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History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.
It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.
So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?
If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.
Yes. It is happening. Right now.
Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.
In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organizations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance,, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media. VID]
On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.
In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.
The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.
And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.
That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.
Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.
In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.
The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.
Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.
This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.
Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.
Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.
It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.
This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.
Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, *RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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field eror bad code?
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Marc Morano
Weekly update ⋅ August 4, 2023
NEWS
How data is manipulated to sell the climate hysteria narrative | Marc Morano - Rebel News
Rebel News
... pick and choose small samples of data to make extreme weather events seem like bigger issue than they are, says Climate Depot's Marc Morano.
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New York's Falling Tower Of Pizzas - Forbes
Forbes
ClimateDepot.com's publisher, Marc Morano, compared the emissions of a wood-burning stove with the emissions from the private plane routinely used ...
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Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2
HotAir
... are other forces at work' | Climate Depot https://t.co/XJtGThKJ69 pic.twitter.com/DxDJ64gxPu. — Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) July 29, 2023.
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Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2
TWITTER 12:35 PM on July 30, 2023
fox chryon is it gw or arson? watters? twet
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Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’ | Climate Depot https://climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/
bad code?
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https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/
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Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’
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Fox News Channel - Jesse Watters Primetime - Broadcast July 28, 2023 - Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? 'The Green Fraud' author Marc Morano says there are 'other forces at work' as wildfires rage across the planet on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'
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Morano: "Arson, of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire. And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They've had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia.
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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying 'Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.' There are other forces at work here, Jesse."
Jesse Watters: "All right Marc. Thank you so much. You're always on top of this. We appreciate it."
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By: Marc Morano - Climate Depot July 29, 2023
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Fox News Channel – Jesse Watters Primetime – Broadcast July 28, 2023 – 04:26
Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? ‘The Green Fraud’ author Marc Morano says there are ‘other forces at work’ as wildfires rage across the planet on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’
Rough Transcript:
Jesse Watters: Author of The Green Fraud Marc Morano joins me now. So Marc, can you distinguish between an arsonist fire or winds blowing and an already hot forest?
Marc Morano: No, not really. It looks like they started these fires, the arsonists at the worst possible times, with high winds, with dry conditions, with heat. So it sounds like they may even know what they’re doing. And there are two different islands in Greece, there’s Rhodes island and Corfu island, and in both of them now, the officials are saying these are intentionally started and they actually said they’re basically sick individuals who get pleasure out of causing other people pain.
Arson of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire.
And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They’ve had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia.
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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying ‘Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.’ There are other forces at work here, Jesse.
Jesse Watters: All right Marc. Thank you so much. You’re always on top of this. We appreciate it. Have a great weekend.
Marc Morano: Thank you, Jesse.
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Background Info:
Most fires in Greece were started ‘by human hand’, government says
The Guardian, 28 July 2023Most of the 667 fires that have erupted across Greece in recent weeks were started “by human hand”, the country’s senior climate crisis official has said. As the Mediterranean country emerges from an unprecedented, 15-day period of heatwave-induced infernos, the scale of the destruction is finally being laid bare.
While weather conditions have been different from any other year – with experts calling the first three weeks of July the hottest on record – most of the fires could have been prevented, the government claimed on Friday. Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek minister of climate crisis and civil protection, told reporters:
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“During this time 667 fires erupted, that is more than 60 fires a day, almost all over the country. Unfortunately, the majority were ignited by human hand, either by criminal negligence or intent. Kikilias said that, in certain places, blazes had broken out at numerous points in close proximity at the same time, suggesting the involvement of arsonists intent on spreading fires further. He added: “The difference with other years were the weather conditions. Climate change, which yielded a historic and unprecedented heatwave, is here. There were very few days where the extreme weather was not combined with strong winds.”
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LARGE PIX OF COVER DRAMA
Full story
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https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/set-by-human-hands-are-arsonists-burning-rhodes/
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‘Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen [but] people have been summoned for statements and others will be summoned. As soon as we have complete information – because the investigation is in full swing, we will make announcements…’ said Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, speaking on behalf of the Rhodes Fire Department.
