# What Planet of the Humans Gets Wrong About Climate Change

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 29 Apr 2020, 26 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/e4df6297-fc09-4577-8a28-b3ec00f428d5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

The Michael Moore–produced documentary Planet of the Humans sparked controversy around renewable energy. Political scientist and environmental policy expert Leah Stokes joins us to discuss the many things the new film gets wrong about environmentalists and the fight for climate action. Additional resources: Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil Support us on Patreon. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:12] Speaker 1: There's been a lot of uproar over the last few
[0:15] Speaker 1: days about a film that Michael Moore executive produced and
[0:21] Speaker 1: Jeff Gibbs directed and Ozzie Zayner produced called Planet of
[0:26] Speaker 1: the Humans. Was released on Earth Day this year, and
[0:30] Speaker 1: initially I think some people were excited about it. You know,
[0:33] Speaker 1: a climate movie by Michael Moore sounds like it might
[0:37] Speaker 1: interrogate capitalism or power structures. Instead, it winds up targeting
[0:42] Speaker 1: the environmental movement and renewable energy. Now I'm not saying
[0:47] Speaker 1: that either or both of those things is not worthy
[0:51] Speaker 1: of critique. They both are. There are problems in both
[0:55] Speaker 1: the big environmental movement and in the renewable energy supply chain.
[1:00] Speaker 1: In fact, that's one of my biggest issues with this
[1:03] Speaker 1: film that it took what could have been an intelligent
[1:06] Speaker 1: and nuanced critique of some of the ways that we're
[1:10] Speaker 1: going about trying to solve climate change and turned it
[1:14] Speaker 1: into a badly researched, poorly executed hit job on some
[1:21] Speaker 1: undeserving environmental leaders. The film is tough to watch, and
[1:25] Speaker 1: not just because of Gibbs's monotone, which I feel like
[1:28] Speaker 1: you need to hear to appreciate. So here's a little snippet.
[1:32] Speaker 2: So I decided to begin following the green energy movement.
[1:39] Speaker 2: What better place to check out how a renewable energy
[1:41] Speaker 2: revolution is coming along than a solar festival in the
[1:44] Speaker 2: green Mountain state of Vermont, powered by one hundred percent
[1:48] Speaker 2: solar energy. So I was having fun and got a
[1:57] Speaker 2: chance to ask about getting solar panels installed.
[2:00] Speaker 3: You can keep adding so maybe every time you get
[2:02] Speaker 3: a tax return, it's the solar panel.
[2:07] Speaker 2: But then a little rain began to fall.
[2:12] Speaker 1: I was having fun anyway. If it was just the monotone,
[2:17] Speaker 1: I could deal with it. My big issue here is
[2:20] Speaker 1: really the outdated information and the jumping to unfounded conclusions.
[2:24] Speaker 1: I think the newest bit of footage in this film
[2:27] Speaker 1: is from twenty twelve, and when you're dealing with something
[2:30] Speaker 1: like renewable energy, where the technology and the context changes
[2:34] Speaker 1: rather quickly, you kind of have to keep your information
[2:38] Speaker 1: up to date. That's not the only outdated and debunked
[2:42] Speaker 1: thing in this film. At a certain point, director Jeff
[2:46] Speaker 1: Gibbs makes it clear what he thinks the real solution
[2:49] Speaker 1: is the one that environmentalists are afraid of population control,
[2:55] Speaker 1: that old canard. First of all, it's something that comes
[2:58] Speaker 1: up every ten years. The idea that it either hasn't
[3:01] Speaker 1: been discussed or that it's been widely avoided by the
[3:04] Speaker 1: environmental movement is just not true. But secondly, the largest
[3:09] Speaker 1: emitters in the world are in the Western world, where
[3:12] Speaker 1: birth rate is declining, in fact, so much so that
[3:15] Speaker 1: a lot of politicians are often wringing their hands about it.
