Ars Technica just published their review/fact-check too: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/michael-moores-green-energy-takedown-worse-than-netflixs-goop-series/
The Hill just did an interview with Michael and the other filmmakers, was posted this morning. They respond to some of this criticism in the video, and yes, Michael is standing by his film despite...
The Hill just did an interview with Michael and the other filmmakers, was posted this morning. They respond to some of this criticism in the video, and yes, Michael is standing by his film despite the criticism.
Emily Atkin wrote about the movie in her newsletter yesterday. The post is definitely on the snarky side overall, but there's some good info and a lot of links to other good info/thoughts about it.
Emily Atkin wrote about the movie in her newsletter yesterday. The post is definitely on the snarky side overall, but there's some good info and a lot of links to other good info/thoughts about it.
Here's some personal anecdotal evidence of the damage that this film might have caused. I sat down with acquaintances of mine (an almost-leftist/liberal and a randian libertarian climate change...
Here's some personal anecdotal evidence of the damage that this film might have caused.
I sat down with acquaintances of mine (an almost-leftist/liberal and a randian libertarian climate change denier) last night on Skype. The liberal had apparently just watched this film and seemed disillusioned. He said he was disappointed by the Sierra Club, showed us clips from the film, started explaining how moneyed interests inevitably insert themselves into organizations to control the opposition (I think his impression was that the Sierra Club's stance on biofuels was due to their having been compromised). The libertarian was all ears, pointed out that we may as well be burning coal rather than wood chips, speculated that the reason biofuels were skyrocketing was due to the fact that there is probably less government regulation of biofuels whereas coal is overregulated. I explained that biofuels are less than ideal but obviously better than coal from a carbon sequestration standpoint (which didn't interest the libertarian).
I am not so sure. The big issue with burning fossil fuels is their place in the carbon cycle. These were captured over tens of millions of years with processes that rely on plate tectonics. We are...
I am not so sure. The big issue with burning fossil fuels is their place in the carbon cycle. These were captured over tens of millions of years with processes that rely on plate tectonics. We are literally burning tens of millions of years of captured and stored carbon on the span of decades. That coal we're pulling out of Pennsylvania and the rest of Appalachia? That was captured over 300 million years ago and there's an entire time period named after it.
Burning biomass is burning very young carbon capture, and has a very low net CO2 emission into the atmosphere, since the intent of biomass is to regrow and harvest new biomass. You can read about the life cycle analysis of biomass and other power types from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's website.
I watched the film and gave some of my comments on the Tildes post here. It was pretty disappointing and really focused on the wrong things. If you claim to be an environmentalist and find places like Breitbart and other climate change denying sites agreeing or championing those same opinions, you need to take a hard look in the mirror.
Lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions is a thing. You don't need to rely on gut feelings and speculation when the math can tell you where the ideal balance is on a case-by-case basis based on...
Based on that, I arrived at the conclusion that we shouldn't be burning biofuels right now.
Lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions is a thing. You don't need to rely on gut feelings and speculation when the math can tell you where the ideal balance is on a case-by-case basis based on contexts within some reasonable cone of uncertainty.
I've grown increasingly disillusioned and suspicious of left "activists" like McKibben (and Moore) these past 4 or 5 years. It's become clear to me that they're much more interested in making noise and getting attention than about being correct about the facts, precise in their language, or honest in discussing trade-offs. Actual expertise and nuanced analysis is taking a back-seat to sweeping pronouncements about whether "we" across the planet should or shouldn't be burning biofuels when the actual answer likely varies on a case by case basis.
When it comes to environmental and public health policy these days, the clusterfuck around discussion of GMOs and soft-pedaling in discussion of vaccines has made me quickly lose interest in hearing takes from anyone who isn't a credentialed scientist (and most who know me know I'm anti-credentialism, for the most part). And that includes documentarians, writers, lawyers, as well as professional "activists."
They can still be not-ideal (or even bad) and still an improvement over fossil fuels as a bridge to even more sustainable options (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal). We should be doing everything...
They can still be not-ideal (or even bad) and still an improvement over fossil fuels as a bridge to even more sustainable options (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal). We should be doing everything we can to cut down on fossil fuel emissions now. The film, and by extension Moore, offered no solutions, only complaints and a framing of the issue that discouraged using these as transitions.
