Hardy talked about. Michael moore and jeff gibbs released a film in april called planet of the humans it was a frontal assault on the failures of the Environmental Movement accusing it of peddling false leads and selling out to corporate donors it derided the idea that we can hope the current eco side with Renewable Energy the film lambaste environmentalist for celebrating the replacing of coal plants with socalled natural gas plants and then calling these natural gas plants clean or green or describing the burning of trees as a Renewable Energy source whatever you think of the film it is factually incontrovertibly that the leading environmental groups by misreading the nature of power have failed. The activism protests lobbying petitions appeals to the United Nations and misguided trust in liberal politicians such as barack obama and now gore along with the work of countless n. G. O. S have been accompanied by a 60 percent rise in global c o 2 or Carbon Dioxide emissions since 1900 during the last decade the increase in c o 2 was 102200 times faster than what the earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age the United Nations estimates this will be augmented by a 40 percent rise in c o 2 emissions in the next 10 years we are now at 417. 00 parts per 1000000 of c o 2 in the air it is believed to be the highest concentration since humans evolved we will embrace a new paradigm 2 for resistance or die joining me to discuss the film and the reaction to it by environmentalists is jeff gibbs. So let lay out jeff what you i think did quite successfully what you sought to do in the film and then well talk a little bit about how its been attacked and and finally censored forcing you to take it down off of you tube so to just for people who havent seen it and also tell people how they can see it. Talk about what you did well 1st i want to make a nature film i was thinking oh if we only make a film and finally make a film showing how bad things are finally at long last look at it and friends were telling me no no you sort of know that its bad im like no no im just convinced i could do it so as i making my gauger film on the kind of name of the Natural World i began to discover the green energy isnt really what the same chart for scotto solar festival and they say theyre probably not solar and turns out there are instant generators and generators were enough theyre plugged into the grid so its my journey of everyone let me just interrupt you now because its not you do that and then 10 years later you go to another hero and found them all and theres still generators while on the stage theyre announcing that its all powered with solar panels yet dennis hays a founder of earth a and the you know people say oh youve got older units although your documentary stick place over time this is my journey of discovery that every time i peek behind the curtain it wasnt what it seemed and it gets worse and worse i discover that theres a secret bio mass of bio fuels which are really the lions share green Energy Around the world and. So it and then. You know what why is this happy why are we in denial and i discover the relationship with capitalism industrialism and how. Basically shockingly to me because i was a hippie living in the blitz but i could just you know have these innocent little solar panels but i despair of all that or maybe and. How industrial this is im basically without a giant industrial civilization youre not going to have a Nuclear Power plant youre not going to have a solar panel youre not going to have even some of the technology to produce gas and oil is just so complex now so its really my discovery and that were looking. The perhaps is a form of denial to actually instead of understanding that what this civilization industrial civilization the human species were hitting limits and were going to crash were in sets kind of hoping that this fantasy will save us and as i discover that im not saying that all environmental leaders are on the take but one of the things that their critics ignore is that the shocking list of things that you die when you die pass from fossil fuels and you invest in supposedly sustainable you want to be investing in big ag you want to investigate and mining and banks and all this that part of them is hardly talked about you know you want to be Bill Mckibben. You know whos you know been a bit a hero to me you know at times on stage with somebody that worked for Goldman Sachs agreeing to help raise 40. 00 to 50. 00 trillion dollars and so you have to ask yourself even if everything we say about renewables is true youre still driving it stop powering this industrial civilization this driving us off the cliff so thats my journey of my discovery and really my plea to recognize that the only way. You know weve got to create community weve got to regain control from capitalism industrialism and you know this this civilization with almost 8000000000 people especially at the level of consumption what that would make romans blush. Is just its unsustainable and youve written and talked about abbott everything i read about civilizations is they have an expiration date. And were in design rise 12 yet so right one of the things that i thought the film did very well was implode the myth that for instance solar panels. Are are in any way going to address the crisis and i didnt know until i saw the film that its not just glass in the process of making solar panels itself is environmentally very destructive just mention that none will go into how the films been attacked sure the traditional that the most council of house calls it will take you so look at it which i said i see it i was on the phone and as a producer we spent years trying to figure out where they got banned and finally we discovered through industry sources that takes rare might ports and then we discovered that