I finally watched Michael Moore’s documentary Planet of the Humans (well the abridged version).[1] I now have a better idea why so many leftist organizations were angry at his movie, indeed it gained so much anger it was even removed from Youtube at one point.[2] Why did the movie get such a reaction from progressives? Well, I think it is because it reveals too much too bluntly.
I remember
at the time of the release many conservative pundits were lauding the film
because of its bare-knuckled expose of the environmental agency. Anyone who has
taken the time to look into so-called “green” energy can see that it is nothing
of the sort. But Planet of the Humans bears this out with brilliant
rhetoric and dialectic. There is a scene where Michael Moore asks a woman
promoting an electric car how that car is charged, and it is very funny and very
telling. The car is charged off a grid that requires fossil fuel energy to work,
as we all know is the case. Showing how giant fossil fuel giant companies are
intricately involved in the environmental space, and necessarily so, is also powerful.
And when you see in the movie how necessary coal and rock mining are to the
process of making solar panels, it really just pulls the pants down on the
whole “environmentalist” enterprise. Solar panels are incredibly fossil fuel
dependent: they are built from coal and quartz, and they are disposable. The
gig is up on the whole enterprise.[3]
When viewed
from this lens, it is not hard to see why so many conservative or right-wing
commentators would laud this film: it gives a left-wing perspective on the
overstated success of the environmental industry. Anyone even to the slight
right of the political spectrum is called a climate denier, or conspiracy
theorist, if they dare question the environmental juggernaut. It is a sacred
cow that you are simply supposed to prostrate yourself before. This is partly
because those who want to save the environment have good rhetoric on their side.
It is not hard to convince
people that we need to preserve dying mammals, sea life and rivers, no one is
against this that I know. It is also because state funded subsidies have turned
green energy into very successful business strategy. But most importantly this
happens because the whole media landscape is dominated by a quasi-leftist
position that just assumes renewables are the answer and we are simply in the
transition stage right now. You hear this perspective shared often in the
media. Those who question renewables are at best treated like luddites.
Michael
Moore makes a mockery of this position showing that there has been no
transition at all from fossil fuel to renewables. Rather, all the current
environmental technologies are just fossil fuels in environmental drag. And why
wouldn’t they be? When you consider how many taxpayer funded subsidies are out
there inspiring billionaires to get their tax credits, any fossil fuel company
worth its salt would be finding ways to get their share of the pie. Governments
seem willing to just consider the finished product, and not from what, or how
the technologies are made. And, when you see how necessary mining coal is to
solar panels, or mining rare earth materials is for batteries, you realize that
the fossil fuel and other mining industries have long, bright futures ahead of
them.
But I
suspect much of the left wing outrage, or at least some of it, comes not from
Michael Moore exposing the obvious truth about the fossil fuel dependent
environmental industry, but rather his blunt statement of the environmental
movements less publicized true goal: population control.
When you
step back and view Moore’s movie as a whole, it is not a boon to the right, but
a clarion call to the radical environmental left. His message is not: green
energy is a con, therefore let’s move on from this fool’s errand. His message
is actually: green energy is not the solution, it never really was, population
reduction is our only hope, so let’s get on with it. Indeed, the whole movie,
at least the abridged version I watched, is a carefully and deliberately
structured rhetorical enterprise designed to stoke fear in the heart of the
watcher about what could happen to the planet, if we do not drastically reduce
the human population now!!
Even the
title of the movie, Planet of the Humans, is clearly a play on the
famous Planet of the Apes movies. Moore is setting up a human life as we
know it verse simian life, and by extension all wild life, argument. The
rhetorical message is clear: it is us or them, and the true environmentalist
wants to help them, that is animals, not us. We are the species that has taken
over the planet, that have gotten out of control, we are the problem. Let
Michael’s voiceover speak for itself:
There is a way out of this. We humans must accept, that
infinite growth on a finite planted is suicide. We must accept, that our human
presence is already far beyond sustainability. And all that that implies.
We must take control of our environmental movement and our future…
…Less must be the new more. And instead of climate change, we
must at long last accept that it is not the carbon dioxide molecule destroying
the planet. It’s us. It’s not one thing, but everything we humans are doing. A
human caused apocalypse.
If we get ourselves under control, all things are possible.
And if we don’t…?[4] (emphasis
mine).