To be fair, there's some pretty good arguments (by actual environmentalists) that "biofuel" is a pretty bad approach to renewable energy. Growing plants just to burn them is a colossal waste of...
To be fair, there's some pretty good arguments (by actual environmentalists) that "biofuel" is a pretty bad approach to renewable energy. Growing plants just to burn them is a colossal waste of farmland, which, while better for carbon emissions by-the-numbers, is still pretty "dead" by biodiversity standards. As an extreme example, think chopping down rainforests to grow "biofuel".
There's some very obvious benefits to not pumping poisonous gas into the atmosphere. But the ideal answer to that is probably not sealing the land with "biofuel" farms.
It is more than a bit concerning to see so many self-styled "Leftists" put so much stock in "population control" and Malthusian resource constraints as the solutions to our problems, decrying any...
It is more than a bit concerning to see so many self-styled "Leftists" put so much stock in "population control" and Malthusian resource constraints as the solutions to our problems, decrying any actually practiced attempts at solutions as being "corrupt." This isn't socialism, it's too nihilistic. This is very thinly veiled eco-fascism.
Genuine environmentalists would realise without a doubt that humanity is not acting sustainably on this planet, and we are therefore overpopulated. It's one of many strategies we're going to need...
Genuine environmentalists would realise without a doubt that humanity is not acting sustainably on this planet, and we are therefore overpopulated. It's one of many strategies we're going to need to solve this problem.
Talking about people like they're weeds is not a "strategy" that respects anyone's humanity.
Genuine environmentalists would realise without a doubt that humanity is not acting sustainably on this planet, and we are therefore overpopulated. It's one of many strategies we're going to need to solve this problem.
Talking about people like they're weeds is not a "strategy" that respects anyone's humanity.
That's an unfair characterisation of my intent and isn't a charitable interpretation of the discussion I'm trying to have. It is true we are a species living in on our own Petri dish; and...
That's an unfair characterisation of my intent and isn't a charitable interpretation of the discussion I'm trying to have. It is true we are a species living in on our own Petri dish; and respecting humanity is not also forcing millions or billions of people to suffer through resource scarcity caused by nature being unable to support the number of humans currently on it.
It cuts both ways. At some point, there is a number, given our consumption rates, that is "sustainable", and a larger number, that is non sustainable. It does need to be talked about.
True... But the argument should be we need to reduce consumption and business practices so we can live sustainably. But this is a huge leap of logic and steps right into far-right talking points...
Genuine environmentalists would realise without a doubt that humanity is not acting sustainably on this planet,
True... But the argument should be we need to reduce consumption and business practices so we can live sustainably.
and we are therefore overpopulated.
But this is a huge leap of logic and steps right into far-right talking points and some seriously questionable ethics.
Most people would know me as anything but a far-right person; and it's not a huge leap of logic at all. In fact, that's the definition of overpopulation! Whether an organism is living sustainably...
But this is a huge leap of logic and steps right into far-right talking points and some seriously questionable ethics.
Most people would know me as anything but a far-right person; and it's not a huge leap of logic at all. In fact, that's the definition of overpopulation! Whether an organism is living sustainably in its environment. I'd love to discuss this without being thrown against accusations of "questionable ethics", "right wing talking points", or being called out for "not respecting humanity".
I didn't accuse you of any of that (except for maybe the leap in logic), so I apologize if it seemed that way. Bringing up 'overpopulation' without further elaborating on it just leaves the door...
I didn't accuse you of any of that (except for maybe the leap in logic), so I apologize if it seemed that way. Bringing up 'overpopulation' without further elaborating on it just leaves the door open to Malthusian interpretations. Where have population control attempts happened in the past? What groups did they target?
The term you're looking for is carrying capacity. Humans are unique from other species carrying capacity in that we can change habits and develop technology that change the carrying capacity for us as a species.
That's the same argument people use against socialism—it's bad because Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, etc attempted it in some bastardised form. Which isn't really much of an argument because it...
Bringing up 'overpopulation' without further elaborating on it just leaves the door open to Malthusian interpretations. Where have population control attempts happened in the past? What groups did they target?