[3:19] Speaker 1: So usually when you have a bunch of white experts
[3:22] Speaker 1: saying that population is the solution to any problem, it's
[3:26] Speaker 1: kind of code for a eugenicist view of the world. Again,
[3:31] Speaker 1: Gibbs brings up some true and valid critiques of the
[3:36] Speaker 1: environmental space in this film, including the ways in which
[3:40] Speaker 1: some aspects of the renewable energy supply chain are repeating
[3:44] Speaker 1: mistakes from the fossil fuel supply chain, the massive boondoggle
[3:48] Speaker 1: that is biomass, and yeah, probably some parts of the
[3:53] Speaker 1: environmental movement have gotten a little too cozy with capitalism,
[3:56] Speaker 1: but none of those end up being well argued or documented. Instead,
[4:01] Speaker 1: the movie kind of jumps around from one conclusion to another,
[4:06] Speaker 1: uses a bunch of experts who are never even named,
[4:10] Speaker 1: and cherry picks data points that are from a decade
[4:14] Speaker 1: or more ago. On everything from the efficiency of solar
[4:18] Speaker 1: panels to how the electrical grid handles renewables. To correct
[4:24] Speaker 1: some of those issues, I've brought in Leah Stokes. She
[4:28] Speaker 1: is a political scientist and a professor at the University
[4:32] Speaker 1: of California at Santa Barbara. She has focused all of
[4:35] Speaker 1: her research on the electrical grid and the energy system,
[4:40] Speaker 1: energy policy, who shapes it and how and why? And
[4:44] Speaker 1: she's just come out with a book relatively recently called
[4:46] Speaker 1: Short Circuiting Policy about utilities role in delaying action on climate.
[4:52] Speaker 1: As you'll hear in this interview, Leah has spent quite
[4:55] Speaker 1: a bit of time reporting her book as well, and she,
[4:59] Speaker 1: unlike Gibbs, had to update it fairly often. It's just
[5:03] Speaker 1: come out last month. We have an excerpt up on
[5:05] Speaker 1: the Drilled News website if you want to check out
[5:08] Speaker 1: a little preview. And in this episode, I'm going to
[5:10] Speaker 1: talk to Leah about what the More film gets wrong
[5:13] Speaker 1: on renewable energy. She also has a story up on
[5:16] Speaker 1: vox right now detailing some more of her arguments on
[5:20] Speaker 1: this subject, so you can check that out. We'll drop
[5:23] Speaker 1: a link in the show notes that conversation is coming
[5:26] Speaker 1: up right after this quick word from today's sponsor. I'm
[5:29] Speaker 1: Amy Westervelt, and this is drilled. If you had to
[5:47] Speaker 1: pick one thing that bothers you the most about planet
[5:51] Speaker 1: of the humans, what would it be.
[5:54] Speaker 3: I think it's the attack on environmental groups because it's
[5:59] Speaker 3: just not true the things that they say about what
[6:02] Speaker 3: environmental groups are doing, and particularly in this moment when
[6:07] Speaker 3: the climate movement has had such a breakthrough in the
[6:10] Speaker 3: media and groups like Sunrise and Fridays for Future with
[6:13] Speaker 3: Greta Tunberg have just catapulted climate change to the top
[6:17] Speaker 3: of the agenda, and rather than joining with those groups,
[6:21] Speaker 3: it attacks them and pretends that somehow three fifty dot
[6:24] Speaker 3: Org or the Sierra Club or Energy c are our enemy,
[6:28] Speaker 3: when really they are part of the fight to address
[6:32] Speaker 3: the climate crisis.
[6:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know, especially the whole segment on biomass.
[6:37] Speaker 1: I just I'm like you, if you're going to make
[6:39] Speaker 1: arguments about kind of evolving technologies, you cannot like report
[6:44] Speaker 1: something four or five years ago and then not update it,
[6:47] Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
[6:48] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[6:49] Speaker 3: I read a little bit about it and also watched
[6:53] Speaker 3: this Colbert interview with Michael Moore, and I think what
[6:55] Speaker 3: happened was Jeff Gibbs, who's a longtime producer with Michael Moore,
[6:59] Speaker 3: had wanted to make a film, and for a long
[7:03] Speaker 3: time he was kind of just like driving around and
[7:07] Speaker 3: you know, collecting information, talking to people because you'll see
[7:11] Speaker 3: some of the early footages in Michigan and like I
[7:13] Speaker 3: don't know.