He leaves
this question hanging, and the movie fades into a scene of an orangutan habitat
being destroyed. It is a powerful scene, truly it is. But the message it is
serving is sinister: it is them or us. Moore brings all his film making talents
to bear, to make the case that we need to deal with the human population
problem.
It is
important to note, though, that Moore’s argument is not new in the
environmentalist sphere. There has always been a menacing undercurrent of
population control in the green movement. It is sad to see over the years how many
rational people have been duped by the cuddly and friendly persona that the green
movement seeks to portray itself with. Because really, for some time, many in
the movement have made it clear, that they see your family and my family, and
everyone’s family as a problem that needs to be solved.
In any
movement there are the high priests, the evangelists, the converted, the laity,
the nominal, the radical and the charlatans. The high priests are the status
bearers of the movement, the famous ones, the Al Gores. The evangelists are the
lesser priests who promote the movement through articles, books, foundations,
roadside stands in the city, t-shirts, etc, etc. The converted are those who
were ideologically transformed into the movement, the people who once were lost
in the dredges of V8’s and coal appreciation, and are now saved to the cause.
The laity are just the ordinary people who say, “yes we should look after the
planet.” The nominal are those who don’t really care, but will pretend to be
true believers for a night to get a date with the pretty vegan girl. And the radical
are the true believers who are found in all the ranks up from the laity to the
high priests, though in all those ranks there are also charlatans.
So, if we
are charitable and recognize this to be true, this means that we are aware that
not everyone who uses the environmentalist tag is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate
of population control. But the radicals that advocate this agenda exist, and
they are influential. It would be foolish to not recognize that this is a
strong undercurrent in the green movement, and it reveals itself openly from
time to time, like in Moore’s Planet of the Humans. In fact, it has long
been integral to the movement.
A
Blueprint for Survival, first an Ecologist issue and then a book printed in 1972, presents
an interesting example here. The writers argue that:
‘Radical change is both necessary and inevitable because the
present increases in human numbers and per capita consumption, by disrupting
ecosystems and depleting resources, are undermining the very foundations of
survival,’ wrote Ecologist founder Edward Goldsmith, Robert Allen and a team of
colleagues, who named self-sufficient smaller communities, like those of native
societies, as a model for sustainable living.
As part of a strategy for the future this forward-thinking
team outlined ‘The Movement for Survival,’ which would be spearheaded by ‘a
coalition of organisations concerned with environmental issues.’ This movement
would eventually lead to the formation of the Green Party.[5]
In Blueprint
they outlined a strategy for pushing the world towards green endeavours,
and outlined their radical goals. They
suggest things like a “raw-materials tax” to incentivize people giving up using
the particular materials being taxed, by penalizing “resource-intensive
industries and favour[ing] employment-intensive ones” and also a “power tax”,
which we today would call a carbon tax.[6]
They clearly wanted us to stop using things we need for
our standard of civilisation. But the writers were clearly aware that this
would not be enough. The true goal needed to be to get consumption levels way
down.[7]
For the
writers of Blueprint, only population controls could solve this issue. As
they note the maximum carrying capacity of the planet must be gauged and in
their reckoning, “It is clear that our population is too large to permit the
optimization of many social and ecological requirements.”[8]
They were concerned that in 1972 Britain was already beyond its carrying
capacity therefore it would need “to reduce its numbers before stabilizing.”[9]
They suggest Britain reduce its population to 30 Million people.[10]
Of course they don’t just stop there. By their reckoning “the optimum
population for the world is unlikely to be above 3.5 billion and is probably a
good deal less.”[11]
In 1972 the population of the world was already 3.8 billion,[12]
and they were already calling for population reduction. They would be
apoplectic if they saw the population of the world today.
