Forests hold the climate together. They are also at extreme risk due to global warming, drought, and other ecological stresses created by industrial civilization. New research shows that forests may be “hanging by a thread.” This excerpt from a recent peer-reviewed article in Science magazine details some of the threats to forests. Despite the academic language, it paints a frightening picture of the near future.
Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate.
Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.
Temperature and Atmospheric CO2
No tree species can survive acute desiccation. Despite this unambiguous constraint, predicting the death of trees during drought is complicated by the process of evolution, whereby the fitness of tree species may benefit equally from traits that either increase growth or enhance drought resilience. Complexity arises because improving either of these two beneficial states often requires the same key traits to move in opposite directions, which leads to important trade-offs in adaptation to water availability. This conflict promotes strategic diversity in different species’ adaptations to water availability, even within ecosystems.
Understanding how the diversity of tree species will be affected by future droughts requires a detailed knowledge of how the functions of different species interact with their environment. Temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration are fundamental elements that affect the water relations of all tree species, and the rapid rise in both of these potent environmental drivers has the potential to markedly change the way trees behave during drought. The future of many forest systems will be dictated by how these atmospheric changes interact with tree function.
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Rising temperature and drought
Ultimately, the impact of elevated CO2 on forest trees is likely to come down to the intensity of the CO2-associated temperature rise and its effect on trees’ water use. This is because the distributions of tree species, in terms of water availability, broadly reflect their intrinsic tolerance of water stress. In other words, species from rainforests to arid woodlands face similar exposure to stress or damage during periods of drought.
Hence, any increase in the rate of soil drying caused by elevated temperatures is likely to lead to increasing damage to standing forests during drought. Improved tree WUE could ameliorate the temperature effect, but this argument remains highly debatable because most reports of improvements in tree WUE with rising atmospheric CO2 refer to intrinsic WUE, a value that converts to real plant water use only with a knowledge of leaf temperature and atmospheric humidity.
Thus, rising atmospheric temperature and the associated increase in evaporative demand is likely to reverse the improvements in tree WUE that are proposed to result from higher CO2. Recent evidence suggests that this is the case, with observations of reduced global tree growth and vegetation health associated with enhanced evaporative gradients and warming temperatures.
Predicting Tree Mortality
Tree mortality is most commonly observed when drought and high temperature are combined, likely owing to the compounding effects of the increased evaporative gradient and the increased porosity of leaves at high temperature. The inevitable rise in the intensity and/or frequency of such events as global temperatures climb has already been associated with an increase in tree mortality globally , especially in larger trees which raises a grave concern about the capacity of existing forests to persist into the future. Establishing the magnitude of this threat is an important challenge that requires a fundamental understanding of how water deficit leads to tree mortality.
Much research has focused on the possible mechanisms behind tree death during drought. Possible mechanisms primarily include vascular damage, carbon starvation, and enhanced herbivory . These studies reveal the complex nature of tree death, where the moment of death is difficult to pinpoint or even define. Although it remains difficult to connect cause and effect at the point where drought injury becomes lethal, strong and consistent correlational data from trees suffering mortality or growth inhibition across the globe point unequivocally to the plant water transport system as a fundamental axis dictating the long-term survival of trees .
Forests on a Thread
The massive woody structure of trees provides mechanical support for their photosynthetic crowns; however, the matrix of microscopic threads of water that is housed within the porous woody cells of the xylem is even more fundamental to tree survival. These liquid threads provide a highly efficient mechanism to transport large quantities of water over long distances under tension, from the roots to the leaves. Relying on this passive pathway to replace the water transpired by leaves has the major drawback that the internal water column in trees becomes increasingly unstable during times of water stress, as the tension required to draw water from the soil increases.
The water transport system in plants lies at center of interactions between rainfall, soil water, carbon uptake, and canopy dehydration, which makes xylem hydraulics an obvious focus for understanding and predicting the thresholds between tree death or survival during exposure to drought and heat stress. Xylem vulnerability to cavitation varies markedly among species, not only indicating sensitivity to water deficit but also enabling the quantification of functional impairment if trees are not immediately killed by drought.
The characteristics of tree species that are classically associated with adaptation to water availability—such as rooting depth, water storage, stomatal behavior, root and canopy area, and leaf phenology—can be predictably integrated to determine how plant water content will respond to environmental conditions. The combination of environmental conditions with biological attributes results in a highly tractable framework for understanding the dynamics of mortality or survival during slow dehydration.
Modeling forest mortality in the future
Modeling provides the most credible view of how forests may cope with different intensities of future global warming, with most models suggesting large-scale mortality, range contraction, and productivity loss through this century under the current warming trajectories. Greater precision as to the nature and pace of forest change is urgently needed, requiring dedicated work on key knowledge gaps that limit model precision accuracy. These gaps are apparent in even the basic physiological processes of trees, such as stomatal behavior, tree water acquisition, and interactions between water and carbon stores in trees.
Critical components such as the dynamic connection between trees and the soil are highly simplified inmodels owing to a lack of knowledge about water transfer and storage in the roots under conditions of water stress. The triggering of mortality is also highly oversimplified because the negative feedbacks likely to operate during acute tree stress are difficult to capture in a model. Avoiding this complexity, a commonly used proxy for lethal water stress is the point of 50% xylem cavitation in stems.
Although this threshold is not strictly correct (because trees can survive with a 50% impairment of water transport capacity), it does provide a readily measurable indication of rapid vascular decline incipient to complete failure of the vascular connection between roots and leaves. More-precise understanding of the post-drought transition to recovery or tree death is needed to accurately represent the legacy effects of drought in large-scale models.
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Additional Disturbances
Predicting or modeling the impacts of drought on forest communities is also complicated by interactions between changes in climate and interactions with other disturbance agents, such as fire, insects and pathogens, or logging . The catastrophic wildfires that have affected Australia in 2019 and 2020, after years of extreme drought, is just one such example of drought-fire interactions. Such interactions are also affecting forests in North America, Amazonia , and elsewhere .
