Michael Moore Presents: Planet of the Humans (2020)

Documentary examines climate change, fossil fuels, pollution, and the green energy movement!

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.

“Planet of the Humans”‘ approach is fundamentally flawed – Gibbs focuses almost exclusively on the imperfections of technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, biomass, and electric cars without considering their ability to reduce carbon and other pollutants. The film suggests that because no source of energy is perfect, all are bad, thus implying that the very existence of human civilization is the problem while offering little in the way of alternative solutions.

Planet of the Humans certainly makes many important and illuminating points and sheds light on the industries which instead of suggesting how to reduce our consumption of resources such as water, fossil fuels, and hard-rock minerals, seek technological fixes.

Gibbs, who like Moore certainly doesn’t spare you from the truth behind collapsing myths about renewables, indeed he doesn’t save one: the photovoltaic is not efficient, the panels have short lifetimes, the batteries are made of precious extractive material silicon, cobalt, silver, graphite… Wind power works only intermittently with low efficiency. Both technologies need many fossil fuels in their production. Bio masses are the worst we could imagine, including deforestation. Mind you, when it comes to biofuels the scenes are raw, among trees with giant sawn trunks and chopped cows. I did not close my eyes in time and I suffered a lot.

Directed by Jeff Gibbs