At the heart of the film [Planet of the Humans] is the notion that the real ‘inconvenient truth’ that Al Gore once referred to in his iconic environmentalist film is actually more like Moore’s ‘awful truth’: Maybe we didn’t focus on reducing consumption because we didn’t want to. Maybe it was easier to believe that renewables would give us all the energy we wanted without asking us to change.
— Sophia A. McClennen, Salon
Yesterday, we discussed Jeff Gibbs’ partnership with filmmaker Michael Moore in producing the documentary “Planet of the Humans” which was brought up in the discussion at the Bristol Town Meeting about siting a solar array to provide electricity to the town’s wastewater treatment plant. The film’s premise is that the use of renewable energy may turn out to be more harmful than the fossil fuels it is meant to displace. Its larger message is that humans are being lulled into believing that they can continue consuming at what actually is an unsustainable level. What is really needed is to reduce our reliance on finite resources.
Bristol voters get that. They approved the land lease and operating contract to allow the solar project to go forward at an estimated cost savings of $3,000 per year to the town, but they also approved a warrant article that would allow the town to purchase a a horizontal bailer and skid steer to collect and store cardboard for recycling. The approval also covers the cost of constructing a building to hold the cardboard until it can be sold.
The town had discontinued its single-stream recycling program when it proved to be more expensive than simply sending everything but glass and metal to the incinerator, but residents never gave up on the desire to recycle, recognizing its environmental benefits. Bailing cardboard is the first step in restoring recycling in a way that maximizes the income. Eventually, recycling will be expanded to other items — not because of significant revenue, but because it offsets what has to go to the incinerator.
Officials say the cost of hauling trash will go up as the state’s three landfills close down, and recycling will help to reduce the amount of trash that will have to be towed away.
Climate activism originally focused on this with its “reduce, reuse, recycle” motto, but Gibbs’ film argued that “the idea of reducing and reusing has been sidelined as capitalism wormed its way into the green movement and convinced everyone that renewables were the answer,” writes Sophia A. McClennen in her article for Salon.
The film notes that the Koch Brothers profit from green energy. The mirrors for the Ivanpah Solar grid came from a Koch Brothers-owned company, and they build the plants that produce polysilicon for solar cells. The Koch Brothers receive green energy biomass subsidies, receiving $73.1 million in state and local subsidies in 2013. They got $1 billion in subsidies for their biofuels division in 2011 alone.
‘Outdated And False’
As strong as the case made by the film seems, some environmentalists have disputed some of the facts presented as being either outdated or patently false.
In particular, the information about the efficiency and lifespan of solar panels is no longer valid. Gibbs and Moore made the film over a period of 10 years, and in that time, as engineers geared up for green energy, they found ways to produce them more inexpensively and to boost both their efficiency and longevity. An article by Dan Gearino in Inside Green Energy says that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found a median degradation rate of 0.5 percent per year for solar panels. Although the warranty on solar panels is 20 years, a median panel still produces electricity at 90 percent of its original capability after 20 years.
Gearino’s article also states that, contrary to what the film reports, Germany generates more than 40 percent of its electricity with renewable sources. Onshore wind energy accounts for 17 percent of generation, with solar providing 8 percent, biomass 7 percent, offshore wind 4 percent, and hydroelectric 4 percent.
A 2017 paper published in the journal Nature Energy showed smaller carbon footprints for wind, solar, and nuclear than for coal and natural gas power plants, even if they were using carbon capture equipment to store their emissions. The median estimate of life-cycle emissions for a coal-fired power plant was about 100 times per unit of electricity than that of a utility-scale wind farm, according to the report.
Another article, in The Conversation, says that wind turbines and solar panels have significantly reduced Australia’s dependence on coal. In fact, in South Australia, the expansion of solar and wind has led to the closure of all coal-fired power stations. It exports surplus power to Victoria.
The costs of battery storage are projected to fall faster than previously expected, and South Australia’s grid-scale Tesla battery is being expanded. New South Wales expects to get 89 percent of its power from solar and wind, backed by pumped hydro storage. Countries such as New Zealand and Iceland get almost all of their power from renewables, backed up by storage (predominantly hydro), The Conversation reports. Australia could get all its energy from renewables with small-scale storage.
The Conversation does not completely pan the film agreeing with its calculation that human demands on natural systems are about 1,000 times what they were 200 years ago, and there are ten times as many people, each using 100 times the resources, on average.
It’s clear renewable energy has an important role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change. But it won’t solve the fundamental problem: that humans must live within Earth’s natural limits. Those cheering the film’s criticism of renewables would do well to consider its overriding message.
— The Conversation
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