The writers
base this optimum population on certain consumption requirements that were well
below the average for a developed country in their day. But ominously they warn
us:
Utopian though they may be, unless these assumptions are
realized, we are faced either with the task of reducing world population still
further, until it is well below the optimum, or with condoning inequalities
grosser and more unjust than those that we in the developed countries foster at
present.[13]
To stop this
apparently “ghastly” population problem, they must go all out to lower the
birth rate by the end of the 20th century, so that recruitment “equals
the rate of loss.”[14]
However, some countries will have to actually reduce their population sizes to
reach stability.[15]
They then suggest how this can be achieved with various means including
propaganda, advertising, celebrating childless couples as ideal, making
contraception sterilization and abortion all easy to access and free of charge,
as well researching other population control methods.[16]
If these incentive based methods don’t work, then in the meantime they discuss
researching other “restraints” on population growth.[17]
They acknowledge, that maintaining control of these changes will be difficult:
While there is good evidence that human societies can happily
remain stable for long periods, there is no doubt that the long transitional
stage that we and our children must go through will impose a heavy burden on
our moral courage and will require great restraint. Legislation and the
operation of police forces and the courts will be necessary to reinforce this
restraint, but we believe that such external controls can never be so subtle
nor so effective as internal controls.”[18]
Legal
restraints and “internal controls”, i.e. anti-family brain washing! Still think
the environmental movement is all cuddly and cute? Interestingly, they also suggest
stopping all immigration.[19]
Obviously two globalist agendas are coming to loggerheads with these plans.
They also
advocate small, tribal/town like communities, which are decentralized, locally
supportable, and most importantly they need to “create community feeling
and global awareness rather than that dangerous and sterile compromise
which is nationalism”[20]
(emphasis theirs). They say we should put less focus on car ownership, and
encourage mass road transit, and rail, i.e. busses and trains.[21]
It is right
about now, that some of my readers will be recognizing a certain famous UN
agenda. This agenda is real, and the information I am presenting is not from
any conspiracy site, but rather from a book, published by the Ecologist,
and read and endorsed by many, which, it appears, has had a lot of influence in
global politics in the last 50 years. Population control has been integral to the
environmentalist push from very early on. Indeed, without a massive reduction
in the human population, the environmentalist movement cannot
achieve its goals. This is stated clearly in Blueprint, Planet of the
Humans, and other works as well.
Another
example is the highly influential work, The Population Bomb, written in
1968 by Paul Ehlrich, which also tackled the so-called population problem. Smithsonian
Magazine describes it as “one of the most influential books of the 20th century.”[22]
Population Bomb asserted that we had run out of the ability to produce
enough food for everyone, and predicted that there would be mass starvations in
the coming years, and a massive increase in the world death rate.
Like the
writers of Blueprint, Ehlrich’s book
…argued that many of the day’s most alarming events had a
single, underlying cause: Too many people, packed into too-tight spaces, taking
too much from the earth. Unless humanity cut down its numbers—soon—all of us
would face ‘mass starvation’ on ‘a dying planet’.[23]
Ehlrich believed
that his book’s main asset was that it made the topic of population control an acceptable topic of debate.[24]
Which is clearly correct, as it inspired many other works and discussions of
its kind. But, according to the Smithsonian, it did so much more; it
helped launch the nascent environmental movement, and it “…fuelled an
anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the
world.”[25]
Why? Because people took it utterly to heart. People thought the world was
about to end, and end badly. Sound familiar? This sense of apocalyptic doom has
been a mainstay of the environmentalist movement from then till Planet of
the Humans. But notice that it was population concerns that actually
sparked the environmentalist movement.
You can get
a sense of Ehlrich’s bleak view of humanity from this excerpt in his most
famous book:
The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people
washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People
thrust their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and
urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people,
people, people. . . . [S]ince that night, I’ve known the feel of overpopulation.[26]
The book was
popular, but not universally loved. Many came out against its claims,
Driving the criticism of The Population Bomb were its
arresting, graphic descriptions of the potential consequences of
overpopulation: famine, pollution, social and ecological collapse. Ehrlich says
he saw these as “scenarios,” illustrations of possible outcomes, and he
expresses frustration that they are instead “continually quoted as
predictions”—as stark inevitabilities. If he had the ability to go back in time,
he said, he would not put them in the book.[27]
But whether people loved it, or hated it, it was influential. Population Bomb contributed to a wave of population alarm then sweeping the world. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund, the Hugh Moore-backed Association for Voluntary Sterilization and other organizations promoted and funded programs to reduce fertility in poor places. “The results were horrific,” says Betsy Hartmann, author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, a classic 1987 exposé of the anti-population crusade. Some population-control programs pressured women to use only certain officially mandated contraceptives. In Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, health workers’ salaries were, in a system that invited abuse, dictated by the number of IUDs they inserted into women. In the Philippines, birth-control pills were literally pitched out of helicopters hovering over remote villages. Millions of people were sterilized, often coercively, sometimes illegally, frequently in unsafe conditions, in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
In the 1970s and ’80s, India, led by Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi and her son Sanjay, embraced policies that in many states required
sterilization for men and women to obtain water, electricity, ration cards,
medical care and pay raises. Teachers could expel students from school if their
parents weren’t sterilized. More than eight million men and women were sterilized
in 1975 alone. (“At long last,” World Bank head Robert McNamara remarked,
“India is moving to effectively address its population problem.”) For its part,
China adopted a “one-child” policy that led to huge numbers—possibly 100
million—of coerced abortions, often in poor conditions contributing to
infection, sterility and even death. Millions of forced sterilizations
occurred.