[7:16] Speaker 1: Was introduced, which was like two thousand and seven eight
[7:19] Speaker 1: exactly exactly the Wayback Machine.
[7:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, so what I heard from that interview with Michael
[7:26] Speaker 3: Moore is that basically these guys were under coronavirus lockdown,
[7:31] Speaker 3: and I bet that Jeff Gibbs as a procrastinator, and
[7:34] Speaker 3: Michael Moore was like, we're gonna whip this thing into shape,
[7:37] Speaker 3: and so he just took, you know, the pieces of
[7:39] Speaker 3: this film that had been reported a decade ago and
[7:41] Speaker 3: slapped it together into some half baked narrative and released
[7:44] Speaker 3: it into the world. Anyway, that's my hypothsis. I don't
[7:48] Speaker 3: know if it's true, but you know it's it's not
[7:52] Speaker 3: at all up to date, like this is all ten
[7:54] Speaker 3: years old, if not more.
[7:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, what have you seen as sort of the reception
[8:00] Speaker 1: of the film. I know I've noticed some things on
[8:03] Speaker 1: social media, but I'm curious what you've seen in terms
[8:06] Speaker 1: of like how seriously people are taking it, you know,
[8:10] Speaker 1: how people who maybe don't have the level of expertise
[8:14] Speaker 1: that you have are receiving the information if it seems
[8:16] Speaker 1: credible to folks.
[8:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think a lot of people in the
[8:20] Speaker 3: environmental movement naively thought that this just wouldn't get seen
[8:24] Speaker 3: by very many people, or that it would just go
[8:26] Speaker 3: away if we ignored it. And it's kind of like,
[8:29] Speaker 3: how do you deal with climate deniers. They don't just
[8:31] Speaker 3: go away if you ignore them. They keep sticking around
[8:35] Speaker 3: and spreading misinformation. And so I think it has to
[8:37] Speaker 3: be addressed head on because a lot of people who
[8:41] Speaker 3: are going to watch this film, Like one of my
[8:43] Speaker 3: research assistants just watched it with her family over the
[8:46] Speaker 3: weekend and she was infuriated by it. She's worked in
[8:49] Speaker 3: the solar industry, she knows a lot about the topics,
[8:51] Speaker 3: but her parents they don't really know that much, and
[8:53] Speaker 3: they were kind of like, huh.
[8:55] Speaker 1: Oh, is that true.
[8:56] Speaker 3: And then of course Emily just reported in her newsletter
[8:59] Speaker 3: about you know, somebody quitting their membership in three fifty
[9:02] Speaker 3: because of it. So I think we are naive if
[9:05] Speaker 3: you go on the YouTube website and you look below
[9:08] Speaker 3: the comments are all very positive. You have to know
[9:11] Speaker 3: that Michael Moore has six million Twitter followers. He's a
[9:14] Speaker 3: household name. Everybody knows who this man is in the
[9:17] Speaker 3: United States, and so what he does it goes very far,
[9:21] Speaker 3: and to pretend otherwise is just naive.
[9:24] Speaker 1: I've noticed too that actually a lot of the climate
[9:28] Speaker 1: deniers have picked up on this and are using it
[9:32] Speaker 1: a lot, you know, or even pulling clips from the
[9:35] Speaker 1: movie to post to like make their own YouTube videos about,
[9:40] Speaker 1: like especially the stuff that is critical of Bill mckivin
[9:44] Speaker 1: or three fifty. So I think too that people have
[9:47] Speaker 1: underestimated how much it provides fodder for groups that maybe
[9:50] Speaker 1: have different intentions entirely than the filmmakers had. You know,
[9:54] Speaker 1: I don't know what their goal was.
