Planet of the Humans: Leads To One Conclusion

When you watch the latest documentary, Planet of the Humans, by Micheal Moore and Jeff Gibbs, you come away with a sinking, ugly feeling of hopelessness for our future. That’s what entertaining documentaries do. They take well-accepted perspectives on the far left and pit them against compelling views on the far right, with a clear plan to discredit opposing views along the way.

So like all great documentaries, the stronger the opposing views, the more entertaining the documentary experience. It’s not rocket science.

Like most great documentaries, Planet of the Humans has an attention-grabbing curveball. The twist in this documentary is that the real evil of our time is not big, bad oil companies creating environmental demise; it is renewable energy. What do you think about that?

The video, provided here is worth watching. It is a succession of arguments that ultimately takes apart wind, solar, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources and one by one renders them environmentally just as unfriendly as any other energy source.

Who would have imagined that was coming? Anyone in the fossil fuels industry over the last 50 years, that’s who.

We Seek To Be Right

We can argue one energy source over another, but anyone who knows anything about gathering evidence for a particular perspective knows that whatever you seek to prove, you will find a source of information to back it up.

Somewhere between different vantage points and reality is a range of interpretations that are as plentiful as the number of people on the planet. Warren Buffett said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

I want to say it more simply, “We seek out the that which ensures we are right.”

The creators of Planet of the Humans, do an excellent job of creating controversy, and they ultimately generate fame and revenue by disassembling common views. In this case, who’s the real bad guy, is it renewables or fossil fuels? Or is it neither…..things simply happen in a world that progresses?

The documentary points out that some fossil fuel companies and suppliers may be doing something underhanded by transitioning to renewables but does little to illustrate the reality of our time. It’s not one industry over another; it’s now the new energy mix.

Traditional fossil fuel companies and suppliers offer products and services with one goal in mind, and that is to supply and meet the demand for world energy. The critical point that the documentary doesn’t make is that, if you are using energy, someone is making that energy for you. Doesn’t that make you and I the ultimate environmental culprit?

The Unspoken Truth

Fossil fuel industries have long since realized the unspoken truth that human progress comes with an environmental impact, and THERE IS NO SAVIOUR when it comes to energy.

Planet of the Humans is a documentary that leads you down one example after another of how wind, solar, and biofuels are environmentally unfriendly and, in many cases, even further damaging than traditional fossil fuels. They make a lot of essential points. Points that we should be talking about and should understand. But what the documentary doesn’t say is that our collective energy addiction is the reason we make a mess of the world.

So if you are Greta Thunberg traveling around the world consuming energy in an alternative energy ship, you still have an environmental impact.

If you are Michael Moore sending documentary teams around the world to prove the evils of Biomass, you are contributing to the demise of our planet.

If you are Al Gore trying to make it on renewable mega-projects, books, and speaking engagements, you are part of the problem.

If you are ExxonMobil drilling new oil and gas projects in Guyana, your are part of the global energy consumption.

We all need energy and use energy, therefore, we are all contributing to environmental demise in some way, shape or form.

Addiction To Energy + Being Right = Catastrophic Failure

It is a diversion or truth and a fallacy that we buy into, that one energy source is better than the other. So while Micheal Moores documentary does a great job of breaking down the rhetoric that renewables will be our saving grace, what it doesn’t do is admit that we are all simply in a big fight over ‘who’s right.’

The best we can hope for is to mitigate environmental impact and ensure we do the least amount of harm with the highest level of advancement and human progress. Well, at least that’s the model we’ve been following by enforcing stringent environmental standards and approvals.

But does that even work?

The short answer is no. Climate change has shown us that even the most rigorous, government-regulated environmental project approval processes are failing us. How do we know this?

The world is polluted. People are suffering. Animals are suffering. Climate change is here.

Collective Responsibility

We know that every single move we make in the name of progress and energy consumption has a cost. What if we took all the wasted energy we use on proving ‘who’s right’ about energy and the environment and just stopped?

Isn’t it time we changed our way of thinking from who’s right and wrong, to get on the same page and save life itself?

That question goes out to all of our documentary makers and media as well. As producers of content we need to be keenly focused on that which sustains our people and our planet, rather than causing drama and further demise.

Once we level the playing field and accept collective responsibility for the mess we made, we may be able to use our collective intelligence to come up with a solution.

And if we can’t all come to the table and do that, then mother nature herself will have to stop us.

Oh wait a minute, she just did.

The Planet Will Be Saved By You and Me

While Covid-19 a pandemic of epic proportions and the loss is staggering, it also comes with a silver lining. It comes as a teacher of what is truly important. Covid-19 has provided the entire world with contrast. The contrast from business-as-usual to a world that stopped us in our tracks.

What happened when the world stopped? Energy consumption went down. What happened when energy consumption went down? The animals, the people and planet started to heal. Let’s keep it simple.

Perhaps it’s simply a matter of progress happening and people adjusting to keep consumption down while the new energy mix emerges to create a new energy sustainable world.

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Publisher’s Perspective By Author & Speaker
Katrina (Tina) Olivero, Publisher & CEO The OGM
tinaolivero@theogm.com
WWW.TheOGM.com