The new Michael Moore film Planet of the Humans, which takes aim at the green movement, has provoked a furious reaction from scientists and campaigners all over the world. Moore states in his film that the green movement is hypocrite, and in fact dangerously misleading the public. He exposes for example the illusion of electric cars and solar energy; both unreliable and relying heavily upon fossil fuels to function.
The green movement in it's turn calls Planet of the Humans “dangerous, misleading and destructive” and wants the movie to be removed from public viewing. Some climate scientists and environmental enthusiasts go as far as calling it “shockingly misleading and absurd".
Judge by yourself..
Planet of the Humans has been shown at Moore’s Traverse City film festival, where the producer said it was “perhaps the most urgent film we’ve shown in the 15-year history of our film festival.” Jeff Gibbs, who wrote and directed the film, has suggested that unrestrained economic and population growth should be the target of environmentalists’ efforts rather than technological fixes.
Last week marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. To celebrate the occasion Moore made the new movie available for free on Youtube. In less than a week, it has racked up over 4,3 million views on YouTube.
The only options to steer away from Fossil fuel are Nuclear energy and Fusion. https://www.iter.org/ Fusion is the same nuclear reaction that powers the Sun and the stars, and is a potential source of safe, non-carbon emitting and virtually limitless energy. Fusion is however still under development and will take 2-3 decades more before becoming commercially available. The first production type ITER Tokamak has a power ratio of 10, it will yield 500 MW of fusion power for 50 MW of input heating power.
The problem is that the Green movement has made mankind very afraid of Nuclear energy, which is no longer true. We are soon capable to convert radioactive material, with a half-life on a geological timescale, into something with a much shorter half-life. Waste would still need to be stored, but its long-term hazard would be reduced. Furthermore the energy involved in producing wind turbines and solar panels and its short lifecycle means that there is no positive energy balance, its a dead end street. Right now the best option is to use LPG (by far the cleanest fossil fuel) to power the electric grid and Nuclear Energy in stable countries. Only when the electric grid is fully LPG/Nuclear/Fusion powered the electric car makes sense. For now small high efficient & power combustion engines (hybrid for recovery & short trips) should replace all old V6 & V8 engines in cars. Flying should simply be made 10x as expensive. Halt bio fuels and chopping down forests, we need to eat and breathe oxygen. Batteries must first be made more environmentally friendly, have a longer lifecycle and higher energy density before they can produce a positive energy balance. For today the best action we can take is to reduce our own reproduction and reduce the amount of humans on earth, we are starting to look like a virus ourselves.
Interesting article and movie...human race will prevail in my opinion and start colonize other planets and we will see civilization prospering on other planets in next thousand year.
We are reaching level 1 on Kardashev scale soon and will continue further...this of course come at price and efforts, challenged to overcome to control the environment and to ensure sustainability.