[9:57] Speaker 3: But no, it's going to be weaponized our as being
[10:00] Speaker 3: I mean, I saw a lot of people coming into
[10:03] Speaker 3: my feed sort of saying, you know, they were like
[10:05] Speaker 3: libertarian or right wing this climate skeptics, and I just
[10:11] Speaker 3: think that the film is going to be weaponized by
[10:13] Speaker 3: those groups and it's going to be really problematic. It's
[10:18] Speaker 3: a gift to big oil. That's probably not what their
[10:21] Speaker 3: intention was, but they weren't thinking responsibly about this film,
[10:25] Speaker 3: and I think it's just going to spread misinformation and
[10:27] Speaker 3: climate denial and a sense of doom, this nihilistic feeling
[10:32] Speaker 3: that there's nothing we can do about climate change, so
[10:34] Speaker 3: why even try?
[10:36] Speaker 1: Right right, I want to have you explain something that
[10:40] Speaker 1: you pointed out in your piece about the difference between
[10:44] Speaker 1: carbon that's dug up from the ground and burned in
[10:47] Speaker 1: the form of fossil fuels and you know, wood that's
[10:50] Speaker 1: burned as part of the biomass thing. Not in any
[10:53] Speaker 1: way that you're arguing that biomass is terrific or that
[10:56] Speaker 1: there aren't issues with how it's been executed by I
[10:59] Speaker 1: feel like people don't necessarily know that little bit. And
[11:02] Speaker 1: it's interesting.
[11:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something that I teach my undergraduates, and
[11:06] Speaker 3: then I put the question on a problem set and
[11:08] Speaker 3: they still get it wrong. But then after they've gotten
[11:10] Speaker 3: it wrong, then they hopefully learn it. So it's basically
[11:13] Speaker 3: the carbon cycle one oh one. We know that there's
[11:17] Speaker 3: a certain amount of carbon historically within all the time
[11:20] Speaker 3: periods that humans have been alive that has been cycling,
[11:23] Speaker 3: and it moves between the ocean, the air, and the land.
[11:27] Speaker 3: So sometimes the carbon is locked in trees. Sometimes those
[11:30] Speaker 3: trees burn through wildfires, then it goes up into the atmosphere,
[11:34] Speaker 3: and then it moves into the ocean. And that's how
[11:37] Speaker 3: much carbon we have in the active cycle. We often say,
[11:41] Speaker 3: but the way that climate change happens is when we
[11:44] Speaker 3: dig up carbon from underground. That is what a fossil
[11:47] Speaker 3: fuel is, oil, fossil gas, cool These are all carbon
[11:51] Speaker 3: stores that are underground that are not actively cycling. They're
[11:55] Speaker 3: not moving between the land and the air and the water.
[11:58] Speaker 3: So I often ask my student, and what's the difference
[12:00] Speaker 3: between burning wood historically, You know, if you burned wood,
[12:04] Speaker 3: let's say in the eighteen fifties, versus burning fossil fuels today.
[12:09] Speaker 3: And the difference is that burning fossil fuels brings carbon
[12:12] Speaker 3: into the active cycle. We often talk about it being
[12:16] Speaker 3: in the atmosphere in terms of parts per million, right
[12:18] Speaker 3: we say four hundred and fifteen parts per million is
[12:21] Speaker 3: what we're at for carbon in the atmosphere, and we
[12:23] Speaker 3: should be down near three hundred and fifty or something
[12:25] Speaker 3: like that. We could also talk about it moving into
[12:27] Speaker 3: the ocean and causing ocean acidification and bleaching coral reefs,
[12:31] Speaker 3: for example, But all of that extra carbon comes from
[12:35] Speaker 3: fossil fuels. If we were to burn wood, it will
[12:38] Speaker 3: also put carbon into the air, but that's not really
[12:41] Speaker 3: new carbon for the cycle. That carbon was always in
[12:44] Speaker 3: the cycle. It's really good to store carbon in forests,
[12:48] Speaker 3: and it's good to keep that carbon in the forests.