Wow! It
doesn’t help that Ehlrich predicted in other settings that
“’Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm
in the history of man have already been born,’ he promised in a 1969 magazine
article. ‘Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,’ Ehrlich told CBS
News a year later.”[28]
“Ehlrich
does not see himself as responsible for such abuses,”[29]
and it is probably unfair to blame any one man for such drastic actions taken
worldwide. The population control mantra was taken up by many at the time and
has continued till this day. It is a strong undercurrent of the
environmentalist movement, and as you can see from Plant of the Humans,
famous advocates of climate change and its effects are still calling for
population control to be taken seriously today. It is not so much one man, but
the movement itself which holds the blame for such drastic reactions.
Christians know
that the Bible says that we should be fruitful and multiply, Genesis 1:28 - “And
God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” To
multiply is good, and God blesses this activity. This does not mean that we
should not take steps to care for forests, and sea life and endangered species,
and more. We are called to steward this earth, manage its resources well, and
share them more adequately. But there is a big difference between this and the
radical nature of the call to reduce population numbers expressed by the
environmentalist movement.
Many
Christians, indeed many people, have forgotten or chosen to ignore just how
radical certain environmentalist goals are. They have been laundered through a
public relations process designed to present a cute and cuddly face to the
world, and as noted if you talk about global plans to reduce the population of
the earth you will get called a conspiracy theorist. But it is not conspiracy,
it is fact that an influential part of the environmentalist movement has always
had as its goal a smaller world population, which will drive down consumption,
so that the earth can regreen. They justify such radical ideas, because of their
fear of a supposed coming great catastrophe. But, as the Smithsonian notes, despite what The
Population Bomb claimed,
…in fact, famine has not been increasing but has become
rarer. When The Population Bomb appeared, according to the U.N. Food and
Agricultural Organization, something like one out of four people in the world
was hungry. Today the proportion of hungry is about one out of ten. Meanwhile,
the world’s population has more than doubled. People are surviving because they
learned how to do things differently. They developed and adopted new
agricultural techniques—improved seeds, high-intensity fertilizers, drip irrigation.[30]
Things are
not getting bleaker, they are getting better, and until Covid hit, poverty was
on the decline. Of course, worldwide shutdowns changed all of that.
But calls to
get louder about population control continue. In It's time environmentalists
talked about the population problem, Butler writes:
In all the talk of tackling environmental problems such as
climate change, the problem of population growth often escapes attention.
Politicians don't like talking about it. By and large, neither do environmentalists—but
former Greens leader Bob Brown has bucked that trend.
Brown recently declared the world's population must start to
decline before 2100, telling The Australian newspaper: "We are already
using more than what the planet can supply and we use more than the living
fabric of the planet in supply. That's why we wake up every day to fewer
fisheries, less forests, more extinctions and so on. The human herd at eight
billion is the greatest herd of mammals ever on this planet and it is
unsustainable to have that growing."
Research suggests our species has far exceeded its fair share
of the planetary bounty, and Brown is right to call for the global population
to peak. It is high time others joined the chorus—not only other
environmentalists, but those concerned with international development and human
rights.[31]
What is he
implying there about the so-called “human herd”?
The article
also stresses the importance of birth control, family planning, educating
women, and "universal access to reproductive health and family
planning"[32],
all of which is just code for abortion and the pill, and suppressing birth
rates. Indeed, the more I have read on the environmental movement, the more I
realize that “sustainable growth”, “sustainable development” and “sustainable
population” are all just euphemisms for: we need less people.
Butler
notes that environmentalists
today tend to steer away from this topic because it is unpopular[33].
But people need to be aware that the environmentalist movement keeps coming
back to this linchpin, because their foundational documents show that green
energy is not enough, the environmentalist plan can only work if the human
population is far less than it is today. Indeed, they want it far less than it
was 50 years.
