Planet of the Humans: Michael Moore Cohort Charts Enviro-Disaster with Mixed Results

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B

Is the renewable energy movement a hoax, perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry and their environmental useful idiots to lead us over the cliff?

That's the thesis of Planet of the Humans, which only sounds like a nutbar right-wing conspiracy. The film, released for free to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, is produced by Michael Moore, and directed by his long-time collaborator producer and composer Jeff Gibbs.

Very much in the vein of a Moore film, Planet of the Humans features the first-person filmmaker, Gibbs, taking us on his personal journey as a life-long tree-hugging environmentalist, following his progressive disillusionment with the easy solutions that have been offered.

While Gibbs isn't the natural comedian that Moore is, the film includes lots of voiceover, sardonic archival clips, and scenes of the filmmaker and crew confronting subjects with uncomfortable questions.

The audacious takedown starts on a light note, when Gibbs and crew wander backstage at a "100 percent renewable energy" music festival. He finds there's not enough green energy to power a bass guitar while the real energy is from diesel generators or the coal-powered electricity grid.

Soon, everywhere he looks, Gibb finds examples of “well-meaning people being misled” by green energy solutions — including solar, wind and biomass — that are either co-dependent on fossil fuels or whose benefits are greatly exaggerated.

Scientists like Ozzie Zehner (author of the Green Delusion and a producer on the film) confirm his suspicions. A lot of high-profile environmental heroes are held up to scrutiny and some ridiculed here, including Sierra Club founder Bill McKibben and former vice-president Al Gore, who are placed on the same side of the greenwashing equation as the left's enemies list, the Koch Brothers, Exxon, Black Rock and Goldman Sachs.

While it might have been polite to allow some of the subjects to respond directly, Gibbs uses archival news clips or to damn them with their own words.

“The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete,” he asserts. It's worth noting that climate change activist Greta Thunberg and Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, are not included in the list. Though Gibbs shows no fear of controversy, he never mentions the nuclear option; the idea that nuclear energy may yet be a solution.

Coming into the film's final 20 minutes of its 100-minute running time, Gibbs’ film amps up the inflammatory rhetoric. He asserts that Al Gore "is pretending to care about the Amazon rainforest" when a more forgiving viewer might believe the former vice-president is trying to find the point of compromise. But Gibbs insists that many in the environmental movement have sold out or been co-opted and "cancerous forms of capitalism that rule the world are now hiding under a cover of green."

We wait for the classic Michael Moore last-act change-up: A heart-breaking personal story, an expression of righteous anger, and a rousing call for collective action. But Gibbs, unlike Moore, is not the happy warrior. The problem isn't just the number of C02 molecules in the atmosphere, but the number of humans on the planet. Earth's population has increased ten-fold in the last 200 hundred years, and we're exhausting the planet's resources. "Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide."

The film concludes, not in a new green agenda, but with some general admonishments to sober up and tighten our belts. "Take control of our planet from billionaires. They are not our friends." Or "Less must be the new more.” And the almost-hopeful: "If we get ourselves under control, all things are possible.”

Credit goes to Gibbs for the courage to question the comfortable consensus. But to present a crisis with no resolution feels like a job half-done.

Planet of the Humans. Directed and written by Jeff Gibbs. Available for free on YouTube for one month.