Increases in vapor-pressure deficit and temperature during drought dry out fuel, thereby increasing fire activity and the area that is burned. Drought-fire interactions may also cause tipping points and shifts among vegetation types in areas such as the southwestern Amazon. There, tree mortality is elevated during intense fires experienced in drought years , resulting in altered microclimatic conditions and grass invasion into the understories, which further increases flammability and fire risk.
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk shares the history and songs of the River. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River, Will seeks to strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first, second and third part of Will’s journey.
Just a few miles from where the Ohio River sang me her song of peace, she showed me war. She did so through a succession of experiences that forced me to confront the pervasive violence that maintains our way of life.
I originally planned to begin my journey with the Ohio River in March. But, I left my parents’ home in Castle Rock, CO just as the first states started issuing shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of COVID-19. To wait out the virus, Melissa Troutman, her parents, and grandparents were gracious enough to let me stay in a little house on their property, not far from Coudersport and near the Ohio River’s headwaters. During this time, I was lucky enough to spend time with Melissa’s 89-year old, Italian-American grandfather who was born and raised in a house built a few yards from the Allegheny River in Coudersport. The family calls him Pop-Pop.
Put your shoes on when it rains.
Pop-Pop was a boy when, in just a few hours spanning July 17-18, 1942, nearly 30 inches of rain fell on Coudersport and the surrounding region. In fact, I found accounts of the “flood of ‘42” reporting that 30.7 inches of rain fell on nearby Smethport, PA in a 4 and a half-hour period.
Pop-Pop described how fast the river rose. He watched from an upstairs window as the neighbors’ chicken coop was torn clean-off its foundations only to collide with his family’s house. The impact shook Pop-Pop’s house “like an earthquake.” The cellar in Pop-Pop’s house had a drain that ran down to the river. After the chicken coop slammed into his house, he heard something in the cellar. He didn’t have time to put on shoes before he ran down to the cellar and found “the whole Allegheny River shooting up through the drain.”
The water was already up to Pop-Pop’s knees. But, he wanted to gather the jars of canned vegetables that were swirling around and crashing into each other. Some of the jars had shattered. And, as Pop-Pop grabbed as many jars as he could, he sliced his foot on underwater glass. Luckily, Pop-Pop’s sister was training as a nurse for deployment during World War II and she was able to stop the bleeding and mend the wound. With classic Italian mischievousness, Pop-Pop asked me what I thought the moral of the story was. When I hesitated, he said, “Don’t walk around in a cellar barefoot in a flood!” When I told him I would try not to, he responded, “Well, when it starts raining really hard, make sure you put your shoes on.”
Trout Splash Lullaby
The flood of ’42 was part of a series of floods in the 1930s and 40s that motivated towns throughout the Ohio River basin to implement so-called “flood control.” After Pop-Pop told me the story about cutting his foot during the flood, I asked him for his favorite memories of the Allegheny River. Pop-pop leaned back in his chair and the humorous light in his eyes was replaced by a wistful one.
Pop-Pop explained that his boyhood bed was placed beneath a window facing the Allegheny River. Not far from this window, hungry trout chased minnows from the river’s depths into rocky shallows. Nearly every night, the feeding trout splashed so loudly they woke him up. He loved to lie awake listening to the splashing trout and, eventually, the sounds put him back to sleep. “Those trout were the best lullaby,” he said.
When Pop-Pop told me the flood story, he looked me directly in the eye. He may have done so to judge the best times to strike with a well-placed joke. But, when he told me the story of the trout splashing outside his window, he did not look at me. He looked beyond me. He looked out the window we sat by to a place I could not see. I got the distinct impression he could still hear those trout splashing. After a few moments, he met my gaze once more and said, “Ever since they put in the flood control, they don’t splash like that anymore.”
A few hours after Pop-Pop shared his memories with me, I sat in my favorite recliner in front of an east-facing window in the little house Melissa’s family let me stay in. A light rain grew heavier. I smiled, put on a pair of thick-soled, rubber boots, and contemplated the other morals of Pop-Pop’s stories.
A Tune of Trucks and Songbirds.
Thirty yards from where I sat, I watched the rain falling on a ridge forming part of the edge of the Ohio River basin. Little rivulets of rainwater flowed towards me. They were just beginning the long journey to nearby Mill Stream, on to the Allegheny, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. Across the road, I studied the hemlocks and a pipeline right-of-way forming the edge of weary woods. A few mature hemlocks sighed with a wind whispering of former glory, of the majestic white pine and hemlock forests that grew here before a post-Civil war logging frenzy left the hills naked and exhausted. A woodpecker disregarded the rain and beat a rhythm while eating from a hollow tree trunk.
The tree’s hollowness reflected mine. I wondered if the scene might have been peaceful if it wasn’t for the sadness Pop-Pop’s story left me with. As that thought formed, four trucks carrying radioactive fracking wastewater to a nearby storage facility banged and clattered by on the gravel road running across the ridge. Diesel engines snarled to pull the toxic loads. My angst infested the sound. For two weeks, the trucks had been running day and night. During the day, songbirds did their best to fill the gaps between trucks, but the little hearts of birds are only so big. Night was worse. With few other sounds to compete with the trucks, they only grew louder. I was grateful for my prescribed sleep medication, but my hosts were not so lucky. Each morning, bags under their eyes were a little puffier, their eyes a little more bloodshot, and lines on their faces were harder-etched.
I tried to think of some way to help. If the truck drivers would have taken some time off, I might have succeeded in ignoring the destruction the trucks represented. Regardless, I heard the violence caused, and enabled by, this culture’s addiction to industrial energy in the sounds of grinding metal and the rapid explosion created by the smashing together of air and diesel in the truck engines. I saw the global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rising with the clouds of truck exhaust. As the heavy loads rumbled by, I felt the land shaking with fear, trembling in her efforts to support all who depend on her despite her worsening condition.
