Michael Moore’s latest film targeted ‘renewables’ & accused ‘green’ groups of being in Big Energy’s pockets. It hit a nerve (Part 2)
Moore never for a moment deviates from his devotion to climate-change orthodoxy. However, he doesn’t shy away from accusing marquee names like 350.org’s Bill McKibben and the Sierra Club of being apologists for an industry that is in its own way every bit as destructive as oil, coal, and natural gas, in many cases requiring the continued usage of those much-maligned “dirty” fuels in order to maintain the narrative that “clean” energy can sustain civilization.
The concept of “biomass” especially is revealed as a cruel joke, the euphemistic term covering up the fact that clear-cutting forests is framed as a “sustainable” energy source because the trees being fed into the woodchippers “will grow back.”
The film claims to expose the destructive reality of “renewable” energy sources, pointing out the fact that solar panels require coal and unsustainable rare earth minerals to create – and that these projects’ financial backers are often the same people who made their fortunes on oil and gas.
Moore notes that the dreaded Koch Brothers not only build solar plants, but manufacture a special type of glass used for the panels. They are present in every step of the solar energy generation process billed as humanity’s savior by a movement that smears its enemies as agents of those same Kochs. At the same time, fellow Big Business behemoths like Michael Bloomberg (who lumps natural gas in with solar and wind as a renewable energy source) and timber magnate Jeremy Grantham are shown signing on as sponsors for seemingly environmentally-friendly projects that on closer examination merely involve raping the planet from a slightly different angle.
Moore’s environmentalist critics make some valid points, mostly because much of ‘Planet of the Humans’ was filmed years ago. It is not up to date on the bleeding edge of renewable technology, and some of the environmental crusaders whose hypocrisy shines so bright on film have since tweaked their views. Bill McKibben wrote a detailed rebuttal complaining he no longer supports biofuels, even though he is on film refusing to condemn them.
But the core problems with wind and solar have not been solved, and filmmaker Fox’s insistence that Moore’s claims are invalidated by the mainstreaming of renewable policy commitments – he actually cites the Green New Deal as “the most important policy advance on green energy of all time” – is laughable. New York’s “renewable” commitments, like the colleges and other institutions presented in the film, deem biofuels sustainable, and the Green New Deal itself has not only not been passed – it offers only the vaguest roadmap toward sustainability for some future US willing to pass it.
To be continued part 3…
- Source : Helen Buyniski
