Planet of the Gloom-mans
Supply chains threatened, a global pandemic, unemployment through the roof — where does it end? The new depression feels pretty depressing some mornings for sure. But turning into the punches can be a really useable strategy for triaging the incessant stream of negative news. Know how sometimes listening to sad music when you’re down is just the right medicine? Cruising into month two or three of the latest global bust, I tried a similar strategy and gave my full, through somewhat reluctant, attention to the latest Michael Moore production, Planet of the Humans.
Moore’s first film, Roger & Me, had a fairly profound impact on me. As a kid growing up in middle-America suburbia, it was perhaps one of the first critiques of “the way things are” that I’d formally encountered. It inspired me to imagine that perhaps the folks at the top of the ladder hadn’t already nailed everything yet. Perhaps there was room to improve. I haven’t watched Roger & Me in nearly 20 years but I recall it touched me with its timeless Odyssey-esk narrative, centered around Moore’s return to his hometown, Flint, Michigan after a failed writing gig with corporate left-wing magazine Mother Jones. The story has a clear bad-guy (GM CEO Roger Smith) and a clear solution to the apparent evils: hire good guys as CEOs who will bring foreign labor back to the heartland. Ok, hard to argue with from a hyper-local, domestic POV. In all, I perhaps expected a similarly productive critique and strategy from the filmmaker’s latest film.
In Planet of the Humans, Moore’s protégé Jeff Gibbs and author Ozzie Zehner trade shots at the clean energy revolution, mincing half-truths with tales of victimization. But this was not the real bummer about this piece. Actually, I’m not so much bothered by factual misdirection in an ostensibly environmentalist documentary like this because hey— this is 2020 — we have the internet & I can check out the facts later. For instance, a lot of the footage and claims about the efficiency of various green technologies were over a decade old. The advances in efficiency and waste for solar and wind tech have actually been astounding in recent years. Anyways, I kind of expected Michael Moore to draw me into his personal biases. No sweat. What really pained me about this one was the absolute dearth of viable solutions to the problems presented. What’s worse is that the few half-hearted fixes included smell suspiciously anti-human.
In short, Gibbs and Moore sadly pass up an extremely high-profile opportunity to share some overdue hope with our planet of humans. Instead of actually crunching the numbers on viable alternatives to coal and natural gas, the filmmakers take a Malthusian angle and blame our mere existence: If there were only less humans around, the place would be better off. Less humans means less burning for fuel, QED. Great, get rid of me and you and we won’t have anything to worry about. It’s hard to believe anyone finds this a reasonable strategy, but the documentary is full of prim academics, activists, and the like asserting this exact crank wisdom.
In actuality, this end-is-near attitude is the product of such a half-baked analysis of the modern Energy landscape that it borders on negligent hope-icide with intent to cause harm. Hope is something we can’t get enough of in this economy. The truth is that there have not only been incredible advances in green tech, but that most of these advances were only possible because strong companies were willing to saddle the risk of the inefficient prototypes. What’s even scarier is that a very similar breed of skewed optics nearly wiped out our most powerful and most promising renewable energy: nuclear power.
Wait. Isn’t nuclear power dangerous? Sure is. So is driving a car, though — remember? In fact, nuclear power kills 470 times less than coal due to air pollution, 5 times a few workers due to accident, and more than 1000 times fewer serious illnesses. See, economics is really a comparison of costs to benefit. We’ve talked this through before in our discussion of 5G rollout, but consider that every single technology has to absorb some risk and ultimately every time you fire up your car you calculate this risk is worth the supreme luxury of travel. By the same line of reasoning, the electricity in your screen must come from somewhere. Get it from solar? You’re gonna have to mine some nasty metals out the earth. Get it from wind? You’re gonna have to forge some pretty massive structures and cut a pretty serious carbon debt. The bottom line is that there is, as of yet, no perfect method to charge your computers, phones, e-cars, trains, or any other powered technology. There is no putting electricity back in the bottle: the genie is out for good. All we have now is the path to efficiency. And it’s a plodding, summit-less climb toward the perfect power harvest.
So here’s the thing Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Moore: burning trees is clearly not the solution to our long-term power demands. Actually, burning things in general is a soon-to-be dinosaur. Nuclear power is unique in that the fire is already and always there: half of the Earth’s internal heat is supposedly due to nuclear decay. Just think about that a moment: all those hot-springs; the volcanism, and any other geothermal process is likely in large part due to nuclear decay. All physical objects, even atoms, fall apart eventually. When they do, we can harvest steam to turn turbines and keep the electricity parade in motion. What a shame it would be to let this power-source waste in the ocean instead of working for us. Wasted fuel in the ocean?
Yes, the fuel for the latest reactors is ideally mined, renewably, from the oceans. The sustainable proposal for nuclear power rests upon the newest rendition of breeder reactors which, at least in principle, could extract all of the energy released by the decay process. This is in stark contrast to the antiquated slow reactors, which can barely process 1% of the energy in traditionally mined uranium. Nuclear power is incredible and potentially waste-less. How can you beat that?
True, there have been some notable nuclear disasters. Four, to be precise, three of which were uncontained. But consider that many parts of the site of the famous Chernobyl disaster now has less of a radiation footprint that the granite of the Colorado Rockies. Oh, and if you’re worried about countries arming themselves with nuclear weapons as a result of nuclear power development, don’t. North Korea has been completely cut off from the nuclear energy discussion on account of having not agreed to forgo pursuit of the associated weapons. Guess what? They made a bomb anyways. They still don’t have nuclear power.
In total, nuclear power is far safer than we’ve been brought up to believe. The fear has driven prices up and for a while slowed production of large-scale nuclear facilities. Fortunately, non-western nations haven’t been as discouraged as we have locally. This has allowed investors to focus on production of small modular reactors, which don’t utilize a water coolant like the traditional reactors. In the old reactors, the coolant also sustained the chain reaction, which could run away if things went sideways. Gas, liquid metal and molten salt coolants all but guarantee protection from the cataclysmic meltdowns we’re shown from history. The future is glowing bright for power harvesting on Earth, but we have to steer clear of irrational fears, no matter how seductive they might prove in film or print.
Humans are a beautiful and fascinating addition to the planet we call home. It is not only our duty but our privilege to cultivate efficient, clean practices that harmonize our existence with our native ecology. Critical thinking is imperative to move toward that goal, but bare criticism without remedy is destructive and counterproductive. It is our illogical fear alone which has prevented us from embracing the clear winning in the green-power race. So, the next time you see someone picking on a technology, check to see if they actually know how to repair that particular machine that they’re dismantling. Often it seems like it’s just easier for lazy folks to smash something rather than actually improve it. We can safely leave those analyses in the dumpster where they belong.