That's the same argument people use against socialism—it's bad because Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, etc attempted it in some bastardised form. Which isn't really much of an argument because it doesn't evaluate the core principle, it just looks at flawed implementations. Anything can be bad if you have an asshole at the top running it.
You're right though, perhaps I should've been more distinct when referring the specific take I have on overpopulation management—it's not a nasty "let's kill group x" form of population control. No reasonable person has a view like that; and you shouldn't listen to people who do have that view.
The term you're looking for is carrying capacity.
Yep. And the carrying capacity of planet Earth, as it currently stands, is well below our current capacity as a species. There's some discussion about what the capacity is, but there's lots of evidence that we have already well surpassed that value already and are solidly in 'overshoot' territory. Frankly it's hard to not be skeptical of claims we have a capacity in the tens of billions when you look around and see glaciers melting, ice caps receding, land ice carving into the ocean, sea level rise, intensification of hurricanes and storms, desertification, heat waves, mass coastal erosion, land usage and destruction, mass extinctions of species, aerosol and particulate pollution, the list honestly goes on and on. We are poisoning the planet in slow motion.
Humans are unique from other species carrying capacity in that we can change habits and develop technology that change the carrying capacity for us as a species.
Except in practice this never actually happens. We want to have our cake and eat it too. I think you over-estimate how effective humans are at making processes more efficient, and instead of reducing the absolute load a specific process has on our planet, we absorb more of that efficiency and redirect it to scaling up further or saturating existing capacity again. This is called Jevon's paradox/the efficiency dilemma, and is remarkably good at demonstrating this.
Honestly, I've covered this discussion on Tildes numerous times before. It's not just about how much room there is for people to live, whether there's enough resources to grow food, whether we can desalinate water from the Earth's oceans. It comes down to this: are we sustainably living on the planet?
Given the existence of rapid catastrophic climate change, the answer is we are certainly not, and given our lack of action on climate change, it's obvious we don't care either. So, yes, there's not just too many people, there's far too many people.
I'm a strong believer in maximising human happiness. Obviously we can't go around killing people, but human happiness will be net reduced if we destroy and obliterate the ecology and framework of the environment we live in. So yeah, maybe governments do need to step in and say "hey, maybe don't have more than two kids". At this point, if we want any hope in mitigating the effects of climate change, any little thing helps. Lots of small changes can still make a sizeable difference.
I find it a bit ironic that you use socialism as an analogy when prominent socialist philosophers like Marx and Engels were hugely critical of Malthus' work and the idea of overpopulation. Both...
I find it a bit ironic that you use socialism as an analogy when prominent socialist philosophers like Marx and Engels were hugely critical of Malthus' work and the idea of overpopulation. Both propose that the idea of overpopulation is a symptom of capitalism, which itself stands as an antithesis to sustainable living. When people living in developed countries discuss this topic (which I assume we both are, given education and access to the internet and the general demographics of this site), we do it from a country using the greatest resources per capita and with the least sustainable practices. Developed countries like the US, France, Australia, etc all require many Earths to sustain their lifestyle with populations of 7 billion. With changed lifestyle choices, the Earth could absolutely support a population of more than it currently is. Does that mean we need to? No.
You advocated several times in your posts for a global population of 1 billion or less. Do you realize what it would take to achieve that goal in any realistic sense of time? Even if you instituted a strict 1 child per woman policy globally this year it wouldn't be enough to reach 1 billion people by 2100. You can play around with scenarios in a population simulator like this one. If that kind of scenario is only possible with forced sterilization, how am I supposed to react to a proposal to reduce the human population by less than 1 billion? I see no ethical way to achieve that.
This is absurd how my focus is genuinely being twisted from "we need to consider the Earth's ecology and sustainability of our presence" to apparently a point of I support fascist dictatorships....
This is absurd how my focus is genuinely being twisted from "we need to consider the Earth's ecology and sustainability of our presence" to apparently a point of I support fascist dictatorships. How that's possible within the keeping of Tildes' principles around taking good faith interpretations of other people's arguments is beyond me.