Expressions of Life & Death
I wanted to distract myself from the trucks. My favorite distraction is writing. So, I grabbed my pen and notebook. I opened it up and was greeted with the last line I wrote in my last session: “All natural phenomena are expressions of Life – even ones that cause death. COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon. So, what is Life expressing through the virus?”
I sat with the question, but was afraid to answer it. I was afraid to describe something that has caused so much pain to humans as something positive like a lesson, or a message from the Earth, or even worse, an event necessary to draw human attention to ecological realities. I put my notebook down and sought distraction in my laptop. I ended up at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus map with its confirmed cases and death counters when the screeching brakes of a passing truck taking a curve too fast invaded my awareness.
And, that’s when I realized what Life expresses through COVID-19. Human encroachment into formerly remote and biodiverse lands is a major cause of the spread of pandemic viruses through human populations. Much of this encroachment is caused by humans seeking to exploit so-called “natural resources” like wildlife and land. The fracking trucks, and the industry they are part of, were a textbook example.
COVID-19 is another example. COVID-19 is a message from Life. It says: When humans violate Nature, when humans continuously invade Nature, when, humans wage war on Nature, there will be casualties.
With this in mind, I went looking in Coudersport for the flood control Pop-Pop told me about. As I entered town, a sign announced that I was crossing the “SPC Mike Franklin Memorial” bridge over the Allegheny River. But, when I walked onto the bridge, I did not find a river. I found a concrete tunnel. I found the flood control.
The Silence of Industrial Concrete
Water hurried through the tunnel. It made virtually no sound as it flowed over the barren, flat slabs of industrial concrete. There was no soil or stone for the water to dance over. There were no trees to offer shade for the water to linger under. There were no fallen leaves or branches for the water to twist and twirl with. And, without these, the water could not muster the songs of peace I had heard before. With the beauty of those songs still so fresh in my memory, my ears strained with anticipation and sought the Ohio River’s soothing songs. But, there were no songs. There was only an aggravating silence.
As the silence persisted, images flashed through my mind. I saw government workers scraping away the river bed. I saw them leveling the infinite inconsistencies on the river’s bottom and banks. I saw them pouring concrete slabs in perfectly ugly squares below the window from which Pop-Pop had once listened to the trout splashing as they chased the silver streaks of minnows across multi-colored pebbles lining the shallows. I saw them destroying the physical features that combine with water to create the liquid friction that gives the Ohio River her voice. Then, I saw the most disturbing image: I saw government workers pouring concrete down the Ohio River’s throat.
This hurt, but the Ohio River wasn’t finished with her lesson, yet. I followed the concrete tunnel about a few hundred yards to where Mill Stream converges with the Allegheny River. At this “convergence,” what I truly saw was concrete slabs arranged into two converging tunnels to form a massive letter Y. I stood in the crease of the Y, hoping the lesson would soon be over, when I stumbled over a small concrete marker set in the ground. The marker read: “In Memory of Jim Bushline (1936-1995). Writer, angler, friend. And, the Goodsell Hole. ‘For a century the greatest trout producing pool in Pennsylvania.’” This was a memorial for Jim Bushline. But this was also a memorial for the Goodsell Hole. It was commemorating the death of this natural community.
White Man’s Footsteps
The pain threatened to overwhelm me. Hoping that a direct question might yield a concise answer, I asked the Ohio River what she needed me to learn from these experiences. As I was listening for an answer, Melissa (who was accompanying me to help me learn how to use my new camera) pointed to a patch of what I had ignorantly assumed was weeds and said, “Look at this plantain patch. It’s one of the biggest and most healthy patches I’ve ever seen.” She explained to me that plantain is not a weed. Plantain is a soothing medicine. It has long been used to treat painful skin conditions, chronic digestive issues, and general nervous system ailments. When Melissa held a plantain leaf up to show me the way the leaf’s veins resembled the concrete convergence we stood near, I knew that despite the Ohio River’s voice being stolen by flood control, she still found a way to offer medicine by helping plantain to grow nearby.
As Melissa continued to describe plantain, the Ohio River’s lesson finally became clear. Some Native Americans, according to an herbal website Melissa found, call plantain “white man’s footsteps” because plantain proliferated wherever Europeans settled. I thought of the destruction of the Ohio River that followed the white man’s footsteps through her basin. Plantain is also known as “soldier’s herb” for the way the plant has served as battlefield first aid and infection prevention for centuries.
The Ohio River spoke to me through plantain, a plant that is a common resident of lawns across the United States. It can be found almost anywhere. War, today, can also be found almost anywhere. Plantain is an everyday, garden variety herb. To live today is to witness everyday ecocide and garden-variety genocide. To live today is to live with war.
In this critical review, Elisabeth Robson reacts to the newly released environmental documentary Planet of the Humans. The film explains why technology won’t save us and leads viewers to question the industrial paradigm.
Liberals have been quick to attack the film, mistaking it for a pro-fossil or pro-nuclear fuel argument, and recognizing that critiquing “green” energy undermines the morality of their entire ideological project of “sustainable modern development.” The far-right has attempted to co-opt the message as well. Both are predictable and profoundly mistaken responses. See the end of this review for a few point-by-point rebuttals of these misrepresentations.
Our choice is not between “green” energy and fossil fuels. That is a false binary. We must choose between industrial destruction—including both ‘renewables’ and fossil fuels—and creating a biocentric future. We need revolutionary transformation of society, not superficial changes to the energy sources of empire. Planet of the Humans is not without flaws. No piece of media is. But it contributes critically to a movement too long dominated by cornucopian, anthropogenic industrial energy advocates.
Planet of the Humans: Why Technology Won’t Save Us
By Elisabeth Robson
Green energy is a false solution. That’s a nice way of putting it.
