“Planet of the Humans” grossly misleads and misrepresents renewable energy: A review
Excitedly sinking into the couch with a bag of popcorn after a full day of Earth Day events, chills went down my spine as I clicked play on director Michael Moore’s newest film—“Planet of the Humans.” A supposedly eye-opening take on the renewable energy movement, “Planet of the Humans” turned out to be a mess of old myths and regurgitated climate denialist tales; subsequently detonating a bomb in the middle of the renewable energy movement.
Left with the absurd conspiracy theory Moore and producer Jeff Gibbs sneakily exposed to the American public on Earth Day, viewers of “Planet of the Humans” are now left with a scientifically illiterate tangle of misinformation. Although I could rave for days about this royal flop, there are five main reasons that “Planet of the Humans” should be labeled as a flat-out lie and moved from the documentary to the fiction tab on our televisions.
1) Lumping together all forms of “green energy”
Throughout “Planet of the Humans,” various forms of non-fossil fuel energy were mashed together under the umbrella of green energy. By including solar, wind, and biofuel energies in one frame, Moore and Gibbs stained the entire picture of the renewable energy movement.
Despite its many fallacies, the film does shed light on a little bit of true greenwashing, pointing to the fact that biofuels are hailed as “green” alternatives when in reality, biofuels spew out similar, if not more, carbon dioxide than coal plants. However, Moore and Gibbs increasingly frontload the film with shovels of disinformation when they insinuate that the biomass industry is the main source of renewable energy in our nation. In a study led by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, it was shown that more than 50 percent of our renewable energy sources come from geothermal, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power. By incorrectly claiming that the majority of all renewable energy comes from biofuels, Moore enhances the talking points of climate change-deniers across the world.
The film’s insincerity regarding different forms of green energy does not end here. Moore attempts to play Bill McKibbens (founder of the first grassroots climate change movement: 350.org) against himself by claiming that he supported biofuels despite their clear levels of toxic waste and carbon dioxide production. Although Mckibbens once stood up for the biofuel industry in its budding phases, 350.org has since come out with a statement rejecting the use of biomass production as a sustainable energy resource.
2) Painfully Outdated
Watching “Planet of the Humans” left me feeling like I had time-traveled back to the early 2000s because of the boatload of stale, outdated information.
In the film, Moore attempts to dig up a little solar dirt by pulling out the dingiest, oldest, least updated and smallest solar farm he could find; leading him to Lansing, Michigan. Probably delighted at his luck, Moore’s proposed exemplum of solar farms had only 60 panels (while most current solar farms have thousands), was only 8 percent efficient (most solar power is nearly 20% efficient now), and only produced 64 MWh of power (modern solar technology of a similar size would now generate 436 MWh per year).
Blundering further, the film attacked the Ivanpah concentrated solar power (CSP) plant because it required natural gas to start every morning. While true, Moor failed to mention the Ivanpah CSP was one of the first CSPs ever built and required hybrid energy before it could fully rely on renewable energy. Most CSPs today use molten salt to power themselves throughout the day.
The film also casts the outdated, nasty eye on electric vehicles. Screening the launch of the Chevy Volt (which was from 2010), “Planet of the Humans” deceitfully discredited electric vehicles by claiming that the cars used a grid solely powered by coal. Our modern electric vehicle grids have reduced their reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, and have been noted to produce fewer carbon emissions throughout their lifetimes than their “combustion engine counterparts.” The decarbonization of the electrical grid has allowed for most, if not all, electric vehicles to run on hybrid grids that supply electricity through a mix of coal and solar-powered energy sources.
3) Plain old misinformation
“Planet of the Humans” is a lot of things, but it is first and foremost a fantastical landslide of misinformation.
In the film, Moore used a pie chart claiming that wind power only accounts for a marginal percent of electricity production in Germany. Unfortunately, the chart presented was a chart about German energy sources, not electricity sources. These energy sources included things such as industrial uses for energy. Wind power, in Germany, actually accounts for 17 percent of its electricity, with renewable energy taking up over 50 percent of the entire electricity production in the country. Moore even lied by claiming that Germany gets more electricity from biomass than wind and solar. In reality, Germany produces 45.48 TWh of biomass, which is less than both the 46.54 TWh produced from solar and the 127.23 TWh produced from wind.