[12:50] Speaker 3: But climate change is fundamentally about fossil fuels, because it's
[12:54] Speaker 3: about bringing new carbon up from underground into the active cycle.
[13:00] Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I think to discount the amount of money
[13:04] Speaker 1: and effort that the fossil fuel industry has expended kind
[13:09] Speaker 1: of controlling how the entire economy works, and even like
[13:14] Speaker 1: how people understand how the economy works, you know, like
[13:19] Speaker 1: the influence that they've had on sort of culture and
[13:23] Speaker 1: social understandings of things is like vastly underestimated by these guys.
[13:28] Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I often tell the story of the
[13:31] Speaker 3: first time I heard about global warming or climate change.
[13:34] Speaker 3: I was in high school and I had a geography
[13:37] Speaker 3: teacher who I just loved and he was brilliant. But
[13:41] Speaker 3: when he introduced climate change, he introduced it as a debate.
[13:44] Speaker 3: And this was probably around nineteen ninety nine or two thousand.
[13:48] Speaker 3: You know, they really both through legitimate ways where they
[13:52] Speaker 3: try to convince people that climate policy is bad for them,
[13:55] Speaker 3: and illegitimate ways like these sort of fake campaigns astroturfing
[13:59] Speaker 3: that I also write about a lot in my book
[14:01] Speaker 3: Short Circuiting Policy. You know, they just completely change the
[14:05] Speaker 3: narrative around fossil fuels on the one hand and renewables
[14:08] Speaker 3: on the other. And this film, I mean, I don't
[14:12] Speaker 3: think it was funded by fossil fuels, not that I know,
[14:15] Speaker 3: but I'm not suggesting that, but it could have been
[14:18] Speaker 3: because it is so much playing into their hands.
[14:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, just for people who haven't seen it. Some of
[14:26] Speaker 1: the big arguments that this film makes about renewables are
[14:29] Speaker 1: that they are inefficient, that they are fossil fuel intensive
[14:35] Speaker 1: to produce, that their lifespan is very short, and that
[14:39] Speaker 1: the intermittency of renewables like solar and wind mean that
[14:43] Speaker 1: you have to have kind of cogeneration with fossil fuels.
[14:48] Speaker 1: At various points, they make the argument that, like, you know,
[14:52] Speaker 1: there's essentially no difference between renewables and fossil fuels, which
[14:56] Speaker 1: is just wrong. I think, you know, yes, there is
[15:01] Speaker 1: certainly a discussion to be had about the supply chain
[15:05] Speaker 1: of renewable technologies and you know, where are we going
[15:09] Speaker 1: to source silicon and where are we going to source
[15:12] Speaker 1: lithium and all of those kinds of things, and how
[15:14] Speaker 1: do we avoid, you know, creating similar issues with a
[15:18] Speaker 1: whole different set of energy technologies. Totally valid conversation, you know,
[15:23] Speaker 1: but a lot of these things that they put to,
[15:24] Speaker 1: like the efficiency and the intermittency, We've made a lot
[15:27] Speaker 1: of progress on in the tenures since this film was
[15:30] Speaker 1: clearly reportant yep. And it's again it's like you can't
[15:35] Speaker 1: you can't report on new technology and not update your reporting. Yeah.
[15:39] Speaker 3: I mean I was writing a book about the same
[15:42] Speaker 3: time that Jeff Gibbs was making this terrible documentary about renewables,
[15:46] Speaker 3: so I've followed it accidentally in parallel alongside him with
[15:50] Speaker 3: his work, and so I had to update my draft
[15:54] Speaker 3: so many times, you know, every time I would come
[15:56] Speaker 3: back to the book, the data would have changed. The
[16:00] Speaker 3: costs in particular for solar have just fallen precipitously, and
[16:04] Speaker 3: that's not mentioned once in the documentary. So he goes
[16:07] Speaker 3: to see a solar field sometime around when that was
[16:12] Speaker 3: it the volts that was released with.