But green energy is the god of the left. And heaven forbid anyone from the left point out any of the pesky problems with this god. We expect that from people on the right; but the left? And now one of the left’s progressive heroes has gone and broken the rules and actually published an entire 1 hour and 40 minutes of documentary trashing this god. Needless to say, the backlash took less than 24 hours to begin.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The documentary film is Planet of the Humans. The film is narrated and directed by Jeff Gibbs, and executive produced by Michael Moore. It stars renewable energy generation technologies wind and solar, along with biomass, and with, of course, the obligatory supporting role appearance from electric vehicles.
Jeff channels Michael well. He is not afraid to look behind the curtain to see the man, or rather the fossil fuels, running the show, or to ask the uncomfortable questions. “Well, that’s awkward,” I find myself saying several times throughout the film.
We begin, appropriately enough, with a reminder of the first Earth Day, 50 years ago today as I write this now. That first Earth Day inspired the filmmaker to become an environmental journalist, and he went through a phase, as many of us have done, wishing and hoping so hard that green energy will help us kick our addiction to fossil fuels and save the planet, that he actually believed it for a while.
Wind and solar.
He soon discovers the intermittency problem: you can’t generate energy from solar panels when the sun isn’t shining, or from wind turbines when the wind isn’t blowing. Well, yes, that is a well known problem. He then discovers that fossil fuel powered energy plants must be running at the ready to fill in the gaps when the wind dies and it rains or the sun sets for the evening, and of course you can’t just stop and start fossil fuel powered energy plants on a whim. What about batteries he asks? Yes, but… they degrade quickly and require a lot of resources to make. How about the resources to make the wind and solar panels? Right, that’s a problem too.
And the land where wind and solar is installed? Oh, yes, the vast tracts of land torn up for wind and solar is yet another problem. But it’s just desert right? “Just desert”… sure, if you think centuries old cactus and Joshua trees, wildflowers that color the hills red, yellow, and purple after spring rains, and lizard and tortoise and eagle and wolf habitat is “just desert.”
Prayer walk for sacred water in the Mojave desert, home to numerous indigenous nations, a wide array of biodiversity, springs, wildflowers, ungulates, tortoises, lizards, birds, and some of the more remote lands in North America. The Mojave’s most serious threats come from the military, urban sprawl, and industrial solar development. Photo by Max Wilbert.
Gibbs looks at electric vehicles, trotted out by car companies as proof of their green credentials, but of course if wind and solar aren’t powering the grid, then all you’ve done to power the EVs is move the gas from the gas tank to the power plant. Unfortunately, the car company executive put on the spot did not seem to know much about the power grid, only about how much PR she was getting from the press about the EV she’s announcing.
Next, we meet biomass. Compared to wind and solar this is a low(er) tech solution to powering the world, which we might initially think is better–along with Bill McKibben who is shown proudly touting the benefits of chopping up trees into bits and burning them in power plants–but it turns out that no, we can’t cut down all the trees on the planet to power our lifestyles without some, you know, downsides. We see the fossil fuel powered-machines killing beautiful old trees, and the smoke and CO2 rising from the stacks while hearing about how biomass is “carbon neutral,” from people who obviously don’t understand the difference between trees, and a healthy, thriving forest. We meet the community members subjected to biomass plants that are burning, along with trees, old tires and creosote-soaked railroad ties.
And all along the way, Jeff and his sidekick Ozzie Zehner, author of Green Illusions and co-producer of the film, ask the uncomfortable questions of the celebrities of the left: Van Jones, Bill McKibben, various big wigs at the Sierra Club, along with plenty of clips showing Al Gore at his hypocritical finest, touting capitalism and the profit he will be making personally if only we would invest more money in renewable technologies.
The only conclusion the viewer can draw by the end of the film is the inescapable fact, that no one on the left wants to admit: there is no get out of jail free card. There never was, and there never will be. As long as we try to tech, mine, build, and burn our way out of this mess, we will only make the problem worse.
Why technology won’t save us
While the film, Planet of The Humans focuses almost entirely on the problems of wind, solar, and biomass, and the corporate culture of profit surrounding these industries, we also understand that the filmmaker gets it–as in, the big picture. That it’s not just about climate change, air pollution, water pollution, or even corporate greed. It’s that even if we managed to miraculously replace all the grid energy and liquid fuels we use with so-called renewable sources of energy, it wouldn’t solve the fundamental issues at the heart of all these problems: that it is our industrial civilization and the relentless push for endless growth that is killing the planet. The film makers do not raise this point explicitly, but it is there for all to see if only we care to look. Just like these problems with renewables have been there all along, no matter how hard we try to ignore the fact that solar panels and wind turbines require massive amounts of metals mined out of the ground, ground that was once someone’s home, and is now destroyed; and no matter how hard we try to ignore that biomass is just a euphemism for dead trees, trees the same so-called environmentalists who invest in biomass energy plants tell us we must save in order to sequester CO2 and protect biodiversity.
The hypocrisy is stunning, as it always has been. We are all guilty of it to some degree–I know I am–but at least I can say that I’m trying to learn more, to keep an open but critical mind, and to spend the time to look more deeply at these issues. I’ve learned to not just take on faith the words of the corporate-backed and often fossil fuel-supported organizations mentioned in this film who tell me we can solve everything–have our cake and eat it too–if we just have enough green energy.
“Most chillingly of all, Gibbs at one stage of the film appears to suggest that there is no cure for any of this, that, just as humans are mortal, so the species itself is staring its own mortality in the face. But he appears to back away from that view by the end, saying merely that things need to change. But what things and how?
It’s not at all clear.”
Yes, this film makes the case that things need to change. What things? Everything. How? By shutting down the entire industrial machine.
