TWC Movie Review: Planet of the Humans
[April 28, 2020]
If you want a sure-fire way to start an argument among friends or family of differing political persuasions, there are few quicker ways of tossing a grenade out of the bunker than mentioning the name Michael Moore. The reliably far-left “documentary” filmmaker has just executive produced a new film, Planet of the Humans, which is directed, narrated, and hosted by environmental activist Jeff Gibbs.
To say the film has received mixed reviews would be charitable. If you want the TL;DR summary of the film, it’s this: Business and capitalism is bad, humans are inherently destructive, the “leaders” of the environmental movement are pawns of the global financial system, and that anything we do is basically futile and also environmentally destructive. It’s a good thing the film in its entirety is free to view on YouTube. If I had spent anything out of pocket to watch it, I would have demanded a refund.
Luckily, all that’s needed to view Planet of the Humans is an internet connection, since it’s free on YouTube.
Unsurprisingly, it beats the decades-old tom-tom of the far-left’s Malthusian dystopia of overpopulation, exploitation of the underclass and native peoples, and the rapacious destruction and uninhibited greed of the capitalist system. The film makes predictable and liberal (no pun intended) use of shopworn environmentalist visual tropes of B-roll of the cutting down of rainforests, activists trespassing and being threatened with arrest, strip-mining, and so-called “experts” punching holes in popularly held beliefs about sustainable practices and policies.
Gibbs is particularly unrelenting against the “biomass” industry, which has lobbied itself into the inner circle of the green energy establishment, making itself the recipient of millions of dollars in government and private investment. The dirty little secret is that biomass is essentially trees. So green energy is from burning trees. Ironic. Gibbs’ disdain for the practice is rightly justified.
Al Gore, considered by many as one of the greatest cheerleaders of the environmental movement, is derided by Gibbs as a hypocrite for selling his progressive alternative cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, a Middle East-based broadcasting network essentially owned by the government and royal family (usually one and the same in Mideast monarchies) of Qatar, one of the region’s largest oil producers. Hypocritical politicians? Wow. Imagine that.
Not even Elon Musk is spared from Gibbs’ criticism, bringing up the environmental destruction caused by the mining of raw materials to produce batteries, solar panels, and other so-called green technologies. Well, guess what? Manufacturing anything in significant quantities requires raw materials, and at some point, that means bulldozers, metal furnaces, and giant machinery. Nobody argues that EVs are an environmental panacea.
What makes the film utterly, completely depressing, at least to me, is that Gibbs offers no alternative or hope for any lasting or meaningful change, making the case that we’re essentially already screwed. It’s clear from the start that he’s a committed anti-capitalist, an all-or-nothing fringe activist that won’t be satisfied by anything short of the self-destruction of the human species, and nature’s reclamation of the planet.
As extreme and dogmatic as some of Gibbs’ views are, he does make some fair points and levels valid criticism at practices that in reality are far from what they publicly purport to be or ostensibly aim to accomplish. Gibbs’ disillusionment and disgust with the established world order of business’ influence on politics and policy is spot-on, and his critique of industries and practices that tout themselves as “green” that in reality are even less efficient and more environmentally destructive than conventional energy production are totally valid. Industrial agriculture that requires the burning of diesel fuel to harvest grain, thousands of kilowatts of electricity to process that grain into ethanol, and then distribution to fuel stations hardly seems “green” in its totality. Equally insane is how the burning of trees under the guise of “biomass” energy is either sustainable or sensible.
Personally, I believe that we shouldn’t let the best be the enemy of the good. For that matter, I don’t ascribe to Gibbs’ and presumably by extension, Moore’s apparent absolute hopelessness and futility of even attempting to pursue technologies and scientific developments that could potentially be less destructive to the environment while preserving a reasonable standard of living. I also do not believe the capitalist system is inherently and irredeemably evil, destructive, and unsustainable.
For radical fringe activists like Gibbs and Moore, the mission will not be accomplished until the destruction of the world economic system has taken place, we’ve collectively reverted back to a semi-primitive existence, and the titans of industry and finance are either behind bars or forcefully stripped of their wealth and property.
Some might see me as a sellout or a blind apologist to the capitalist system, but I’d like to believe the capitalist model can be redeemed through a more holistic perspective of the full lifecycle of industry and management of waste products. Am I deluded by my own naïveté? Perhaps, but I’d rather be a hopeful idealist than the hopeless dystopian who finds Moore’s latest film production attractive.
(Images courtesy Planet of the Humans)
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