Michael Moore produced a long sloppy reportage about a bunch of failed American green projects. That is pretty much it.

The author is ditching solar and wind energy claiming that they rely massively on fossil fuels for their production. Okay, so? Without providing a single number, bam!, wind does not compensate for its production footprint. This is so false that it makes you dizzy. True that many components require big scale mining for precious earths and this might make one think that alternative energies ended up in a conundrum. Also, the author has a problem that these sources are connected to the national grid. This is so ignorant as in saying that electric vehicles are dirty only because they roll on asphalt roads together with the diesels.

Good points were made on the terrible land use change with the giant solar projects, excellent point on the global biomass for energy issue. An infographic is showing that the big biomass global demand comes from the EU that considers in a directive that trees minced into chips are a source of green energy. Heartbreaking images of deforestations in Indonesia and desperate orangutans hanging on the remnants of calcinated woods show that we all are the wretched of the Earth.

The work is not critical and, as usual, the culprits are capitalism and corruption. I do know that, but wasn’t there any alternative good (political/ideological) idea to fish in all this green pond? No community solutions, cooperatives, degrowth initiatives, conservation-climate continuums, clean credits, smart SMEs that change the perspective towards a greener energy, reuse, circular economy?

Not really. The documentary, sorry, the long reportage, is just a ball through the wall. No solutions are left for the end of the film and this is making it scary and even dangerous in its message. Despite inequalities, research goes on with unbridled enthusiasm: H2 tech, decarbisation of natural gas, thermal waters’ energy, negative emission technologies and so on. Though I loved it that it kicked the politicians turned feel-good millionaires like Gore or global hero on duty McKibben in their preppy greewashed behinds. This would be the only turning point of critique in the film.

This is not new, 12 years ago Christine MacDonald wrote an excellent book on how big green US based organisations had corrupted the environmental struggle. She should have been interviewed.

Christine MacDonald, Green, Inc.