The film never explicitly condemns industrial civilization as the root of our problems. However, as I said above, it is there to see for anyone who is paying attention. I might wish it had been stated explicitly and directly, but this message is hard to miss. The point of the film is that everything about how we live on this planet needs to change, and deluding ourselves about how we can continue life as we know it powered by green energy is not just a waste of time; it is criminal. Only by acknowledging this truth can we put aside the fantasy of green energy and begin to formulate real solutions. And yes, the real solutions mean shutting down the entire industrial machine. Not just fossil fuels, but everything: all the mining, the logging, the industrial fishing, the industrial agriculture… everything. It’s all got to change.
The lesson, and the moral of the story, is that we (humans) will be entirely to blame for our own demise, when it comes, if we continue down the path of using massive amounts of energy–no matter how that energy is generated–to expand our ecocidal footprint on this planet.
I hold my breath as the end of the film approaches. Will this film, like so many others, try to end on an optimistic note? The green god of the left requires optimism to end all his religious services, don’t you know.
No. This film, unlike so many others, manages to avoid the tragedy of ending with delusional optimism. We see instead the tragedy of rainforests decimated, rainforests that orangutans call home. The tragedy of lives lost to human greed and cruelty; the desperation, sadness, and confusion written all over the faces of those beautiful beings who remind us so much of ourselves.
It is the perfect, heart-wrenching ending to this film: we understand, without any words being spoken, that green energy, along with the many other horrors of our industrial civilization, is killing us and all life on this beautiful planet we call home.
False Critique #1: The film uses inaccurate information, for example about CSP (Concentrated Solar Power)
Critic: “It is stated correctly in the movie that the Ivanpah concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in California requires a natural gas power source to start it up every morning. Other CSP plants do not, however. And newer CSP designs, like the one operating at Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada since 2009, use molten salt to store enough of the sun’s heat to keep the generators running all night long.”
Robson: Most CSPs here in the USA have been an utter failure, including Crescent Dunes, which seems to be shut down now. The plant never managed to achieve its expected monthly output, and was entirely shut down for 8 months of its short life because of a leak in the molten salt thermal storage tank.
In addition, CSP plants are incredibly destructive to the land where they are installed. Typically the land is cleared of all life, like you see in the movie… which means habitat and homes lost for countless beings who lived on that land previously. When wildlife people try to relocate the desert tortoises that often live in these locations, not many survive. They fence off the land so the tortoises can’t get back in. And birds that fly through the hottest part of the light as it’s collected can sometimes burn to death.
I wonder if all that infrastructure is still sitting there, trashing up the desert? Certainly the soil and life they destroyed putting it up will take a very very long time to recover even if the infrastructure is eventually removed.
And none of this changes the fact that it requires metals and materials and fuel to build and maintain these things, that they are very low density sources of energy, and incredibly inefficient, consist of toxic waste at the end of their life spans, are designed to power the grid and our lifestyles that depend on the grid, which is unsustainable over the long term.
Laura Cunningham, Wildlife Biologist (comment from Facebook): Ten years ago I fought to save Ivanpah Valley and stop that monstrous solar power tower. This movie is accurate–the Sierra Club supported building the utility-scale solar project on the wildflower fields, translocating the desert tortoises, and ignoring my Chemehuevi elder friends who said every plant in the desert there is medicinal or edible. Ivanpah means “White clay water” in Paiute-Chemehuevi. I watched them bulldoze an ancient trail and archaeology. More giant solar projects are planned in the desert this year, this needs to stop.
False Critique #2: The film unfairly attacks certain figures
Critic: “It is hugely disingenuous, and frankly misleading, to hide in the credits at the end of a movie the fact that two of the leading organizations being damned in the movie for their support of biomass as a “green” energy source (350.org and Sierra Club) do not, in fact, support biomass any more. Bill McKibben deserves an apology for being misrepresented in this film …”
Robson: I feel the film maker gave Bill McKibben ample opportunity to refute his prior support of biomass *on film*. The film shows proof that Bill once did support it, whole-heartedly. Since the film came out McKibben has written this to say that while he used to support biomass, he no longer does: https://350.org/response-planet-of-the-humans-documentary/
Sierra Club has a page on biomass, where they state: “We believe that biomass projects can be sustainable, but that many biomass projects are not.”
Both 350.org and Sierra Club, and Bill McKibben personally, do whole-heartedly support “renewables,” including wind and solar.
350.org‘s main mission is “A fast & just transition to 100% renewable energy for all”, and their primary focus is climate change. The number one item on Sierra Club’s “issues” page is “Climate & Energy”, and speaking for the Sierra Club, ED Michael Brune said: “The booming clean energy economy is helping people create a better future for themselves and their families while, at the same time, helping to tackle the climate crisis that threatens our collective future. Workers see new job opportunities, communities see thriving local economies, and the American people see the inevitable transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.”
It is good that 350.org and Sierra Club and Bill McKibben have improved their stances on biomass; and certainly these organizations do some good work. But their support for “clean energy” will perpetuate our unsustainable lifestyles, and, as the film points out, is likely tied to corporate investment in these and related technologies, as well as the mining, extraction, refining, batteries, grids, etc. technologies that go with them.
Also, a personal note: I think using the word “biomass” to refer to trees, or plants, or whatever life form it refers to, is a horrific way to look at the natural world. It’s like using the word “resources” instead of trees, water, fish, etc. It turns real living beings into objects, and is a huge part of the problem.
False Critique #3: The film endorses problematic ideas of population control
Critic: “Like many environmental documentaries, “Planet of Humans” endorses debunked Malthusian ideas that the world is running out of energy. ‘We have to have our ability to consume reigned in,’ says a well-coiffed environmental leader. ‘Without some major die-off of the human population there is no turning back,’ says a scientist.”
I do not recall anyone in the movie advocating for one-child policies, or any other draconian population policies. I personally felt like the population issue was a relatively minor point in the film compared to the points about solar, wind, and biomass. [Population is discussed for a few minutes during the 100 minute film].