Literally, according
to many in the environmentalist movement, you and your family are the problem
that need to be solved. Think about that.
The
scriptures have a positive view of family, “Go forth and multiply.” The
environmentalists, who are willing to talk about it, say, “More people IS the
problem. The human herd is too big.” But if you read through their predictions,
you will see that rarely do they ever come to pass. So, if their bleak outlook
is continually wrong, and their philosophy is anti-family, something we know is
the most important thing, why do we continue to listen to these people?
If you think
the world is overpopulated, go for a drive out west, you can drive for hours
and not see a soul. The size of this country is rather daunting really. Even
China and India have massive tracks of untapped land as far as the eye can see.
It is time to call out the environmentalist movement for what it is: a cover
for an anti-human agenda. I would love to see more focus put on greening the
deserts, now that is a worthy goal, that some countries are actually working
on.[34]
If you think
I am going too far in calling our the environmentalist movement, read the
sources in this article, watch Plant of the Humans, not one of these is a
fringe source, they are all mainstream and open about their goals: to them, the
human herd is an issue, a problem that they believe needs to be solved. It is a
chilling thought.
The truth is
you and your family are not the problem. You and your family are the hope of
the future. Have 3 kids, 5 kids, or even 10 kids or more. Because if you want
to have a say in the future, you have to show up, the only way to do that is
through having a family. So, to all of you who are doing that, I salute you. Let’s
win the future.
List of References
[1] Planet
of the Humans, 30 Minute Documentary, accessed on 26.10.2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ0utEg7vkg
[2]
Watts, Jonathan 2020, “Michael Moore film Planet of the Humans removed from
YouTube”, The Guardian, accessed on 26.10.2020, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/26/michael-moore-film-planet-of-the-humans-removed-from-youtube.
“Smith filed the complaint to YouTube on 23 May after discovering Planet of the
Humans used several seconds of footage from his Rare Earthenware project
detailing the journey of rare earth minerals from Inner Mongolia. Smith, who
has previously worked on energy and environmental issues, said he did not want
his work associated with something he disagreed with. “I went directly to
YouTube rather than approaching the filmmakers because I wasn’t interested in
negotiation. I don’t support the documentary, I don’t agree with its message
and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative.”
[3] Planet
of the Humans, 30 Minute Documentary, accessed on 26.10.2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ0utEg7vkg
[4] Planet of the Humans, 30 Minute
Documentary, accessed on 26.10.2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ0utEg7vkg
[6] Goldsmith,
Edward 1972, Blueprint For Survival, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, pp33-35.
[7]
Ibid pg36.
[8]
Ibid, pg44.
[9]
Ibid, pg45-46.
[10]
Ibid, pg46
[11]
Ibid, pg46.
[12] https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+1972&oq=world+population+1972&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i457j0l6.5055j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[13] Goldsmith,
Edward 1972, Blueprint For Survival, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,
pg46.
[14]
Ibid, pp47-48.
[15]
Ibid, pg48.
[16]
Ibid, pg48-49.
[17]
Ibid, pg49.
[18]
Ibid, pg50.
[19]
Ibid, pg48.
[20]
Ibid, pg 52-55.
[21]
Ibid, pg57.
[22]
Charles C. Mann, 2018 “The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation
‘The Population Bomb’ made dire predictions—and
triggered a wave of repression around the world”, Smithsonian Magazine,
sourced online on 23.10.2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/.
[23]
Ibid.
[24]
Ibid.
[25]
Ibid.
[26]
Ibid.
[27]
Ibid.
[28]
Ibid.
[29]
Ibid.
[30]
Ibid.
[31]
Colin D. Butler 2020, “It's time environmentalists talked about the population
problem”, Phys.org, accessed 23.10.2020, https://phys.org/news/2020-10-environmentalists-population-problem.amp?fbclid=IwAR2jHGwii4dLoQbA0oRK-5MTIy-uXjtXK6OOILTPReSnfU_A51qaAU0DtYQ
[32]
Ibid.
[33]
Ibid
[34]
Wiedenbach, Annette 2020, “China Makes Serious Efforts To Re-Green Its Deserts”,
Climate Scorecard, accessed 26.10.2020, https://www.climatescorecard.org/2020/02/china-makes-serious-efforts-to-re-green-its-deserts/#:~:text=China%20has%20become%20the%20recognized,as%20Champions%20of%20the%20Earth.