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Rhodes has been burning for seven days, while other tourist locations, such as Corfu, face smaller localised fires. Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.
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Fewer Europeans would die if they installed a couple of air-conditioners instead of basking under ceiling fans like it’s 1976.
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“Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen.”
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The Mediterranean is on fire as countries have been caught unprepared for the inevitable impact of climate change due to their disastrous capitalist policies. Austerity measures have hampered responses to the deadly wildfires that have paralyzed the region
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Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni has branded EU targets “climate fundamentalism”.
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Thousands of people evacuated as devastating wildfire threats Rhodes, Greece.
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Massive explosion in a NATO ammunition warehouse in Central Greece amid wildfires.
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When climate change doesn’t increase global fires… Activists take it upon themselves. There is NO climate emergency but there is an emergency surrounding mental health and climate anxiety that is leading people to start fires to save the planet.
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Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.
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Greece has been here before. Many people were arrested and charged over the 2021 fires in Greece, which were considered to be some of the worst on record. Some of the blazes were described as a ‘deliberate organised criminal activity’. In the devastating fires of 2007, arson was listed as a major cause of the blaze and some of the blazes were even suspected to be a form of terror attack. Charges of arson and murder were eventually brought. NOTE PASSIVE NO DETAIL
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As over 32,000 precautionary evacuations are carried out for the fires on Rhodes and surrounding areas, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told his nation that they had ‘more difficult days ahead’.
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/07/24/greece-wildfire-island-thousands-evacuation-updates/70454961007/
Yiannis Artopios, a fire service spokesperson on Rhodes, told Greek television network Skai TV that authorities are currently questioning suspected arsonists.
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“Fires are not sparked on their own,” he told Skai TV. “They are triggered by the human hand, be it intentionally or not. We currently have several people being questioned in connection with their probable involvement.”
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In Corfu, the region’s deputy mayor for tourism and construction told the BBC the fires there were started by “a group of people.” Chariton Koutscouris said officials had a “suspicion” fires would be started this weekend.
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Officials are said to have been warned on Friday by the fire department chief that someone who started two fires last week would start another.
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“He was right,” Koutscouris said, adding that the apparent arsonists “get pleasure out of this with the pain of the other people.”
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Global wildfires are not historically unusual and have been part of the natural forest cycle for thousands of years and contribute to their regeneration.
But the media blaming ‘climate change’ anyway — even when humans start the fires!
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Arson and poor green policies of forest management cause many forest fires and increase CO2 emissions! see: U.S. Geological Survey: 2018 California Wildfires Emitted as Much CO2 as an Entire Year’s Worth of Calif. Electricity
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Recently, as Democratic politicians were blaming wildfires on climate change, it was revealed that it was Democratic donors that caused the wildfires.
Australia had the same issues with arson!
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Aussie police announce a crackdown on arsonists after investigations showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally – 267 already charged with arson offences – The Daily Telegraph: Serial arsonists will face the full force of the law after NSW Police announced a crackdown on fire bugs in the wake of investigations which showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally. Of that number it is unclear how many were the work of arsonists and what was the result of negligent behaviour. Dedicated investigators will now trawl through evidence to separate the two.
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Aussie ABC says Arson = 1%.NSW police say 42% of fires are man-made. 9% are ‘natural’. Rest unknown. (So far)
Australia’s Epic Fires Caused By Bad Forestry And Arson, Not ‘Climate Change’
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Then the odd thing about this is if you look at all the data on wildfires, there are dramatic drops from 100 years ago in the United States.
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There is no trend in wildfires, no trend at all the extreme weather, but it doesn’t matter. This is the narrative, and if they need an arsonist to help The Science along apparently they’re not beneath doing that at this point. And again, this is the same thing — blaming the wildfires on climate
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The Reality is Global & U.S. fires are declining.
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From my 2018 book: ‘Less fire today than centuries ago’ – Scientists, studies counter claim that wildfires due to ‘climate change’ – Book Excerpt – “There is increasing evidence that there is overall less fire in the landscape today than there has been centuries ago, although the magnitude of this reduction still needs to be examined in more detail.”…
“The ‘wildfire problem’ is essentially more a social than a natural one.” Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid found that “climate change” is not to blame for increased forest fires in the Mediterranean basin.”…
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“In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees.