[16:14] Speaker 1: The poet It's the volts, so around two thousand and seven,
[16:17] Speaker 1: two thousand and eight in Michigan.
[16:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so sometimes around the Inconvenient Truth documentary literally
[16:24] Speaker 3: that came out in two thousand and seven or six,
[16:27] Speaker 3: he goes to see a solar field and he's like, wow,
[16:30] Speaker 3: this can't even power any houses. But the reality is
[16:33] Speaker 3: that solar efficiencies have gone up so much over the
[16:37] Speaker 3: over the last you know, fifteen years, and so we
[16:41] Speaker 3: now are able to create a lot more energy with
[16:44] Speaker 3: a lot less space and a lot less materials, and
[16:48] Speaker 3: the same thing for intermittency. I find it so funny.
[16:52] Speaker 3: So intermittency is basically the idea that you know, the
[16:54] Speaker 3: sun is not shining all the time, the wind is
[16:56] Speaker 3: not blowing all the time, and so renewables kind of
[16:59] Speaker 3: flick on and off. But the grid has to be
[17:01] Speaker 3: stable three hundred and sixty five days a year twenty
[17:04] Speaker 3: four to seven, and so it's creates some challenges for
[17:07] Speaker 3: how you're going to make sure that you keep the
[17:09] Speaker 3: grid stable. But what we've learned in the intervening fifteen
[17:13] Speaker 3: years is that you can have much higher levels of
[17:15] Speaker 3: renewable energy penetration before you really run into problems with
[17:19] Speaker 3: grid stability. I mean, we're talking like North the fifty
[17:22] Speaker 3: percent of your electricity can come from renewables. And they
[17:25] Speaker 3: just kept going on about weird things like if natural
[17:29] Speaker 3: gas plants ramp somehow they are going to pollute more.
[17:32] Speaker 3: I have no idea what they're talking about. I had
[17:34] Speaker 3: not heard of that before. I mean, I'm sure there
[17:37] Speaker 3: are some efficiency losses to have to match with wind
[17:40] Speaker 3: and solar, but you have to think about the system overall.
[17:43] Speaker 3: How much pollution are you burning are you creating in
[17:46] Speaker 3: this system versus in the counterfactual system, And the film
[17:49] Speaker 3: makes absolutely no attempt to do that. There's one thing
[17:52] Speaker 3: that I did not write about in my piece because
[17:54] Speaker 3: it's a little wonky, but they put this figure up
[17:56] Speaker 3: at one point where they show how much coal and
[18:01] Speaker 3: natural gas there is to try to show that fossil
[18:03] Speaker 3: fuels is not going away, and it's true, they're not
[18:06] Speaker 3: going away fast enough, but they do it in I
[18:09] Speaker 3: think BTUs, which is units of energy rather than in
[18:12] Speaker 3: carbon pollution, and so it completely obscures the fact that,
[18:16] Speaker 3: for example, when natural gas is displacing coal, we don't
[18:20] Speaker 3: really know exactly because of methane leakage how much better
[18:24] Speaker 3: natural gas is than coal, But probably carbon missions are
[18:28] Speaker 3: going down, and certainly particulate matter, mercury, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide.
[18:34] Speaker 3: These are all the things that go along with coal
[18:36] Speaker 3: that do not go along generally with natural gas. All
[18:39] Speaker 3: of those air pollutants are falling during that time period.
[18:42] Speaker 3: So by putting BTUs on the figure, it makes it
[18:45] Speaker 3: seem like, oh, we're just as dirty as we've ever been.
[18:49] Speaker 3: And from a carbon perspective, it's very complicated, but from
[18:53] Speaker 3: conventional air pollution perspective, it is fantastic that we are
[18:57] Speaker 3: moving away from coal towards natural gas.
[18:59] Speaker 1: For exam right, I just I was honestly surprised that
[19:04] Speaker 1: there were so few accurate things.