you actually have to put not only you have to use a lot of energy but you have to put coliform of carbon right in the furnace just to process the courts and the same is true of steel and cement all the things a power does your civilisation and all of the socalled alternatives they want to make solar panels without so it can well that you have to use some other toxic material one of them is so toxic that they recommend not putting it on the rooftops so i began to realize theres no easy way out at this level and maybe you realize that a while ago and then the other thing i say what the time is it runs out like Extinction Rebellion extinction isnt just about climate were in this huge biodiversity collapse as well that even if we stop climate thats still going to proceed so really its too much to jam into and our have come but. If i tried my best. So the film was savagely attacked i dont think that word is. Hyperbolic by Bill Mckibben ahead of 350 dot org by the filmmaker josh fox. By naomi klein fox started an action letter that described the film as dangerous misleading and destructive we wrote an article for the nation with the headline meet the new flak for oil and gas Michael Moore who produced the film with you and call the film unscientific outdated full of false odes and benefiting fossil fuel industry promoters and climate deniers and then on may 28th i think it right and racked up over 8000000 views and over in just over a month they got the pressure so you tube removed the film they justified taking down the film youve since put up a different version. They justified taking it down because of. What they said was a 4 2nd piece of footage that supposedly violated copyright laws. And thats what i found so disturbing. Is that the censorship of the film being cheered on by the left. And of course major digital platforms have already marginalized or banished many of us including myself on the left. And so talk a little bit about the response and then lets go into the censorship because Michael Moore is a very well known filmmaker were not talking about you know these outliers like alex jones. Yeah its really and what you went through was really. Dismayed at what others went through. You know your in a fantastic author ive learned so much for you and just you know. Its just frightening to think about whats happens to people that theyre step outside of the the boundaries and to be accused of profiles of those you know. Anyone Pay Attention might realize fahrenheit 911 is about this god awful horrible war for oil and Corporate Power weve we literally feared for our lives all making that its hard to look back on that time now but we kept our drapes closed. Because of the saudis and the bin ladens and the oil companies. You know the the bushes i mean you name it and that you know i cant tell you the anguish making a film like that put us through it and so the ironic thing to me is that. You know what were showing you and everybodys got the right to their own opinion and their own stories i believe that this false promise that renewables are going to displace. Fossil fuels as lead us to a situation where which where you describe with the possible you use just keeps going up and up and up and that happens for a couple reasons its both because of as you see in a company intermittency which we tend to laugh op is such a profound issue in michigan solar only can produce about 30 percent of the Available Energy you know so if theyre rated at 190. 00 watts they can only produce like 30 percent of that because of the intermittency so what we want to have is a whole array of natural gas class plants being built out. And so you dont see a decrease and worse because nobody calls out the growth in the capitalistic expansion the imperialism that you talk about we do the machine just keeps growing so we got nuclear we didnt get off color while we just kept using it and if it everything they say was true about solar and wind we would just this machine would just keep using more and consuming more and what they dont want to talk about is that all around the world we observe got a new form of imperialism. You know almost slavery in the form of mining and we really underestimate the amount of money thats happening on this planet and especially in the Southern Hemisphere where we cant see it you know lithium iron copper cobalt as you see quickly in the film these are really contribute 10 percent of Global Energy emissions the energy needed for mining. So its just you know like the censorship the attacks were both dismaying and the same time kind of like it made me realize what a threat the movie as to that josh fox started the attacks on us with the like he said that our distributor pulled the file. We were the only distributors through you tube so even the film for action that he said pulled the film called him and said thats not true. If you still kept it going you got picked up in usa today i dont know if you found this and i want to talk a little bit about what it is i think you attacked and i and i think that these people are. And i know all of them i think theyre in the business of selling hope theyre not in the business of speaking truth. And its a false hope as your film i think correctly documents. But i wondered if you could comment on that because when youre in the business of selling hope thats a form of advertising and in many cases a form of moral posturing and self promotion yes selling hope you know this is i think hope weirdly enough is what happens in the Business World you know if you get a job for a corporation or a company or a logging company or. You know which of a company you know they dont want to hear the problems they want to hear the solutions and its it might sound weird to people thats amazingly corporate to be focused on the hope. Its also allows us to just keep doing what were doing. And