Bright Green Lies

"Gosh, I wonder how humans have survived for the past 200,000 years without electricity? Could it be that we really don't need electricity?" says the filmmaker whose filmmaking equipment probably uses electricity. Or, maybe it runs on algae.

"Electricity is a convenience, it is a luxury," says the guy with an electric light burning away right next to him during his interview.

The film presents some interesting information that the so-called "green" industry (solar power, wind turbines, "biomas") are not as "green" as they purport. I don't doubt this. Industries exist to make money. Also, the "green" industry is going to have a reasonably big carbon footprint in these early stages because it's in its infancy, and the oldschool, polluting industries are the only ones that can mine and fabricate the components. But this is not near good enough for the purists behind this film. From the absurdity that electricity is merely a "convenience" -- tell that to people who underwent life-saving surgery today, keeping our COVID-19 vaccine doses temperature-controlled, or simply working jobs to support their families.

The documentary is certainly worth watching. No doubt there is hypocrisy in the green industry, but these filmmakers are pretty stark examples of letting "'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'". They are also caricatures of what most people think of as "environmentalists" -- who get choked up over the birds that are killed each year by wind turbines, cats, and sky scrapers (as it turns out, wind turbines kill the fewest of the three, it turns out -- but still receives heavy scowls and deep disapproval from those who love the earth).

People are entitled to their beliefs, but the filmmakers open themselves up to charges of hypocrisy with their rigidness and purity. Electricity cannot be dismissed as merely a "luxury", as something people could probably live without and be happier for it. That is the kind of mind behind this film. I mean, when you tie the solar power industry in with the Holocaust, explaining what a "claim to virtue" is, there is something drastically wrong with your argument.

Watching this doc, I learned about the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which was fascinating.

In the abstract, many of the ideas voiced by the filmmakers are correct. Capitalism is destroying the parts of earth that sustain human life. Technology isn't the answer to every problem. Often, it's the source of the problem, or exacerbates problems that already exist.

At one point, one of the filmmakers asks "What does the earth need?"

The honest answer is: drastically fewer human beings.

Thing is, that's not going to happen.

The documentary did a good job of discrediting the greenness of renewable energy, and of explaining the destructive nature of our modern industrial civilization.

Their main conclusion is that industrial civilization and agriculture must end, however they provided no hint of how that might be achieved while feeding 8 billion people.

They did not say a single word about the need for democratically supported rapid population reduction policies.

This is quite amazing because population reduction is key for BOTH the goal of deindustrialization, AND the opposing goal of retaining industrial civilization, as non-renewable resources deplete.

In other words, population reduction is the only wise path forward, no matter what lifestyle you desire.

Thank goodness for Ajit Varki's MORT theory which explains that humans exist because we evolved to deny unpleasant realities. I'd go insane without understanding why there are vanishingly few sane people on this planet. Even among well intentioned reasonably aware people like the producers of this documentary.

The question I had going into this was whether it was coming from a right or left perspective. It's the left, but likely the left being financed and co-opted by the right. These are people who are against renewables because they're afraid renewables will hurt the sand. Their view seems to be that wind turbines will kill birds and when it's explained that buildings kill birds, they want to tear down the buildings.

There are some interesting ideas raised here. Climate change is certainly a bigger problem then it's usually presented as and we need more than recycling a few plastic bottles. The thing is that human existence doesn't really mean anything if human beings are left to live in teepees and mud huts which is what the documentarians here are proposing.

Critical thinking from millennials - unfortunately, we don't see that very often these days. They also make time available for opposing opinions for the viewer to assess, like true scientists should - another extreme rarity in these types of documentaries.

I don't agree with absolutely everything the hosts express, but they have certainly presented a valid thought provoking discussion, and present facts with citations. Well done!

In theory, I mostly agree with people like Jensen, but found Planet Of The Humans (2019/2020) more convincing with the same basic themes.

Both of the above could have focused more on the land and ocean space wind & solar power occupy, set to grow radically if full schemes are approved. There's already a major assault on what's left of scenic open space. That angle could really get the attention of environmentalists who've swept the sprawl issue under the rug. It's an environmental tragedy as bad as AGW in many ways. Look up the Net-Zero America project's 2050 projections and prepare to be stunned by the scale they seek.

The thing that sticks out (literally) with "renewables" is the extremely large physical footprint of the end product, especially noticeable with industrial wind turbines. The director even implies that landscape damage is relatively "unseen," though they show various panoramas of wind and solar projects. It's just strange that the biggest thing about them isn't highlighted.

Instead, they emphasize mining as the main resource problem, which is only true in the specific context of water pollution, etc. You don't see mines all over the place at long distances. They should have emphasized why low energy-density machines need far more space than fossil fuels, which build and support them anyhow. Mining is a must for many human endeavors, not just energy infrastructure and batteries.

Nuclear power is a critical alternative to sprawling wind & solar but they write it off as more of the same and offer no real options but primitivism. A realistic view would admit we're stuck with large economies that can't simply be dismantled. One segment made the weird claim that electricity is a luxury item, and asked why we even need it! I only skimmed the rest after that scene, having read the book and agreeing with their main points on blind growth.

This film came off as too anarchistic and non-pragmatic to sway anyone on the fence. I'd recommend the book for its more thorough analysis of technical issues. The term "Bright Green Lies" is a memorable slogan, either way.