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You are being conned: Data, studies & UN IPCC all reveal Canadian fires not due to ‘climate change’ – ‘There has been a significant & continuing decline in the number of fires’
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: What the media won’t tell you about … Wildfires – ‘Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries’
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Pielke Jr.: “The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change
Globally, emissions from wildfires has decreased globally over recent decades, as well as in many regions
Canada wildfire trends show no increase in recent decades
Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries
Wildfires are a part of the natural eco-system.”
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Bjorn Lomborg: Climate alarmists falsely claim the world is literally on fire – Satellites reveal global area burned annually has trended downward in past 2 decades
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Lomborg on Global wildfires: For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward. In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a record low of 2.2% burned area…The latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change. Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century. …
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America wildfires: While the complete data aren’t in for 2023, global tracking up to July 29 by the Global Wildfire Information System shows that more land has burned in the Americas than usual. But much of the rest of the world has seen lower burning — Africa and especially Europe. Globally, the GWIS shows that burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already saw some of the lowest rates of burned area.
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Australian Wildfires: Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 earned media headlines such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data show this was a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two states but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country. Since the early 2000s, when 8% of Australia caught fire, the area of the country torched each year has declined. The 2019-20 fires scorched 4% of Australian land, and this year the burned area will likely be even less.
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When reading headlines about fires, remember the other climate scare tactics that proved duds. Polar bears were once the poster cubs for climate action, yet are now estimated to be more populous than at any time in the past half-century. We were told climate change would produce more hurricanes, yet satellite data shows that the number of hurricanes globally since 1980 has trended slightly downward.
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Filed under: astrology, avg, heatwave, mediacd, mediacdf, wildfires
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/05/01/fossil-fuel-backed-climate-deniers-rush-promote-michael-moore-planet-of-humans
Climate science deniers and long-time opponents of renewable energy, many with ties to oil and gas companies, have seized on Michael Moore’s latest documentary to argue the case for continued fossil fuel dependence.
Planet of the Humans investigates the environmental footprint of renewable technologies such as wind, solar and biomass, and argues that the green movement has sold out to corporate interests. The documentary has been viewed over five million times on YouTube since its release last week to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
But the film, produced by Moore and written and directed by his long-time collaborator Jeff Gibbs, has been widely criticised by energy and climate experts, who say it fails to provide context on the benefits of renewable energy and the negative impacts of fossil fuels, and is based on out-of-date information.
A group of environmentalists and climate scientists, including Professor of Atmospheric Science Michael Mann, who was this week elected to the National Academy of Sciences, has described the documentary as “shockingly misleading” and called for it to be withdrawn.
In contrast, the film has been heavily promoted in recent days by commentators known for their rejection of mainstream climate science and support for fossil fuels, including some with direct ties to the industry.
While the film’s anti-economic growth and population control message has not appealed to the free-market philosophies of many of these commentators, its criticism of renewables struck a chord, with the narratives used generally taking one of three forms.
‘Renewables are ineffective and more damaging than fossil fuels and nuclear’
The US-based libertarian Heartland Institute, which hosts “counter-summits” alongside UN climate conferences and has taken funding from fossil fuel interests including oil major ExxonMobil, was quick to host a podcast episode dedicated to Moore’s documentary.
One of the Heartland employees contributing to the podcast praised it for doing a “really good job of ticking off all the downsides” to renewables, which he claimed were the “least efficient way that you can try to generate electricity”.
Another said the “green weenies” could have “learned all of this stuff about the folly of wind and solar” by “coming to Heartland Institute conferences and reading our website”.
Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Environment at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and a regular speaker at Heartland conferences, has written a blog lauding the film. In the article, since reposted by the UK-based climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation,Ebell claims the film “exposes” every type of green energy as “phony, useless, and inextricably dependent on fossil fuel production and large-scale hardrock mining”.
Both Heartland and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has similarly received funding from Exxon and the Koch family, owners of the largest privately owned oil company in the US, have sought to pressure Donald Trump into removing the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change action.