i think thats a problem that were just going to keep doing so we got off the cliff but i heard that all making the film was all you got to give people hope and i think i learned this from you is that you know when. To stuff a city in the family you can make a plan based on reality if you dont make a plan based on reality youre wont. So i actually think this summer also opened you can watch no i would agree i always feel that you know i dont believe in manipulating information to sell hope im but of course especially given the climate crisis. It is it is dark foreboding and frightening were going take a break when we come back well continue our conversation with director jeff gibbs about his film planet of the humans d. I think the biggest danger thats come out. As you destroy us is its highlighted the shootin equality that exists and i think one of the things that education. Changes access to the internet for educational purposes needs to be i think to this depth and surely. Its. My no no crowd. No shots. Actually theres a bell to be. Struck no posts. Which your thirst for action. Welcome back to on contact we continue our conversation with director geoff gibbs about the film he made with Michael Moore planet of the humans so before the break we were talking about that notion of selling hope and i think youre right that it you know its its that mania for hope that in fact some American Culture and very easily slides into self delusion and illusion which i think given the catastrophic failure of the Environmental Movement i read the statistics at the opening of the show. Is it is counterproductive to everything that we want but talk a little bit about. Because the as you pointed out the attacks were vicious and personal but by blame this information out its not just that you shattered this narrative positive hopeful happy narrative that we can you know win win mill or win farm our way out of this. But i think also the film. Said something about the prominent most prominent environmentalists that at its core probably triggered most of the anger what was that i think its just seeing them in their relationships with the billionaires in the in our Corporate Leaders and i think dont think it is talked about enough you know we dont see just dont see or you know forming a partnership with david blood a former c. E. O. Were sort of Perlman Sachs we formed a partnership before Inconvenient Truth came out. Like that part of the films ever even mentioned its like how come thats the conflict of interest want to want to be set up to profit from a film that youre making and not even reveal that and i think people have tried to talk about gores relationship in this property from the us and it just gets blown up Bill Mckibben whos on many wonderful things but i think he took a wrong turn once youre on stage with a man from go up the same man from Goldman Sachs and youre promising to lead the charge for one thing. For both gore and the cabinet once you make that commitment that prevents you from being a free thinker was a sierra club forms a partnership with Michael Bloomberg it does Michael Bloomberg it changes the sierra club it change does Bill Mckibben get change or does a billionaire its changed i think what however well intended we want to get it changed. You know theres so many ridiculous attacks or not like we never i never accused the mckibbin of taking money i dont know what his finances are but i do know that the people your relationship with the facts you deeply ive seen people universities and the youve probably seen this in your lifetime as i come to lay people off the reason why they lay off their lower people cause all that their friends from among other things ive seen are to college or they laid off you know tons and tons of students and faculty and staff rather than lay off one Vice President you know who could begin to say the same amount of money. So yeah im just stunned that they dont see you nobodys talking about. Bill mckibben in the sierra club promoting these reinvestment funds and then they contain the very banks including black rock. The sierra club and the 350. 00 have campaigns against them they include the very Biomass Plants you know even as we wrapped up the film 2102020 these funds still contain these giant biomass. Operations weyerhaeuser the blocky company and this one in florida im blanking on the name right now but its cited by the sierra club in their op ed saying that they hate biomass so you know i take them at their words enough so they also they also dont like showing Bill Mckibben endorsing a small Biomass Plant in a Military College my point is if youre one of the environmental leaders of the planet and you happen to endorse a small clean coal plant nobody would think that was a one off. Something mckibben writes are only heard about that are out there. Mckibben writes in Rolling Stone on that issue and says that yes you are right he did endorse it but then he changed his position and you did note that how would you respond because the double messaging of the Environmental Movement is noted in the file that they say one thing and they do another if you really. They offer very Biomass Plant your door to be closed if youre a guest pole youre going to copper topass to be coal close youre not just going to write an op ed so that theres kind of agreement there were 100. 00 something models about how that was going to be affected 100. 00 of them contained biomass and biofuels you know just this last few months the democratic bills before congress for clean energy contained bio mass abuse so biomass this at all this you know theres no visible opposition to this so to me it was just a cia thing to write these op eds in the sierra club of the same thing so thats it was noted that there is a mixed. Message about biomass and i thought that was sufficient because if you the mckibb