We speak with Jeff Gibbs, director of the new film “Planet of the Humans” (produced by Michael Moore) about why green energy won’t save the world, the need to focus on consumption, and how the environmental movement has gotten off track.
Since this interview was recorded, the film was viewed more than 8 million times and a copyright claim was filed against the film for using 4 seconds of copyrighted footage. The film has been taken off YouTube, but is now on Vimeo.
Excerpt from this Episode
[ 21:15 ] Michael [Moore] and I went to a talk at, I think, the University of Michigan in Flint and the talk was [about] if you get involved with the system to change it, does the system change or do you change?
The speaker’s feeling was it’s probably going to be you who changes. So [because Bright Greens are] getting into bed with capitalism and renewable energy, that’s why I think they’re so angry about breaking down the fantasy that you can’t have renewable energy without giant industrial processes that are destructive to the planet, and you can’t have it without capitalism… without these investment schemes… without the subsidies it would be very difficult to have.
In This Episode
- 2:05 – Jeff Gibbs Introduction
- 2:39 – Movie Philosophy
- 6:24 – Overall Perception of Planet of the Humans
- 12:43 – Addiction to Modern High-Energy Way of Life
- 18:36 – Climate Change as a Tool for Profit and Manipulation
- 21:15 – Does the System Change or Do You Change?
- 26:07 – What Are the Questions We Should Be Asking Ourselves?
- 29:15 – Fear and Hate of Nature
- 34:15 – The Trauma of Disconnection
- 39:35 – Psychology, Sociology and Stories
- 43:27 – The Rise in All Things Human
- 47:23 – Climate Change as an Existential Threat
- 52:36 – What Can People Do in a Practical Way?
- 58:47 – The World Wants to Grow Back
About The Green Flame
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
This episode includes two tracks, “Shi-baytz” and “Radio-daylong” from the Filipino group Katribu Collective, off their new album “The Gathering.”
Katribu Collective is the unified effort a few individuals from the Philippines playing indigenous instruments from different tribes all around the world. Their vision is to promote culture and unity. Katribu’s passion and commitment to exploring the musically rich culture of the tribes of Mindanao leads its music to fuse these elements.
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I’ve had many thoughts since viewing “Planet of the Humans,” the most recent of which are these:
• Perpetual growth on a finite planet is an equation any child would find both absurd and suicidal, if children were not conditioned from birth to believe that cancer of the world is a good thing.
• No one questions why hogs on a hog farm are deliberately overfed, because we all know that the purpose of hog farming is to kill the hogs for profit. Likewise, we never question why capitalism deliberately overfeeds civilization. Just one flaw in the logic: We’re the hogs.
I’ve been saying this for years. All technology is environmentally and ecologically harmful, so there are no magical solutions to environmental or ecological harms. Either humans live simply and naturally in much smaller numbers, or they continue to do great harm to the Earth and everything that lives here. Changing sources of energy to less harmful ones will at best buy a little time, but it won’t solve the problems.
This movie really needed to be made and I’m really glad that I saw it before it got censored. Humans need to grow up and stop acting like badly spoiled children who think they can have their cake and eat it too.
Also notice the attacks on this film from people who we thought were friends of the Earth, like Naomi Klein. This movie really separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak by drawing out who is really for the Earth and who is really for prioritizing unnatural human lifestyles over the needs of our planet and the life on it.