Nope, I'm just a regular environmentalist type who thinks western capitalism promotes unadulterated growth and waste, and that we need higher education to drop fertility rates, and probably tax incentives to promote small family planning. Solving climate change is going to require an 'all of the above' approach, and this is one of the tools in our toolbox. Go big on policies which promote population decline and spend large sums of money on education in your country and in poorer ones.
But if people want to characterise those with my viewpoints as supporters of authoritarian regimes, I guess I can't stop people taking the worst possible view of me personally.
Sorry for misinterpreting you, you're right. I got carried away. I don't know what the solution is. I don't think that having the state tell people what to do with their bodies/children is the...
Sorry for misinterpreting you, you're right. I got carried away.
I don't know what the solution is. I don't think that having the state tell people what to do with their bodies/children is the answer, and (in America at least) I don't think that will ever be an electable/actionable platform.
I've been reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty. In the section I'm on, he's engaging with what sounds to have been a popularly accepted malthusian theory (in general) with the aim of...
I've been reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty. In the section I'm on, he's engaging with what sounds to have been a popularly accepted malthusian theory (in general) with the aim of grappling with the also popular interpretation that this theory predicts poverty as an inevitability and therefore justifies the existence of poverty in industrialized societies. He's a little more explicit with the term referring specifically to Malthus's claims about rates of population growth and rates of productive growth.
The rest of the book is devoted to demonstrating that poverty is a consequence of monopolies that are inherent in the ownership of land so it would make sense for him to devote a section to challenging malthusian theory.
This is almost a tangent to the topic at hand but I guess the reason I bring it up is that I think leftists recognize that inequitable resource distribution is a feature of our current system and this recognition is prerequisite to any discussion of population as a factor in anthropogenic environmental disruption. At the same time, broaching the topic of population control under a system that views poverty as inevitable is just seeking new forms of injustice.
Ars Technica just published their review/fact-check too: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/michael-moores-green-energy-takedown-worse-than-netflixs-goop-series/
The Hill just did an interview with Michael and the other filmmakers, was posted this morning. They respond to some of this criticism in the video, and yes, Michael is standing by his film despite the criticism.
Emily Atkin wrote about the movie in her newsletter yesterday. The post is definitely on the snarky side overall, but there's some good info and a lot of links to other good info/thoughts about it.
Here's some personal anecdotal evidence of the damage that this film might have caused.
I sat down with acquaintances of mine (an almost-leftist/liberal and a randian libertarian climate change denier) last night on Skype. The liberal had apparently just watched this film and seemed disillusioned. He said he was disappointed by the Sierra Club, showed us clips from the film, started explaining how moneyed interests inevitably insert themselves into organizations to control the opposition (I think his impression was that the Sierra Club's stance on biofuels was due to their having been compromised). The libertarian was all ears, pointed out that we may as well be burning coal rather than wood chips, speculated that the reason biofuels were skyrocketing was due to the fact that there is probably less government regulation of biofuels whereas coal is overregulated. I explained that biofuels are less than ideal but obviously better than coal from a carbon sequestration standpoint (which didn't interest the libertarian).
I am not so sure. The big issue with burning fossil fuels is their place in the carbon cycle. These were captured over tens of millions of years with processes that rely on plate tectonics. We are literally burning tens of millions of years of captured and stored carbon on the span of decades. That coal we're pulling out of Pennsylvania and the rest of Appalachia? That was captured over 300 million years ago and there's an entire time period named after it.
Burning biomass is burning very young carbon capture, and has a very low net CO2 emission into the atmosphere, since the intent of biomass is to regrow and harvest new biomass. You can read about the life cycle analysis of biomass and other power types from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's website.
I watched the film and gave some of my comments on the Tildes post here. It was pretty disappointing and really focused on the wrong things. If you claim to be an environmentalist and find places like Breitbart and other climate change denying sites agreeing or championing those same opinions, you need to take a hard look in the mirror.
Lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions is a thing. You don't need to rely on gut feelings and speculation when the math can tell you where the ideal balance is on a case-by-case basis based on contexts within some reasonable cone of uncertainty.
I've grown increasingly disillusioned and suspicious of left "activists" like McKibben (and Moore) these past 4 or 5 years. It's become clear to me that they're much more interested in making noise and getting attention than about being correct about the facts, precise in their language, or honest in discussing trade-offs. Actual expertise and nuanced analysis is taking a back-seat to sweeping pronouncements about whether "we" across the planet should or shouldn't be burning biofuels when the actual answer likely varies on a case by case basis.