The film also ventures to misguide individuals on intermittency; basically touting that solar and wind power can’t possibly work because the energy can only be generated at select times (daytime and high wind time respectively). Since the film is not scientifically or academically backed, it fails to look at the fact that solar and wind energy do not need energy storage to equal the total amount of energy generated. Research by Stanford civil engineer Mark Jacobson explained that once we reach the critical mass of renewable energy on the grid, the intermittency problem will solve itself.
Perhaps my favorite tidbit of misinformation is the quote from a random booth attendant at the solar festival who, after nervously responding to Moore’s microphone dangling in front of his face, falsely claimed: “some solar panels are built to last only 10 years.” Yes, some were…in 2008 maybe. But with the renaissance of renewable energy at its peak, the current market average for the longevity of most solar panels is between 20–30 years.
4) 100 percent renewable energy takes time
Cherry-picking their way through the singular cases of outdated, underdeveloped and defunded facilities, Moore and Gibbs consistently tried to highlight the ineffectiveness of renewable energy as it still “uses nonrenewable sources.” Renewable energy activists and scientists are not superheroes, we cannot magically topple the walls of our entire energy system — yet. A full transition requires time. This time will involve hybrid instances.
Take the grid for the electrical vehicle for the Chevy Volt (from 2010). The grid was powered by fossil fuels, which generated electricity for the car. Though this seems to defeat the entire purpose, many companies are now utilizing the benefits of hybrid by combining new thermal energy with storage in order to maximize reliability and also continue to decarbonize the grid. These hybrid forms are much more sustainable than straight petrol and are major stepping stones to current goals of creating 100 percent clean energy grids.
Clean energy has also been growing. In 2018, solar-powered electricity in the U.S. accounted for nearly 17 percent of all new generating capacity. Only one year later, 2019 experienced a 23 percent spike, bolstering solar-powered electricity’s new generating capacity to 40 percent. Our grid is getting cleaner too. “Over the past four years, 77 gigawatts of renewable power has been added to the grid,” said Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. Our concentrated solar power (CSP) plants have also gotten cleaner, led by Abengoa Solar and Crescent Dunes plants, which utilize thermal storage and molten salt technologies to achieve 100 percent renewable energy.
5) Fails to provide solutions
This point is often overlooked amidst the array of other errors within the film. However, it is one that irks me and should frustrate every viewer.
Railing against solar, then wind, then biofuels, Moore and Gibbs simply want it all. They want to trash the renewable energy experts and movements, and say “fix it.” Renewable energy is the solution. A recent report by the International Energy Agency forecasts that renewable energy will expand by 50 percent between 2019 and 2024.
Moore is prepared to mislead, misinterpret, misrepresent and miscalculate, but he is too afraid to provide a real solution. Their only answer to the world’s environmental issues is claiming we should “limit overpopulation and overconsumption.” These “solutions” fail to address any issues with renewable energy.
The film simply took the end-of-the-world ideology and expanded it, ballooning it to claim the idea that “there is no way out of this one” (said by anthropologist Stephen Churchill). Even when Moore brought up his skimpy overpopulation plea, he failed to recognize any real solutions other than China’s one family size limit, which has failed tremendously.
The old ideas presented in the film were simply recycled ideas of both Gibbs and Moore, who failed to update their thinking to feature experts, climate activists, young people and people from other countries. Instead, a series of white men with limited experience and knowledge of the field scoffed at the past four years of climate efforts and discredited an entire movement.
Overall, the movie was a bust
I had a rollercoaster of emotions while watching “Planet of the Humans,” but at the end of the day, I was left with a growing sense of despair. The damage Moore did is irreversible. His film groveled its way into the mind’s of individuals who took his misleading information as facts, and failed to explore the factual errors posted after the fact. This left a void. A void consisting of a spike in climate change skepticism and increased resistance to climate legislation. The remnants of this skepticism remain in our policies today, allowing the sting of this film to burn even now — more than one year later.
I want to simply say I do not recommend “Planet of the Humans.”. However, upon reconsidering, I think it is not enough to just avoid watching the film. Instead, you should use the two hours you would have wasted watching the documentary to learn more about climate change and renewable energy.
Educate yourselves, and we just might win this.
