Michael Moore Acknowledges: There Are No Alternatives to Energy Reality

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Essential Energy AIER | James Alexander Michie

By attacking green energy, Michael Moore turned into the new Orange Man. In Planet of the Humans, a documentary he sponsored and is actively marketing, well-meaning environmental activists are told that the road to environmental hell is paved with green investment funds and lined with wind turbines, solar panels, and biomass-burning power plants.

Far from being led to the Sustainable Land, they have been deceived by the “profits” of the Green religion who sold their souls to petro-monarchies, the logging industry, biofuel manufacturers and cynical crony capitalists. Even the people who manufacture, build, sell, install and operate solar panels and wind turbines show little faith in the impractical, unaffordable, unreliable and non-scalable technologies they promote for a living. In the end, our only road to salvation is a return to the low human numbers and widespread poverty that existed before humanity got addicted to fossil fuels.

While Planet of the Humans doesn’t say anything that long-time critics of alternative energy haven’t discussed in more detail, it lifts the green curtain and provides much new and very effective footage of the waste, lies and destruction that prop up the sets on the stage. Among the waste are the bankrupt and collapsed infrastructure of many wind and solar power projects.

Among the lies are sustainability leaders evading tough questions, the fossil-fuel-free investment funds that include internal combustion engine and drilling equipment manufacturers, a concentrated solar thermal plant that burns much natural gas, diesel generators that power alternative energy festivals, allegedly 100% renewable factories connected to the natural gas and electricity grids, and the fossil fuel-powered beachfront properties, luxury yachts and private jets of “green” billionaires.

Among the destruction one sees centuries-old Joshua trees turned into wood chips to make room for solar panels and orangutan habitat cleared in the name of “sustainable” biodiesel production.

The creators of Planet of the Humans only discuss (and then very briefly) their Malthusian prescription to cure our civilizational ills towards the end of their documentary, and then mostly by letting a few population control advocates speak on their behalf. They are, however, much more explicit in their Earth Day Live Stream and in a shorter interview with The Hill. To sum up their worldview and agenda in no particular order: 1) the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet is absurd; 2) the profit motive is shortsighted and the rich are screwing the planet; 3) markets, technological innovation and nuclear power are the “hopium” of climate change deniers; 4) humanity must revert back to pre-industrial population numbers and standards of living; 5) REDUCE, reuse… and only recycle if you haven’t been able to consume less to begin with; 6) Planned Parenthood is doing Gaia’s work; 7) in the end, the problem is US.

As could be expected, the first part of the documentary has awakened the inner Greta Thunberg of a wide range of science and environmental journalists, green entrepreneurs, alternative energy insiders, climate activists, academics and in another celebrity green documentarian whose income, public image and purpose in life revolve around leaving fossil fuels in the ground and promoting the kind of technologies decried in Planet of the Humans. Defenders of the documentary, who sometimes fault Moore and his collaborators for not going far enough, have accused these “awoken” attackers of denying the laws of physics, invoking pal-reviewed studies rather than real-world evidence of success, and of using the same long-debunked arguments and ad hominem deplatforming tactics usually deployed against privileged, climate-denying, profit-hungry, white, male, boomer fossil fuel industry shills. Needless to say, many defenders of green energy are more supportive of the documentary’s Malthusian prescription, and vice versa.

The main virtues of the creators of Planet of the Humans are arguably the long-standing criticisms of green energy they brought to the attention of an unsuspecting audience and the bluntness with which they express their Malthusian beliefs. Unbeknown to them, however, their stance on the latter issue is more reactionary than left-wing. In what follows I provide additional background to the documentary and discuss why the filmmakers’ preferred path of ecological soundness through population control and increased poverty worldwide is even less sustainable than the system they decry.

How Dare You!

Planet of the Humans was written, directed, produced and voiced-over by Moore’s long-time collaborator Jeff Gibbs. The story he crafts is a classic “Bootlegger and Baptist” tale. This expression refers to the political dynamic observed in dry counties in the United States where the local government prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages. Supporters of the policy include both those who want to achieve the stated outcome of a policy (the Baptists) and those who benefit by undermining its purpose because of the creation of a vibrant black market (the Bootleggers).

In Gibbs’ story, well-meaning environmental activists, misinformed by a corrupt leadership that includes Al Gore, prominent campaigner Bill McKibben and the Sierra Club, end up doing the bidding of billionaire capitalists (including their ultimate bête noire, the Koch Brothers) who only care about the green that destructive government subsidies and renewable energy mandates puts in their bank accounts.

If Gibbs is the face, voice and heart of the documentary, its technical brain is energy writer Ozzie Zehner, whom Gibbs met when Zehner was promoting his 2012 book Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism. Although credited as a producer, Zehner is presented in the documentary as an unassuming and objective technical analyst who pierces the green technology smokescreen by pointing out that wind turbines, solar panels, and biomass-burning power plants could never exist without, and are always parasitical upon, our fossil fuel-powered energy, manufacturing and transportation infrastructure.

People and the environment, he tells viewers, would be better off if we simply burned coal and natural gas to produce electricity rather than destroy the environment to make room for solar panels and wind turbines. In the final act of the documentary, however, Gibbs and Zehner are revealed to be radical Malthusians whose main concern is global overpopulation and unequal overconsumption.

Apart from long-standing technical debates, two specific critiques of Planet of the Humans stand out. The first is the contention that Bill McKibben and the Sierra Club reversed their stance on biomass burning a few years ago. Yet, as Gibbs accurately replied, McKibben has engaged in much mixed messaging on the topic and his “actions are an endorsement of the status quo, not a stance against biomass.” The other is that some of Gibbs and Zehner’s data and footage on wind and solar power is dated. As a typical thirty-something put it, their material sometimes goes back over a decade, an “absolute eternity, in solar development years” because things are now very “different in 2020.”

Needless to say though, back then none of their supporters claimed that these technologies were not ready to be deployed on a large scale nor worthy of massive government support. Critics of Gibbs and Zehner also fail to provide satisfactory answers to long-standing critiques, such as have solar panels finally become economically competitive without subsidies or government mandates? Have the perennial problems of intermittency and low power density been solved in practice? Will ramping up solar and wind electricity production now finally generate economies of scale and reduce consumer prices rather than destabilize the grid and create ever greater energy poverty? While no one denies incremental improvements in the last decade, in practice the solar power picture remains as bleak as ever.

Perhaps Gibbs and Zehner’s take on wind and solar energy is not as up-to-date as some would like because they devoted much time in the last few years to documenting a major push towards burning biomass for electricity and heat production (a subject that has also been covered critically in another recent green documentary).

The beauty of burning wood is that it allows policy-makers to meet ambitious renewable energy mandates without destabilizing the electric grid the way greater reliance on wind and solar power would. Needless to say though, burning biomass on a large scale (which must imply going beyond garbage and forestry residues) is disastrous for both taxpayers’ wallets and their health, to say nothing of the environment.

Most importantly, as Gibbs and Zehner point out, our forests would be gone in short order if we got serious about this. Indeed, it was a fuelwood shortage that triggered the large scale development of coal burning technologies a few centuries ago. As the economist William Stanley Jevons observed in 1865, which would obviously qualify as a real absolute eternity in energy development, “Forests of an extent two and a half times exceeding the whole area of the United Kingdom would be required to furnish even a theoretical equivalent to [the country’s] annual coal produce.”

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Source: Pierre Desrochers | American Institute for Economic Research

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