Anyone hoping renewable energy will save the planet from climate-change catastrophe would appear to have grounds for optimism these days. Good news abounds.
In April, monthly electricity generation from renewable energy in the United States exceeded coal-fired generation for the first time ever. Meantime, in its recently released annual energy outlook, Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that renewables will make up 90 per cent of the electricity mix in Europe by 2040 – with wind and solar accounting for 80 per cent of it.
Since 2010, the cost of wind power around the globe has plummeted 49 per cent, while solar and battery prices have dropped 85 per cent.
Some major economies are moving at rapid speed in making the transition. Germany, for instance, plans to phase out coal and nuclear over the next decade. Bloomberg predicts renewables will be responsible for providing more than 82 per cent of the country’s power.
Even conservative U.S. states such as Indiana are getting into the act. There, the head of the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said renewables have become so cheap that the utility can close its coal plants early and return US$4-billion to its customers over the next 30 years. Meantime, Los Angeles just announced the largest and cheapest solar-storage project in the world, one expected to shatter records in both capacity and price.
But is the renewable-energy sector all that it’s hyped up to be? According to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, far from it.
Yes, the scourge of globalists and capitalists everywhere, the man behind important films such as Fahrenheit 9/11 (a critical examination of the war on terror) and Bowling for Columbine (gun culture in the United States) is backing a documentary about the renewable-energy industry. And early reports are it is not very flattering.
Planet of the Humans is directed by Mr. Moore’s long-time collaborator, Jeff Gibbs. It’s being billed as an examination of the “false promises” of the environmental movement. (It hasn’t been released other than at film festivals so far.) Among the many things that surprised Mr. Gibbs, according to interviews he’s given, is the extent to which alternative energy is entangled with coal and natural gas. How? Because everything from wind turbines to the charging stations that power Teslas are hitched to the U.S. energy grid. The film also discloses how the Koch brothers, Charles and David, much despised by environmentalists everywhere for their central role in crippling government action on climate change, are linked to the solar-panel industry through their glass-production business.
Apple's 50-megawatt solar farm, east of its data center in Mesa, Az.Apple via Reuters
“It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us … but [also] that there is a whole dark side of the corporate money. … It dawned on us that these technologies were just another profit centre,” Mr. Gibbs told the Associated Press.
There is an absence of comment from many of the world’s leading environmentalists, some of whom refused to appear on camera to answer questions. Mr. Gibbs wanted to ask Bill McKibben, head of the influential 350.org, about biomass, the process that produces heat and is considered a form of renewable energy. But as the film documents, it’s also a process that requires the cutting down of vast numbers of trees to produce wood chips that are converted into energy. Not a good look when you’re suddenly not available to answer tough questions on a file you’re said to care passionately about.
Not surprisingly, the upshot of Planet of the Humans is being lapped up by climate deniers and websites that welcome people of similar views. It will doubtlessly be used as a cudgel with which to bludgeon “holier-than-thou” climate activists for years to come. But I doubt it will do much to stop the progress that is being made on the renewable-energy front.
That ship has sailed. Nothing gets people’s attention more than money, and when it becomes cheaper to power things using renewable-energy sources rather than conventional ones, then everything changes. That change is under way as we speak.
That doesn’t mean that a film that peeks behind the curtain of this nascent industry isn’t valuable. There are almost certainly things going on that would shock us, that are hypocritical if not downright unseemly. And just because people think they’re working on the side of the angels doesn’t mean they don’t have to be accountable.
Like most of the films Michael Moore is associated with, Planet of the Humans will command our attention and perhaps get us to see things in ways we didn’t before. Even if that pains us a little.
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Gary Mason