[19:10] Speaker 3: I watched it with my husband and we were trying
[19:11] Speaker 3: to fact check it in real time because he does
[19:13] Speaker 3: climate stuff too, and he was like, oh, I thought
[19:15] Speaker 3: there would be more facts, Like I thought there would
[19:18] Speaker 3: be more things that we had to rebut like, even
[19:20] Speaker 3: if you read Ketan Joshi's rebuttal of it, this is
[19:23] Speaker 3: this person from Australia who did a fact check of
[19:25] Speaker 3: the film. There aren't that many facts to fact check
[19:28] Speaker 3: because it's not really very factual. Like I wrote that,
[19:31] Speaker 3: I don't even really think this should be a documentary,
[19:33] Speaker 3: Like it doesn't it great an information. It's like some
[19:36] Speaker 3: weird art piece. And you totally see that at the
[19:39] Speaker 3: end when somehow there's an orangutang dying god knows where.
[19:42] Speaker 3: And the craziest thing is that footage, if I understand correctly,
[19:47] Speaker 3: wasn't even film by them. They just took this traumatizing
[19:50] Speaker 3: image of this orangutang dying and stuck at the end
[19:52] Speaker 3: of their depressing film to make you even more depressed.
[19:55] Speaker 3: We had absolutely nothing to do with any other parts
[19:58] Speaker 3: of the film. So yeah, it wasn't really about facts
[20:01] Speaker 3: or a coherent narrative backed up by evidence. I think
[20:04] Speaker 3: Emily put it well. You know, if if this had
[20:07] Speaker 3: been handed in, let's say it was an essay and
[20:08] Speaker 3: it had been handed in as an assignment for a
[20:10] Speaker 3: course that I was teaching, I don't think it would
[20:13] Speaker 3: get better than a d You know, this is a
[20:15] Speaker 3: very poorly done piece of work.
[20:17] Speaker 1: Okay, So the last thing I want to ask you
[20:19] Speaker 1: about is the whole argument about population, which to me,
[20:23] Speaker 1: the idea of population reduction as a solution to climate
[20:27] Speaker 1: change is like as wrongheaded as a like one hundred
[20:30] Speaker 1: percent technocratic approach. They both assume that there's no amount
[20:34] Speaker 1: of social change that can or should happen. Yeah, you know,
[20:40] Speaker 1: better technology on one end and fewer humans on the other.
[20:43] Speaker 3: Of course it comes up. I remember being an undergraduate
[20:47] Speaker 3: and there was a used book sale and I picked
[20:50] Speaker 3: up a copy of The Population Bomb, not really knowing
[20:54] Speaker 3: the history of that book or it's important, you know,
[20:59] Speaker 3: this was sort of part of the idea that the
[21:00] Speaker 3: earth had finite resources and that population was going to
[21:04] Speaker 3: overrun it. And of course it was proven wrong in
[21:07] Speaker 3: many ways because there's something called the Kaya identity or
[21:10] Speaker 3: the iPad, which is the idea that environmental impact is
[21:14] Speaker 3: a function of population, yes, but also affluence and technology.
[21:21] Speaker 3: And I think that when you think about those three levers, population, affluence,
[21:25] Speaker 3: and technology, it makes a lot more sense to pull
[21:28] Speaker 3: on affluence and technology, especially when you recognize that wealthy
[21:34] Speaker 3: white people are not having that many babies, and wealthy
[21:37] Speaker 3: white people are the ones with the largest environmental footprint.
[21:41] Speaker 1: Because of course this yeah.
[21:43] Speaker 3: Of course, of course this film throws out technology that's
[21:45] Speaker 3: not even a solution according to them, And it's so
[21:48] Speaker 3: bizarre to me that Michael Moore, who's in the lefty literati,
[21:52] Speaker 3: did not somehow put affluence and capitalism on the table.
[21:56] Speaker 3: You know, all of your movies about how capitalism is bad.
