Planet of the Humans:

Please discuss (in more than a couple of sentences) four critiques made in the
documentary. Then please discuss your responses to the critiques.

In the documentary “Planet of the Humans”, it referred to discussing renewable energy

and breaking down what it really means to state that “something is renewable”. The film
was based on an environmentalist perspective that compared to other environmental
perspectives. This film seems to bring some controversy which is somewhat dividing the
climate movement. In the documentary there is questioning regarding these renewable
forms of technology and ‘solutions’, and diving into whether or not it is a temporary
band-aid and or a cover up that is essentially causing and increasing the same problem-
a problem in disguise. The first critique that I would consider a huge point for the main
idea of this film would be the critique on our technological society contributing to our
climate issues despite their branding of “renewable” “environmentally friendly”
advertisements. Gibbs then goes on to be more specific within examples that he will
critique regarding whether or not they are actually environmentally friendly and or
contributing to the issue with a disguise. Another critique was on the usage of elephant
manure to power a zoo but turns out that the elephants were not able to produce
manure to heat the elephant barn. There was a need for more elephants in order to get
more manure but that was not realistic so the choice was to use one of the biggest coal
mines and when you bring those two things together, you get an ethanol plant. This all
contributes to the usage of fossil fuels in the form of coal in an attempt to replace fossil
fuels. Which again is “solution” disguised as a problem, because it is only contributing to
it not fixing it. The third critique was on the idea of green energy and the way it is
advertised today. Gibbs then goes on to refer to a journal article posing the question of
whether or not non-fossil energy sources actually replaced fossil fuels. The further
discussion referred to how billions of dollars go into green energy and it is not replacing
fossil fuels. Another critique was on alternative technologies like wind and solar, and
how it creates an illusion that they are somehow different from fossil fuels. The idea is
that solar panels are made from silicon, so from sand but they actually do not use sand
but instead use high quality mined quartz and coal and it needs to be melted at high
degrees. The usage of fossil fuels is needed to create these green energy products,
which does not help fix the problem but creates an illusion of the problem being fixed.

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