It is very clear that 8 billion humans would not exist without massive amounts of fossil fuels. I don’t think many would argue with that at this point (and if you have a cogent argument, I’d like to see it). In addition, several studies have recently shown that we humans have transformed a large proportion of the Earth in modern times. We have reduced wilderness areas to almost nothing, and wildlife to almost nothing.
So yeah, population is a problem. I thought the film did a fairly good job of raising it as an issue without being particularly “Malthusian” about it (in the pejorative sense that word is used today).
Elisabeth Robson is a radical feminist and a part of DGR.
Editors note: “Green technology” has become the policy centerpiece of the mainstream climate movement. But the idea that technology will solve global warming is a dangerous lie. And as Kim Hill explains in this piece, it is also highly profitable. This is no accident. We offer this article to those who suspect XR is engaging in ineffective resistance, and who are looking for a better way. Analysis is the first step toward effective action.
By Kim Hill
The Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement has taken off around the world, with millions of people taking to the streets to demand that governments take action on climate change and the broader ecological crisis. The scale of the movement means it has the potential to have an enormous impact on the course of history, by bringing about massive changes to the structure of our societies and economic systems.
The exact nature of the demanded action is not made clear, and warrants a close examination. There is a long history of powerful government and corporate interests throwing their support behind social movements, only to redirect the course of action to suit their own ends, and Extinction Rebellion is no exception.
With the entirety of life on this planet at stake, any course of action needs to be considered extremely carefully. Actions have consequences, and at this late stage, one mis-step can be catastrophic. The feeling that these issues have been discussed long enough and it is now time for immediate action is understandable. However, without clear goals and a plan on how to achieve them, the actions taken are likely to do more harm than good.
Extinction and climate change are among the many disastrous effects of an industrial society. While the desire to take action to stop the extinction of the natural world is admirable, rebelling against the effects without directly confronting the economic and political systems that are the root cause is like treating the symptoms of an illness without investigating or diagnosing it first. It won’t work. Addressing only one aspect of the global system, without taking into account the interconnected industries and governance structures, will only lead to worse problems.
Demand 2: net-zero emissions
The rebellion’s goals are expressed in three demands, under the headings Tell the Truth, Act Now and Beyond Politics. I’m starting with the second demand because net-zero is the core goal of the rebellion, and the one that will have enormous political, economic and social impact.
What does net-zero emissions mean? In the words of Catherine Abreau, executive director of the Climate Action Network: “In short, it means the amount of emissions being put into the atmosphere is equal to the amount being captured.” The term carbon-neutral is interchangeable with net-zero.
Net-zero emissions is Not a Thing. There is no way to un-burn fossil fuels. This demand is not for the extraction and burning to stop, but for the oil and gas industry to continue, while powering some non-existent technology that makes it all okay. XR doesn’t specify how they plan to reach the goal.
Proponents of net-zero emissions advocate for the trading of carbon offsets, so industries can pay to have their emissions captured elsewhere, without reducing any on their part. This approach creates a whole new industry of selling carbon credits. Wind turbines, hydro-electric dams, biofuels, solar panels, energy efficiency projects, and carbon capture are commonly traded carbon offsets. None of these actually reduce carbon emissions in practice, and are themselves contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, so make the problem worse. Using this approach, a supposedly carbon-neutral economy leads to increased extraction and burning, and generates massive profits for corporations in the process. Head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, Louis Redshaw, predicted in 2007 “carbon will be the world’s biggest commodity market, and it could become the world’s biggest market overall.”
The demand for net-zero emissions has been echoed by a group of more than 100 companies and lobby groups, who say in a letter to the UK government: “We see the threat that climate change poses to our businesses and to our investments, as well as the significant economic opportunities that come with being an early mover in the development of new low-carbon goods and services.” Included in this group are Shell, Nestle and Unilever. This is the same Shell that has caused thousands of oil spills and toxic leaks in Nigeria and around the world, executed protesters, owns 60 per cent of the Athabasca oil sands project in Alberta, and intends to continue extracting oil long into the future; the same Nestle that profits from contaminated water supplies by selling bottled water, while depleting the world’s aquifers; the same Unilever that is responsible for clearing rainforests for palm oil and paper, dumping tonnes of mercury in India, and making billions by marketing plastic-wrapped junk food and unnecessary consumer products to the world’s poorest people. All these companies advocate for free trade and privatization of the commons, and exploit workers and lax environmental laws in the third world. As their letter says, their motivation is to profit from the crisis, not to stop the destruction they are causing.
These are XR’s allies in the call for net-zero emissions.
The nuclear industry also sees the net-zero target as a cause for celebration, and even fracking is considered compatible with the goal.
Net-zero emissions in practice
Let’s look at some of the proposed approaches to achieve net-zero in more detail.
Renewable energy doesn’t reduce the amount of energy being generated by fossil fuels, and doesn’t do anything to reduce atmospheric carbon. Wind turbines and solar panels are made of metals, which are mined using fossil fuels. Any attempt to transition to 100% renewables would require more of some rare earth metals than exist on the planet, and rare earth mining is mostly done illegally in ecologically sensitive areas in China. There are plans to mine the deep sea to extract the minerals needed for solar panels, wind turbines and electric car batteries. Mining causes massive destruction and pollution of forests and rivers, leading to increased rates of extinction and climate change. And huge profits for mining and energy companies, who can claim government subsidies for powering the new climate economy. The amount of fossil fuels needed to power the mines, manufacturing, infrastructure and maintenance of renewables makes the goal of transitioning to clean energy completely meaningless. Wind and solar ‘farms’ are installed on land taken from actual farms, as well as deserts and forests. And the energy generated is not used to protect endangered species, but to power the industries that are driving us all extinct. Not a solution. Not even close. In the net-zero logic of offset trading, renewables are presented as not an alternative to fossil fuel extraction, but instead a way to buy a pass to burn even more oil. That’s a double shot of epic fail for renewables.