[22:02] Speaker 1: How did this one leave that out? I don't understand.
[22:05] Speaker 3: I know the editor I was working on for the
[22:07] Speaker 3: piece pointed that out, and so that'll be in my
[22:09] Speaker 3: article too, that if you look about if you think
[22:11] Speaker 3: about Bulling for Columbine or Sicico or Roger and me,
[22:14] Speaker 3: I mean, all he does is criticize corporations, and yet
[22:17] Speaker 3: here we are with him criticizing environmental groups that are
[22:21] Speaker 3: battling corporations. It's very nonsensical. So you know, I remember
[22:27] Speaker 3: clearly I was looking at houses with a real state agent,
[22:30] Speaker 3: and real estate agents often tend to be nothing against them.
[22:32] Speaker 3: I'm sure there's some great realestate agents, but in my experience,
[22:35] Speaker 3: I have seen racism practiced more when I've been looking
[22:40] Speaker 3: for a home than ever else in my life, because
[22:44] Speaker 3: real estate agents kind of sort you into neighborhoods that
[22:46] Speaker 3: they think you're supposed to be in, and in the US,
[22:49] Speaker 3: with the way that the school districts are aligned with
[22:52] Speaker 3: property values, they kind of make racial neighborhoods. Anyway, so
[22:57] Speaker 3: one time I was with this real estate agent and
[22:58] Speaker 3: she said to me and my husband, well, you don't
[23:00] Speaker 3: want to live here because those people, they have too
[23:02] Speaker 3: many babies. And she was talking about Hispanic communities, and
[23:06] Speaker 3: she said, you know, people like you, you guys need
[23:08] Speaker 3: to be having more babies because you're not having enough babies.
[23:11] Speaker 3: And that's I feel like that really captured exactly what
[23:14] Speaker 3: the population control thing ends up being about. It ends
[23:18] Speaker 3: up being about who should be having babies. White people
[23:22] Speaker 3: somehow should be having babies, and black and brown and
[23:26] Speaker 3: Indigenous people somehow shouldn't, I guess because we're racist. And
[23:31] Speaker 3: you know, so my husband, who's Madame Mildenberger, he he
[23:35] Speaker 3: did some work on Garrett Harden, who wrote that article
[23:38] Speaker 3: that's really famous, Tragedy of the Commons. And you know,
[23:43] Speaker 3: Garrett Harden was at UC Santa Barbara where we work,
[23:45] Speaker 3: and when Trump was elected, I joined the Southern Poverty
[23:50] Speaker 3: Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States,
[23:53] Speaker 3: and what I learned was that there's a hate group
[23:56] Speaker 3: in Santa Barbara. And I looked up what it is,
[23:59] Speaker 3: and it's a population can control anti immigration group that
[24:02] Speaker 3: Garrett Harden was involved in founding So you know these
[24:06] Speaker 3: the environmental movement has a racist past. You know the
[24:10] Speaker 3: way John Muir, for example, talked about indigenous peoples. Garrett
[24:14] Speaker 3: Harden pushed this idea of lifeboat ethics, which was about
[24:18] Speaker 3: overthrowing sort of black and brown people to keep white
[24:21] Speaker 3: people to have the resources on the boat. And so, yeah,
[24:26] Speaker 3: I just think that if you're going to just randomly
[24:28] Speaker 3: be like, yeah, population controls the answer, and you don't
[24:31] Speaker 3: do any reading about the history of that thinking and
[24:34] Speaker 3: its ties to anti immigration hate groups or like white supremacy,
[24:39] Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know what you're thinking.
[25:01] Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Thanks for joining us. We'll
[25:04] Speaker 1: be back later this week with another episode, maybe two
[25:08] Speaker 1: if I can get it together, and don't forget to
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[25:42] Speaker 1: We'll drop a link in the show notes to all
[25:44] Speaker 1: the details on those things as well. Thanks for listening
[25:47] Speaker 1: and we'll see you soon. Then the back back, back
[26:13] Speaker 1: back

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