Wednesday, April 22, 2020

comments on "Planet of the Humans"

The new movie from the Michael Moore stable, "Planet of the Humans", is available free on youtube: https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE. Everybody should see it.

As we have recently learned from SARS-CoV2, exponential growth is brutal. Also, if something can't go on then it must stop. These things apply to people as well as virus pandemics. That is the basic message of the film.

The movie proposes we solve the problem now with population reduction and much lower consumption. That isn't going to happen. There is an alternative which is two fold:

(a) Take on board the fact that human population exponential growth must stop and build up the social structures that will make that possible. Basically bringing a new person into the world is a deal between the world and the parents, and that needs to be explicit (and fair).

(b) Give ourselves time to get to that point by adopting the one energy source that the rest of nature has no use for: Nuclear Power.

If the movie doesn't kick start a pro Nuclear Green movement than I'll be very disappointed.

A final comment on the movie is this. It is a collection of emotional anecdotes. Anecdotes are a weak form of evidence. The role of anecdotal evidence is to tell you what needs to be seriously and openly investigated. If we've learnt anything from the pandemic, it is the importance of getting the experts involved in a clear and open way, while understanding that they don't always agree, and that they can change their mind.