Improving efficiency of industrial processes leads to an increase in the amount of energy consumed, not a decrease, as more can be produced with the available energy, and more energy is made available for other uses. The industries that are converting the living world into disposable crap need to be stopped, not given money to destroy the planet more efficiently.
Reforestation would be a great way to start repairing the damage done to the world, but instead is being used to expand the timber industry, which uses terms like ‘forest carbon markets’ and ‘net-zero deforestation’ to legitimize destroying old-growth forests, evicting their inhabitants, and replacing them with plantations. Those seeking to profit from reforestation are promoting genetically engineered, pesticide-dependent monocrop plantations, to be planted by drones, and are anticipating an increase in demand for wood products in the new ‘bioeconomy’. Twelve million hectares of tropical rainforest were cleared in 2018, the equivalent of 30 football fields a minute. Land clearing at this rate has been going on for decades, with no sign of stopping. No carbon offsets or emissions trading can have any effect while forest destruction continues. And making an effort to repair past damage does not make it okay to continue causing harm long into the future. A necessary condition of regenerating the land is that all destructive activity needs to stop.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is promoted as a way to extract carbon dioxide from industrial emissions, and bury it deep underground. Large amounts of energy and fresh water are required to do this, and pollutants are released into the atmosphere in the process. The purpose of currently-operational carbon capture installations is not to store the carbon dioxide, but to use it in a process called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which involves injecting CO2 into near-depleted oil fields, to extract more fossil fuels than would otherwise be accessible. And with carbon trading, the business of extracting oil becomes more profitable, as it can sell offset credits. Again, the proposed solution leads to more fossil fuel use, not less. Stored carbon dioxide is highly likely to leak out into the atmosphere, causing earthquakes and asphyxiating any nearby living beings. This headline says all you need to know: “Best Carbon Capture Facility In World Emits 25 Times More CO2 Than Sequestered”. Carbon capture for underground storage is neither technically nor commercially viable, as it is risky and there is no financial incentive to store the carbon dioxide, so requires government investment and subsidies. And the subsidies lead to coal and gas becoming more financially viable, thus expanding the industry.
Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a psychopathic scheme to clear forests, and take over agricultural land to grow genetically modified fuel crops, burn the trees and crops as an energy source, and then bury the carbon dioxide underground (where it’s used to expand oil and gas production). It would require an amount of land almost the size of Australia, or up to 80% of current global cropland, masses of chemical fertilizers (made from fossil fuels), and lead to soil degradation (leading to more emissions), food shortages, water shortages, land theft, massive increase in the rate of extinction, and I can’t keep researching these effects it’s making me feel ill. Proponents of BECCS (i.e. fossil fuel companies) acknowledge that meeting the targets will require “three times the world’s total cereal production, twice the annual world use of water for agriculture, and twenty times the annual use of nutrients.” Of course this will mostly take place on land stolen from the poor, in Africa, South America and Asia. And the energy generated used to make more fighter jets, Hollywood movies, pointless gadgets and urban sprawl. Burning of forests for fuel is already happening in the US and UK, all in the name of clean energy. Attaching carbon capture to bioenergy means that 30% more trees or crops need to be burned to power the CCS facility, to sequester the emissions caused by burning them. And again, it’s an offset, so sold as a justification to keep the fossil fuel industry in business. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (in the three most likely of its four scenarios) recommends implementing BECCS on a large scale to keep warming below 2°C. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea can go burn in hell, where they can be put to good use as an energy source.
This is what a decarbonised economy looks like in practice. An enormous increase in fossil fuel extraction, land clearing, mining (up to nine times as much as current levels), pollution, resource wars, exploitation, and extinction. All the money XR is demanding that governments invest in decarbonisation is going straight to the oil, gas, coal and mining companies, to expand their industries and add to their profits. The Centre for International Environmental Law, in the report Fuel to the Fire, states “Overall, the US government has been funding CCS research since 1997, with over $5billion being appropriated since 2010.” Fossil fuel companies have been advocating net-zero for some years, as it is seen as a way to save a failing coal industry, and increase demand for oil and gas, because solar, wind, biofuels and carbon capture technologies are all dependent on fossil fuels for their operation.
Anyone claiming that a carbon-neutral economy is possible is not telling the truth. All of these strategies emit more greenhouse gases than they capture. The second demand directly contradicts the first.
These approaches are used to hide the problem, and dump the consequences on someone else: the poor, nonhuman life, the third world, and future generations, all in the service of profits in the present. The goal here is not to maintain a stable climate, or to protect endangered species, but to make money out of pretending to care.
Green growth, net-zero emissions and the Green New Deal (which explicitly states in its report that the purpose is to stimulate the economy, which includes plans to extract “remaining fossil fuel with carbon capture”) are fantasy stories sold to us by energy companies, a shiny advertisement sucking us in with their claims to make life better. In reality the product is useless, and draws us collectively into a debt that we’re already paying for by being killed off at a rate of 200 species a day. With exponential economic growth (a.k.a. exponential climate action) the rate of extinction will also grow exponentially. And the money to pay for it all comes directly from working people, in the form of pension funds, carbon taxes, and climate emergency levies.
The transition to net-zero
There are plans for thousands of carbon capture facilities to be built in the coming years, all requiring roads, pipelines, powerlines, shipping, land clearing, water extraction, pollution, noise, and the undermining of local economies for corporate profits, all for the purpose of extracting more oil. And all with the full support of the rebellion.
To get a sense of the scale of this economic transformation, a billion seconds is almost 32 years. If you were to line up a billion cars and run over them (or run them over) at a rate of one car per second, you’d be running for 32 years non-stop. That’s enough cars to stretch 100 times around the equator. You’d probably need to turn entire continents into a mine site to extract all the minerals required to make them. And even that wouldn’t be enough, as some of the rare earth metals required for batteries don’t exist in sufficient quantities. If all these cars are powered by renewables, you do the math on how much mining would be needed to make all the wind turbines and solar panels. Maybe several more continents. And then a few more covered in panels, turbines, powerlines, substations. And a few more to extract all the oil needed to power the mining and road building. Which all leaves no space for any life. And all for what? So we can spend our lives stuck in traffic? It’s ridiculous and apocalyptic, yet this is what the net-zero lobbyists, with the US and UK governments, and the European Union, have already begun implementing.