When it comes to environmental and public health policy these days, the clusterfuck around discussion of GMOs and soft-pedaling in discussion of vaccines has made me quickly lose interest in hearing takes from anyone who isn't a credentialed scientist (and most who know me know I'm anti-credentialism, for the most part). And that includes documentarians, writers, lawyers, as well as professional "activists."
They can still be not-ideal (or even bad) and still an improvement over fossil fuels as a bridge to even more sustainable options (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal). We should be doing everything we can to cut down on fossil fuel emissions now. The film, and by extension Moore, offered no solutions, only complaints and a framing of the issue that discouraged using these as transitions.
To be fair, there's some pretty good arguments (by actual environmentalists) that "biofuel" is a pretty bad approach to renewable energy. Growing plants just to burn them is a colossal waste of farmland, which, while better for carbon emissions by-the-numbers, is still pretty "dead" by biodiversity standards. As an extreme example, think chopping down rainforests to grow "biofuel".
There's some very obvious benefits to not pumping poisonous gas into the atmosphere. But the ideal answer to that is probably not sealing the land with "biofuel" farms.
It is more than a bit concerning to see so many self-styled "Leftists" put so much stock in "population control" and Malthusian resource constraints as the solutions to our problems, decrying any actually practiced attempts at solutions as being "corrupt." This isn't socialism, it's too nihilistic. This is very thinly veiled eco-fascism.
Genuine environmentalists would realise without a doubt that humanity is not acting sustainably on this planet, and we are therefore overpopulated. It's one of many strategies we're going to need to solve this problem.
Talking about people like they're weeds is not a "strategy" that respects anyone's humanity.
That's an unfair characterisation of my intent and isn't a charitable interpretation of the discussion I'm trying to have. It is true we are a species living in on our own Petri dish; and respecting humanity is not also forcing millions or billions of people to suffer through resource scarcity caused by nature being unable to support the number of humans currently on it.
It cuts both ways. At some point, there is a number, given our consumption rates, that is "sustainable", and a larger number, that is non sustainable. It does need to be talked about.
True... But the argument should be we need to reduce consumption and business practices so we can live sustainably.
But this is a huge leap of logic and steps right into far-right talking points and some seriously questionable ethics.
Most people would know me as anything but a far-right person; and it's not a huge leap of logic at all. In fact, that's the definition of overpopulation! Whether an organism is living sustainably in its environment. I'd love to discuss this without being thrown against accusations of "questionable ethics", "right wing talking points", or being called out for "not respecting humanity".
I didn't accuse you of any of that (except for maybe the leap in logic), so I apologize if it seemed that way. Bringing up 'overpopulation' without further elaborating on it just leaves the door open to Malthusian interpretations. Where have population control attempts happened in the past? What groups did they target?
The term you're looking for is carrying capacity. Humans are unique from other species carrying capacity in that we can change habits and develop technology that change the carrying capacity for us as a species.
That's the same argument people use against socialism—it's bad because Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, etc attempted it in some bastardised form. Which isn't really much of an argument because it doesn't evaluate the core principle, it just looks at flawed implementations. Anything can be bad if you have an asshole at the top running it.
You're right though, perhaps I should've been more distinct when referring the specific take I have on overpopulation management—it's not a nasty "let's kill group x" form of population control. No reasonable person has a view like that; and you shouldn't listen to people who do have that view.
Yep. And the carrying capacity of planet Earth, as it currently stands, is well below our current capacity as a species. There's some discussion about what the capacity is, but there's lots of evidence that we have already well surpassed that value already and are solidly in 'overshoot' territory. Frankly it's hard to not be skeptical of claims we have a capacity in the tens of billions when you look around and see glaciers melting, ice caps receding, land ice carving into the ocean, sea level rise, intensification of hurricanes and storms, desertification, heat waves, mass coastal erosion, land usage and destruction, mass extinctions of species, aerosol and particulate pollution, the list honestly goes on and on. We are poisoning the planet in slow motion.
