  Yes, the Koch’s are the biggest recipients of biomass subsidies and make parts for solar farms.

Gibbs plays the role of a more gentle Moore, curiously asking questions and going to locations that reveal the dark side of purely technocratic solutions to climate change –solar, biomass, natural gas and wind.  He visits the denuding of a mountaintop in Vermont, to be converted into a wind farm.  He views a number of bio-mass plants, supposedly ‘green,’ which burn huge quantities of trees, sugarcane and also tires.  He happens upon a famous solar farm in the California desert that is already shut down, while others are falling apart, still using natural gas to get them started each morning.  In California’s Mohave desert they are clear-cutting Joshua trees to put in new arrays.

The documentary’s special focus is on bio-mass and bio-fuels, which are leading to deforestation in the Amazon, in Indonesia, in the south-west U.S., in northern forests, as wood chips are turned to fuel.  Much is exported to Europe.  This is supposedly renewable energy, getting a pass in the Kyoto Protocol.  As you can imagine it will take 30-50 years for trees to grow back – if they are ever replanted.  In the case of sugar-cane plantations in Brazil, never.  Of most import is Big Green environmental pooh-bahs like Bill McKibben, 350.org, the Sierra Club, Al Gore’s investment arm “Green Country Funds” and others who supported this bio-mass strategy.  Getting rid of coal and substituting trees or sugar cane is a fool’s errand – carbon intensive and ultimately leading to doom.  I wonder if these people have heard of deforestation? The building of massive natural gas plants as ‘environmentally friendly’ is supported by some Big Green groups and also by the Democratic Party.  Instead of a ‘bridge fuel’ they are a terminal fuel.  Grinding up cows and other animals is no better for burnable ‘fat.’

Another reveal is that solar panels are not built with silica ‘sand’ but with a combination of coal and quartz, melted by high heat through conventional means.  According to the documentary solar panels can degrade in 10 years, just as early wind turbines – aluminum, fiberglass and concrete - are now being taken down, as their life-span is about 20 years.  Gibbs does not go into battery technology, which can provide night power instead of conventional power plants cycling up and down.  One interviewee says they last around 2 years.  Not sure where these figures come from.

Carbon credits, bio-mass and the market.  Bill McKibben.

Gibbs covers some festivals like a recent Earth Day, which was sponsored by Toyota, Citibank and Caterpillar.  The inefficient solar panels ‘running’ that Earth Day and a small environmental rock festival were only for show.  The documentary also shows a local solar installation in Lansing, Michigan that powers very few homes, seeming to be more of an advertising display.  Tesla uses massive amounts of (fracked) natural gas in their supposedly all-sustainable factory.  The documentary shows that forces like Blackrock, Goldman Sachs and Michael Bloomberg have hijacked the main environmental movement, partially using 'progressive' fronts like R.F. Kennedy Jr., Van Jones and the aforementioned Gore, McKibben and others.

In the end Gibbs says all this illustrates “the takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism.”  Gibbs says that a reduction in useless or excessive consumption, unproductive labor and stopping endless growth are impossible under capital and this alternative is never discussed.  Instead capital is seeking a new extractive and expropriating model to extend its life. Gibbs does not mention how much of this new technology ANY anti-capitalist response will need nor does he go into detail on what ‘reducing consumption’ means, but certainly a large part of the commodity economy is unnecessary or useless.   If done under workers' control it will lead to a more simple, sustainable, healthy and just life.  If not, it will become austerity, war and barbarism administered by the capitalist class and their political, corporate and non-profit allies..

In a commentary on environmental issues on the May Day Books Blog in March 2011, I wrote:

“The key thing that socialism should provide is healthy food, clean water, good clothing that does not fall apart and actually works, shelter that shelters, education for all, health-care for all, a consistent source of sustainable energy, necessary transportation, leisure time, non-alienated work and culture. If these economic and social basics could be provided for the whole world population – EVEN IF they were lower than the present American ‘middle-class’ – this would be an enormous gain for the world proletariat. As a casual conversational target, my guess might be the life-style of the American working class in the late 40s-early 50s could be a real target. This, of course, is before the full development of the internal combustion car economy.”

And as we know now, before many other things.  A date that coincides with what environmentalists and biologists call 'the Great Acceleration."

No longer free on You-Tube, as it was pulled by YouTube 5/26/20:  Planet of the Humans

Prior blog reviews on this subject: "This Changes Everything – Capitalism Versus the Climate"(Klein); or the word 'environmetalism.' 

Red Frog

May 4, 2020