Shell’s thought leadership and government advisory schemes appear to be going great, with the US senate passing a number of bills in recent months to increase subsidies for oil companies using carbon capture, and a few more, to subsidise wind, solar, nuclear, coal, gas, research and development, and even more carbon capture, are scheduled to pass in the coming months.
The UK government, with guidance from the creepy-sounding nonprofit Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, is implementing a transition to net-zero, involving carbon capture, nuclear, bioenergy, hydrogen, ammonia, wind, solar, oil, gas, electric cars, smart grids, offset trading, manufacturing and the obligatory economic growth. And offering ‘climate finance’ to third world countries, to impose this industrial horror on the entire planet. All led by their advisors from the fossil fuel and finance industries, with input from the CCS, oil, gas, bioenergy, renewables, chemical, manufacturing, hydrogen, nuclear, airline, automotive, mining, and agriculture industries.
The European Union, advised by the corporate-funded European Climate Foundation, are implementing a similar plan, aiming to remain competitive with the rest of the industrialised world. The EU intends to commit 25% of its budget to implementing so-called climate mitigation strategies. Other industrialised countries also have plans to transition to a decarbonised economy.
Net-zero emissions is also the goal of the councils that have declared a climate emergency, which now number close to 1000, covering more than 200 million citizens.
This is the plan the rebellion is uniting behind to demand from the world’s governments.
+ + + + + +
Part II will cover the rebellion’s other two demands, for truth from government and a Citizens’ Assembly; the tactics being used by the rebellion; and their proposed solutions to climate and ecological collapse.
Beginning tomorrow, Friday September 20, and going through September 27, there are a whole host of climate-related actions happening nationally (USA) and globally, including climate strikes and marches. These climate strikes are being heavily promoted by big green organizations on down to local communities, and the media plays along by making sure to note in coverage about the upcoming strikes that they are “youth-led”. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. The youth themselves, of course, believe they are doing the right thing, and certainly their message that we need to do something about the climate catastrophe is true. But these youth are being supported and, one might even say, manipulated by a tangle of pro-business, pro-capitalism, pro-growth, anti-natureorganizations, corporations, and governments.
Bill McKibben writes about the climate strikes in The Guardian (“Why you should join the global climate strike” Wednesday, September 18, 2019). As in other recent articles he’s written, McKibben gives himself away as a front-man for big green organizations, including the one he started himself, 350.org, which have been co-opted by the solar, wind, and carbon capture industry.
He asks us to strike because…
“… sun and wind are now the cheapest way to generate power around the world”—if you ignore the impacts of land-grabbing, mining, manufacturing, transportation, maintenance, and disposal…
“… this could be the great opportunity…Green New Deals have been proposed around the world; they are a way forward”—the “great opportunity” he is speaking of is a way to keep our capital-demanding growth economy going so that the rich can continue to get richer at the expense of the natural world and the poor… Green New Deals are all growth plans, they all involve extracting more, building more, destroying more of the natural world…
“… batteries are ever cheaper – we can now store sunshine at night, and wind for a calm day”—again he is acting as front man for the solar and wind industries which are, as I write this, destroying forests, rivers, deserts, wildlife, habitat, and poor communities around the world, while the materials required for batteries and battery storage (lithium, iridium, copper, zinc, etc) are incredibly destructive to mine and manufacture…
“… indigenous people around the world are trying to protect their rightful land from the coal and oil companies”—and they are also trying to protect their rightful land from mines and dams and solar and wind factories and installations, because all those are harmful to land and communities just like oil is…
“… young people have asked us to. In a well-ordered society, when kids make a reasonable request their elders should say yes”—in fact it is the “elders” who are running the show, the elders who are running organizations like We Mean Business and GCCA who are working feverishly behind the scenes of the so-called youth-led movements to make sure that governments and corporations will make plenty of money on the fourth industrial revolution “demanded” by the people.
McKibben mixes his pro-business, pro-growth reasons for striking with just enough nice nature-sounding reasons to mask, for most people, that what he’s really doing is helping the corporations behind the fourth industrial revolution, by tricking “the people” into “demanding” action, believing they are part of a grass roots movement, when in fact those demands are being manufactured by the very organizations who will “respond” to those demands with more growth, more capitalism, and more extraction.
Don’t fall for it. True grass roots movements don’t have billionaires backing them. True grass roots movements don’t make vague demands of the very governments and organizations that have failed for 40 years to do anything at all. True grassroots activists take concrete actions that actually help: they sue the government and corporations when they break the law; they stand in front of bulldozers building pipelines and cutting down trees; they help inner city people learn how to build gardens in once empty parking lots to supply fresh vegetables; they change the zoning and planning laws in their own communities. Difficult and sometimes dangerous work that actually makes a difference.
Don’t waste your time on fake movements with vague asks that don’t actually take on the systems of power. The people behind these fake movements don’t give a damn about the planet, and they don’t give a damn about any of us. They care about money and power. That is it.
Do something real instead.
Image by Lunae Parracho for Reuters: Ka’apor Indian warriors tie up illegal loggers in the Amazon rainforest. Tired of the lack of government assistance in keeping loggers off their lands, they and four other tribes monitor their territory themselves.
“Before releasing them, one of the warriors told the loggers on the ground: “We’re doing this because you are stubborn. We told you not to come back, but you didn’t listen.”
They then set fire to five trucks and three tractors equipped to pull down trees and transport them from the jungle. They confiscated chainsaws and shotguns that they carried back to the village saying: “Jande pairata” or “We are strong.””