Except in practice this never actually happens. We want to have our cake and eat it too. I think you over-estimate how effective humans are at making processes more efficient, and instead of reducing the absolute load a specific process has on our planet, we absorb more of that efficiency and redirect it to scaling up further or saturating existing capacity again. This is called Jevon's paradox/the efficiency dilemma, and is remarkably good at demonstrating this.
Honestly, I've covered this discussion on Tildes numerous times before. It's not just about how much room there is for people to live, whether there's enough resources to grow food, whether we can desalinate water from the Earth's oceans. It comes down to this: are we sustainably living on the planet?
Given the existence of rapid catastrophic climate change, the answer is we are certainly not, and given our lack of action on climate change, it's obvious we don't care either. So, yes, there's not just too many people, there's far too many people.
I'm a strong believer in maximising human happiness. Obviously we can't go around killing people, but human happiness will be net reduced if we destroy and obliterate the ecology and framework of the environment we live in. So yeah, maybe governments do need to step in and say "hey, maybe don't have more than two kids". At this point, if we want any hope in mitigating the effects of climate change, any little thing helps. Lots of small changes can still make a sizeable difference.
I find it a bit ironic that you use socialism as an analogy when prominent socialist philosophers like Marx and Engels were hugely critical of Malthus' work and the idea of overpopulation. Both propose that the idea of overpopulation is a symptom of capitalism, which itself stands as an antithesis to sustainable living. When people living in developed countries discuss this topic (which I assume we both are, given education and access to the internet and the general demographics of this site), we do it from a country using the greatest resources per capita and with the least sustainable practices. Developed countries like the US, France, Australia, etc all require many Earths to sustain their lifestyle with populations of 7 billion. With changed lifestyle choices, the Earth could absolutely support a population of more than it currently is. Does that mean we need to? No.
Chris Williams wrote a more modern critique of capitalism and climate change, titled Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. He has publicly spoken about the same topic. There are also some succinct videos on socialist takes on Malthusian overpopulation like this one.
You advocated several times in your posts for a global population of 1 billion or less. Do you realize what it would take to achieve that goal in any realistic sense of time? Even if you instituted a strict 1 child per woman policy globally this year it wouldn't be enough to reach 1 billion people by 2100. You can play around with scenarios in a population simulator like this one. If that kind of scenario is only possible with forced sterilization, how am I supposed to react to a proposal to reduce the human population by less than 1 billion? I see no ethical way to achieve that.
This is absurd how my focus is genuinely being twisted from "we need to consider the Earth's ecology and sustainability of our presence" to apparently a point of I support fascist dictatorships. How that's possible within the keeping of Tildes' principles around taking good faith interpretations of other people's arguments is beyond me.
Nope, I'm just a regular environmentalist type who thinks western capitalism promotes unadulterated growth and waste, and that we need higher education to drop fertility rates, and probably tax incentives to promote small family planning. Solving climate change is going to require an 'all of the above' approach, and this is one of the tools in our toolbox. Go big on policies which promote population decline and spend large sums of money on education in your country and in poorer ones.
But if people want to characterise those with my viewpoints as supporters of authoritarian regimes, I guess I can't stop people taking the worst possible view of me personally.
Sorry for misinterpreting you, you're right. I got carried away.
I don't know what the solution is. I don't think that having the state tell people what to do with their bodies/children is the answer, and (in America at least) I don't think that will ever be an electable/actionable platform.
I've been reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty. In the section I'm on, he's engaging with what sounds to have been a popularly accepted malthusian theory (in general) with the aim of grappling with the also popular interpretation that this theory predicts poverty as an inevitability and therefore justifies the existence of poverty in industrialized societies. He's a little more explicit with the term referring specifically to Malthus's claims about rates of population growth and rates of productive growth.
The rest of the book is devoted to demonstrating that poverty is a consequence of monopolies that are inherent in the ownership of land so it would make sense for him to devote a section to challenging malthusian theory.
This is almost a tangent to the topic at hand but I guess the reason I bring it up is that I think leftists recognize that inequitable resource distribution is a feature of our current system and this recognition is prerequisite to any discussion of population as a factor in anthropogenic environmental disruption. At the same time, broaching the topic of population control under a system that views poverty as inevitable is just seeking new forms of injustice.