5 Gyres Reviews Film, “Planet of the Humans”

If “Planet of the Humans” left you a little hopeless, join the crowd. That little voice in your head that questions the ability of renewable energy to transform the world just got a little louder because, as director/producer Jeff Gibbs explains, “solar, wind and biomass are not going to get us there.”  While the debunking of renewables as a flawless solution is a reality-check about true costs, what’s missing is a broader analysis of consumption. Attempting to use green energy to maintain our pace of drilling, mining, extraction and exploitation, waste and pollution cannot be sustained. A shift to renewables and meeting the energy needs of the global south could meet a reduction in consumption by the global north half-way. That’s the narrative we were hoping for. 

Early in the film (which is free on YouTube) Gibbs wanders backstage to an Earth Day concert and discovers the energy to run the stage, which the crowd is told runs on renewables, is secretly tied to the grid. Later, proposed wind farms are flattening forests and bulldozing mountain tops in Vermont to make room for turbines. Meanwhile at a GM plant, at the unveiling of the Chevy Volt a spokesperson claims, “Everyone thought we killed the electric vehicle. No we didn’t. It’s alive and well,” to which Gibbs asks, “So what’s charging the batteries right now?” leading to an awkward admittance that the local coal-burning plant powers their EVs. 

The film goes on to expose the systems of extraction of silica to make photovoltaics, social injustices in the extraction of rare earth metals, and the abundance of fossil fuels driving the infrastructure to manufacture and transport the entire system. Ozzie Zehner, author of the 2012 book “Green Illusions,” steps into frame to make the case that these capital costs to build everything as well as the operating cost to run it all, are disingenuous. If you consider the efficiency and lifespan of turbines and panels, you’re left thinking you would have burned less fuel if you had stuck to your local power grid all along. You could counter-argue that we don’t have an existing infrastructure of renewable energy to build new renewable energy. The chicken comes before the egg, right? While it’s misleading for manufacturers of renewables and electric cars to hide their true carbon footprint, it’s also unrealistic and unfair to chastise them for using the current system to get things going.  

But Gibbs missed a more important essential point. Developed economies have a strange cultural expectation that renewable energy and new technology will be the magical feel-good replacement to match 1-to-1 our current energy and material demands – that somehow we can maintain a Western rate of consumption by flicking a switch.  Renewables are not the culprit, consumption of non-renewable stocks is, and the larger political/corporate forces that drive this consumption. 

After watching the doc we did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of energy consumption by the average American. If the US consumes 7.4 billion barrels of oil per year in 2019 (eia.gov) and there are 328.2 million Americans, then each American consumes 6.2% of a barrel of oil, or 90,696 kcals of energy per day. This supports everything about our consumer lifestyles and the industries that support them. This doesn’t correct for industrial uses (or that children don’t drive) and doesn’t account for the equity issues embedded here, as the energy and resource demands of the wealthy (with vacation homes, international flights, and expensive gadgets) overshadow the demands of the less affluent populace. If 11,000 years ago, as agriculture kicked in, we got by with 2,000 calories per day (probably a lot less), then today we are consuming 45 times that, using energy from non-renewable stocks.  

By the end of this decade, UN SDGs aim to get the 840 million people living without electricity onto a grid (irena.org), the rising middle class will grow by 2 billion (brookings.edu), and global population will grow to 8.5 billion (un.org), all by 2030. Everyone deserves to have basic needs met as a human right and a path to participation in modern civilization. But we’re already drilling/mining wider and deeper to get the energy and materials we need to maintain things as they are for the few that consume it most. Combine these growth predictions with the expected 3% economic growth rate of developed economies and we’re looking at tremendous resource scarcity of all non-renewable stocks.  As Nate Hagens of the Post-Carbon Institute explains, “Globally, we’re turning into an energy-squandering superorganism, like some energy-hungry, blind, purposeless amoeba.” Like it or not, the “Great Simplification” as Hagens refers to it, living with less because it’s gone or too expensive to extract, is our destiny.

The challenge in the near future is to live smarter, decentralize and localize our economies. The current COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of our global supply chains and elevated the conversation on localization of everything from food security to micro-grids. Victory gardens are back. We need to globalize ideas, not stuff. It is possible, not easy, but increasingly desirable. For example, when I co-founded the 5 Gyres Institute with Anna Cummins back in 2010 to research ocean plastic pollution, we found ourselves sailing around the world. The culture of living on a boat includes conserving power, not wasting drinking water, scouring the pantry daily for food that needs to be eaten first. You quickly settle into a culture of conservation by necessity. Yes, there’s a carbon footprint in the polymers that make up the boat hull, a combo of diesel and solar to charge batteries, the components of those batteries and electronics, including a flotilla of satellites supporting communications and navigation equipment, but living with less becomes normal, easy, and there’s another positive externality from how you spend your time. You take time to read, write in journals, bond with crew, share meals, watch the waves and contemplate your place.  

This simplification, having spent many months at it, delivers superb quality of life, provided your basic needs are met. This later part however is the key. Our sailing expedition came with the privilege of having funding to support our mission to stop plastic pollution. We need to ensure the basic needs of our marginalized communities are met and deeply examine the inequities around who has access to which resources. 

While we talk about the shortcomings of renewable energy and their inherent material demands, we cannot reject that they are inevitable and that the conversation must be coupled with the necessary cultural renaissance toward quality of life over our love of things and all that fuels them. When Gibbs says, “We don’t talk about overpopulation, consumption, suicide of economic growth because there’s no profit in it,” we must make the case that there’s greater value and a hopeful path forward in living smarter, simpler, self-reliant, and within resilient communities.