Executive producer Michael Moore has given his imprimatur to long-time associate Jeff Gibbs provocative documentary, which stakes out a contrarian position on so-called 'renewable' energy that has already drawn brickbats from climate change activists and will undoubtedly continue to generate heated debate. After a brief prologue in which Gibbs, a much blander narrator than Moore, asks people on the street how long they think the human race can survive, he marshals evidence, including testimony from those he identifies as experts, to attack two fundamental alternatives to fossil fuels—solar power and wind-generated energy. The electricity derived from both sources, he says, is intermittent and must be backed up with that produced by conventional means. Moreover, not only are solar panels and wind turbines manufactured from materials that are extracted using fossil fuel energy in ways destructive to the environment, but their short life span means that ultimately they are ultimately no more 'green' than petroleum-based energy-producing methods. Gibbs offers a similar critique of electric automobiles.
He saves his harshest criticism, however, for biomass technology, which uses wood chips to generate power. It is, he says, not merely inefficient but environmentally unsound, leading to wholesale deforestation. If all these popularly hyped means of producing 'renewable' energy are, as Gibbs calls them, 'delusional,' why do so many famous proponents of changes in energy production—individuals like Al Gore, Robert F. Kennedy, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill McKibben, and organizations like the Sierra Club—espouse them? Because, Gibbs argues, they have been co-opted by established corporations and financial firms, which see their traditional revenues from fossil fuels declining and seek to replace them with profits derived from control of these alternative energy sources; the motives of such 'leaders,' who have allowed the environmental movement to be taken over and corrupted by capitalism, are suspect, and sometimes positively venal—a startling and, many will contend, unfair charge (Gibbs’ habit of cutting off those whom he interviews just after asking them embarrassing questions will encourage doubts about his methods). Nor does Gibbs show much interest in how green energy technology is evolving and adjusting over time.
But the major problem with Planet of the Humans is that while it is long on accusation, it offers very little in the way of practical suggestions. If solutions to environmental degradation based on technology are dismissed, what is the alternative? Gibbs offers none, implying that the only real answer is to curb the human appetite for energy by controlling the population, thereby making it less urgent to seek alternative sources. This is a point of view fraught with social ramifications he does not address. Still, his film offers a point of view about alternative energy that deserves to be both heard and challenged with a degree of vigor equal to his own. A strong optional purchase. Aud: P, C.