Planet of the Humans : dystopia and an antidote
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Planet of the Humans: dystopia and an antidote K. Dean Hubbard Jr 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Planet of the Humans. Directed by Jeff Gibbs, Executive Produced by Michael Moore, Rumble Media, 2019. 1 h, 40 min. The Condor & the Eagle. Directed by Clement and Sophie Guerra, Executive Produced by Giancarlo Canavesio, EchoDoc Studio, 2019. 1 h, 30 min. Climate disruption, which is already shattering lives in poor, black, and brown communities, will, if not itself disrupted, cause devastating harm to almost every living creature (Morello-Frosch et al. 2009; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014). Both the creators of Planet of the Humans and the leaders of the environmental NGOs the film attacks share this insight. It is too bad the film made itself such an easy target, with a well-documented laundry list of flaws that include the following
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Silencing the voices of people of color, women, and working class people (Van Hecken and Kolinjivadi 2020) Gratuitous and misleading attacks on dedicated environmental leaders like Bill McKibben (2020) Advocacy of population control, a tactic descended from eugenics1 Outdated attacks on solar energy (Sasso 2020)
I say “too bad” because these failings obscure a core insight of the film which too many mainstream environmental critics have ignored: there is no technological fix to the climate crisis. The film cogently makes the point, too rarely heard from “big green” groups, that extractive capitalism premised on economic growth and ever-increasing consumption will lead to planetary destruction, even if it is fueled by solar and wind. Production of solar panels and wind turbines requires cement, steel, and glass, which in turn requires burning fossil fuels. It requires the mining of rare earth minerals which are by definition finite and are extracted at
Van Hecken and Kolinjivadi, “Planet of the Dehumanized.”
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* K. Dean Hubbard, Jr [email protected]
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Strategic Consulting, Just Strategy, Stamford, CT 06902, USA
K. D. Hubbard
great cost to humans and the environment (Rees 2019). Yes, solar and wind burn fewer fossil fuels and put far less carbon into the atmosphere than coal, gas, and biofuels,2 and the film is wrong to imply otherwise. But the film accurately observes that renewables will not “solve” the climate crisis by themselves, even with sufficient investment and political will, in the context of a global economy based on the illusory promise of infinite growth.3 Just to reach the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees, humanity must cut emissions levels to less than half of what they were in 2010 by 2030, only 10 years from now, and completely decarbonize the global economy by 2050.4 That change cannot happen without dramatically reducing consumption. Moreover, as others have argued, there can be no just transition without a transition, and the clean energy transition is not happening (Treat 2019). Each year, the annual increase in global electricity demand alone far outstrips the global generation of
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