In the past I've had very little time for Michael Moore and his deliberately confrontational, far-left-wing perspective, expressed in his movies (Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 being probably the best known). I still disagree profoundly with his politics: but I must, however grudgingly, doff my hat to his willingness to slaughter sacred cows in his latest documentary, Planet of the Humans.
The New York Post, hardly a left-wing rag, says of it:
Memo from Moore to those who think they are driving green: You may indulge your illusions if you prefer. But all you’ve really done is transfer your emissions from the tailpipe of your car to the smokestack of the local power plant.
Maybe you think solar power is the answer?
Moore treats you to a visit to a showy solar array that covers an entire football field. The power-company executive present admits that it can only power ten homes, and then only when the sun shines.
Powering the nearby city of Lansing, Mich., he says with a grin, would require 15 square miles of panels. You want to talk about “footprints?”
We follow local environmentalists as they hike up a mountain where a site has been clear-cut for 21 mega wind turbines. They deplore the destruction of the natural beauty of the landscape and the scattering of the wildlife it once supported.
The engineer in charge ticks off the hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, aluminum, carbon and other products that go into the construction of each and every mega wind turbine. Industry requires huge inputs of energy to produce such things, a total energy deficit that the spinning blades of the wind turbine will not begin to pay back over its projected lifetime.
Moore ends the segment with a shot of broken and rusted wind turbines littering the landscape.
We visit plants that generate electricity by burning “biomass” rather than fossil fuel. But as we see one diesel-powered machine after another felling, hauling and chipping logs for burning, the absurdity of the entire enterprise comes into focus. In the final scene we see a clear-cut forest and learn that we would need to burn every tree in America to power the country for just one year.
By the midpoint of the movie, Moore has already revealed that each and every form of green energy is a fraud, surviving on popular naivete, government subsidies and the products of industrial civilization.
. . .
He ... [takes] us to a green concert, where the organizer has just announced to cheers from the crowd that it is powered by “solar energy.” Going backstage, however, we learn that the tiny solar array is only for show. The actual power for the lights, amplifiers and electric guitars comes from a portable diesel generator.
Then he moves on to the big boys. He exposes the massive funding that the Sierra Club, 350 and other environmental groups receive from the energy industry, and exposes the connections between leading environmentalists like Al Gore and Wall Street financiers.
For now, you can still watch Moore’s epic take-down of “green energy” on YouTube, but you’d better move fast. There’s a campaign underway to remove it from that service as well.
If you do tune in, bear in mind that Moore is no friend of free markets or individual liberty. His “solution” to reducing humanity’s use of energy is a throwback to twentieth-century population control ... But you can fast forward through that part. Otherwise, it’s a joy to watch Moore skewer one “renewable energy” fantasy after another.
There's more at the link.
On April 21st, Moore put the movie on YouTube, free to watch for 30 days. We're about halfway through that free watching period right now, so you've got about two weeks to see it at no expense, if you wish. I highly recommend that you do. Like the reviewer above, I don't hold with Moore's proposed solution: but the documentary nevertheless provides an honest look at the frauds and confabulations of the eco-warrior clique, and shows how many of their most favored projects and plans are essentially nothing but frauds. Meanwhile, of course, they're making a very great deal of money out of them. "Follow the money" remains a very reliable method to find out what's really motivating almost any agenda or policy.
Here's a teaser trailer for the movie.
And here's the movie itself. Enjoy it while you still can!
Kudos to Mr. Moore for his objectivity and honesty in this documentary. Frankly, I wouldn't have believed him capable of it, based on his past movies. I still don't agree with his progressive views, but I'll gladly give credit where credit is due.
Peter
