Fourth contribution to a discussion about the new documentary “Planet of the Humans”. Read the other contributions
by Rosalie Anders
Planet of the Humans, released by Michael Moore on the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, has caused a sensation. It offers some inaccurate and dated information about solar and wind power and focuses considerable attention on the issue of burning biomass (mostly trees) for electricity. Many climate activists have opposed large-scale biomass for years, including Bill McKibben, who did embrace it at first, and I’m glad the film highlights the problems with it. But overall, I think the tone and messages of the movie are really unfortunate. McKibben has devoted his life to climate action. He agrees he was wrong at first on biomass, but the film makes him look like a sellout, and that is outrageous. Anyone who knows him knows that he is sincere and thoughtful and dedicated.
One example of many: The film makes it sounds as if an organization taking money from the Rockefeller Foundation commits an evil act (they donated to McKibben’s organization 350.org, from which he has not drawn any money). The foundation was an early divester from fossil fuels, and of course some of us in the Boston area know some of the heirs for being dedicated to promoting using less. How about Abby Rockefeller’s many-years’ dedication to composting toilets, for example? Cambridge and other municipalities took money from the Kendall Foundation to help launch energy use reduction initiatives, and the Kendall fortune originally came from whaling.
The film attacks climate groups for failing to deal with our society’s excessive consumption. I would have loved even one minute of advice in the film on how to convince people to live more simply or, at least, some recognition of the ways in which climate activists have wrestled with this issue for decades. Many municipalities and some federal agencies, even in the Bush administration, have worked hard to try to convince people that energy efficiency is more important than putting a solar collector on their roof and have launched major projects to facilitate energy efficiency in buildings, with limited success. State and local staffers have been, and continue to be, a big part of climate action, and using less, driving less, etc., has been a long-time mantra on the state and local level, where a lot of the action is. For many years, the recycling people have been preaching that the key is to consume less. The film’s claim that the climate movement has ignored the need to consume less energy is untrue. It would have been helpful if there had been a little attention in the film to the successful efforts to, for example, improve light bulb and appliance efficiency. Climate activists worked hard to make those national-scale changes, realizing that their efforts to get people to voluntarily do things like turn off their lights were getting nowhere. Efforts around individual consumption have focused largely on particular products, e.g., bottled water, fast fashion, plastic bags, because they seem doable.
Since the 1980s, there has been a split in climate activism, in which the older, suburban-white preserve-the-wilderness-so-we-can-keep-visiting-the Galapagos groups (to be nasty about some of them) have clashed with grassroots activists. Around here, this played out for years in fights over the Big Dig and the Urban Ring. This split is healing.
Naomi Klein has been ripping into extractive capitalism and greenwashing and slamming the way some of those older mainstream environmental groups cozied up to the powers that be in DC and failed to tackle the big economic issues. (Remember when we showed This Changes Everything?) It would have been appropriate for Moore’s film to mention her, but there’s nothing in the movie about where climate activism is now.
For that, we need to look at Drawdown, at LEAP, at Sunrise, at Extinction Rebellion, at 350. Drawdown tackles women’s education in economically struggling countries as one of the keys to dealing with climate disruption, for example, and that is vital. The film accuses climate groups of ignoring population growth. It would have been helpful if it had cited, even ever so briefly, work that is happening, even if it says the efforts are not enough.
It’s true that our culture keeps saying we can have it all, and that is just wrong. I believe that the Green New Deal is our greatest hope right now, and it doesn’t tackle the need to simplify our lives. But it is also true that it doesn’t ignore social justice. How to tackle the deep economic and cultural issues that lie behind climate change has been a preoccupation for many climate activists for years, and it is a tough issue—a lot tougher than slamming biofuels. Or pointing out that solar and wind are not going to solve everything.
I guess my big quarrel with the film, besides its inaccuracies and gotcha quality, is about what it leaves out. It’s less than half the story, even about renewables. (How about more up-to-date information? How about geothermal? Air exchange?) Now, more than ever before, people are wrestling with how to transform our world. This film, which millions of people are viewing, seems to say we might as well just give up, because nothing is going to save us, and even people we thought cared really only care about money and power. And that the many grassroots people (and even a lot of bureaucrats!) who understand the need to tackle consumption and are working for positive change are not even worth a mention.
Rosalie Anders is co-chair of Mass. Peace Action’s Peace and Climate Working Group.