Environmental commentator and nuclear enthusiast Michael Shellenberger also reacted positively to Moore’s film, tweeting that it proves “renewables are worse for environment than fossil fuels”.
... no lnx pix twt
Environmental commentator and nuclear enthusiast Michael Shellenberger also reacted positively to Moore’s film, tweeting that it proves “renewables are worse for environment than fossil fuels”.
In a column for Forbes, he argued that nuclear was the only answer to our energy needs, claiming solar panels require more materials to build and create more waste than nuclear plants. While solar panels can create a certain amount of potentially hazardous waste, around 80% of a panel is recyclable and solutions are being developed for the remaining materials.
Later interviewed by Sky News Australia’s Andrew Bolt, who has been criticised for repeatedly dismissing mainstream climate science, Shellenberger claimed most countries would need to use roughly 50% of their land to produce 100% renewable energy. Many studies have found the figure to be considerably lower.
The far-right news website Breitbart similarly claimed the documentary reveals that the solar and wind industries “pretend to be saving the planet from climate change while consuming more fossil fuels than they save”, despite research showing their carbon footprint to be many times lower.
In the UK, pro-Trump commentator James Delingpolewrote on the same website that Moore’s documentary was the “most powerful, brutally honest and important documentary of his career”.
He said it “clearly shows that renewable energy is damaging to the landscape and to wildlife and does NOT reduce the use of fossil fuels”. He suggested it could help Trump win the upcoming US election because it “undermines the entire basis of the Green New Deal” advocated by some Democrats. Elsewhere, Delingpole has called Moore his “new hero” and praised the film for “causing greenie heads to explode”.
Breitbart News, whose UK branch Delingpole edits, was co-founded by Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump, and board member of scandal-hit political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica were both financially backed by long-standing funders of climate science denial, the Mercer Family.
Matt Ridley, an author and former chairman of the Northern Rock bank, whose collapse precipitated the 2008 financial crash in the UK, has also applauded Planet of the Humans for being “extremely critical of the green renewable energy industry, saying it’s just as industrial as the fossil fuel industry, in fact it’s dependent on it”.
Speaking in a webinar organised by the British Conservation Alliance, a student network that describes itself as the “home of conservative climate solutions”, Ridley, who has a coal mine on his family estate, said you “simply cannot run a modern economy on wind or solar because there just isn’t enough space for putting up the panels or the windmills. And there isn’t enough resources.”
‘Renewable energy is a profit-driven scam and the environmental movement is corrupt’
These groups and individuals have also used the film to promote the narrative that renewable energy is a scam, backed by crony capitalists colluding with environmentalists.
In his blog about the film, theCompetitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebellcalled it a “stunning evisceration of so-called green energy and the people profiting from it”.
Moore’s documentary was also the subject of an interview by the Canadian far-right news site Rebel News with Marc Morano, Communications Director of CFACT, a Washington-based free-market think tank that has claimed carbon dioxide is a “harmless trace essential gas in the atmosphere”.
Morano called Planet of the Humans an “amazing film” during the interview with host Ezra Levant, with the only downside being that Moore “believes in climate alarmism severely”.
Asked by Rebel News host Ezra Levant whether Moore produced the documentary because “he hated the fact these billionaires were tricking everyone”, Morano said the filmmaker “sees all the con that they’re doing and who’s profiting and who’s making money”. CFACT has taken funding from ExxonMobil and billionaire industrialists the Koch brothers.
A similar narrative was used by Robert Bradley Jr, founder of the Koch-fundedInstitute for Energy Research, when pre-release screenings of the documentary took place last summer.
In a blog post for a pro-fracking website Natural Gas Now, Bradley Jr described renewables as “mostly a hedge-fund scam”. The Pennsylvania-based Natural Gas Now is run by Tom Shepstone, a former employee ofEnergy in Depth, a PR campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America to promote fracking, with funding from oil majors including Shell, BP and Chevron.
In Australia, Sky News’ Andrew Bolthighlighted a scene from the documentary showing corporate executives awkwardly trying to explain where the energy for the electric vehicles they were promoting was coming from.
Bolt assured viewers he didn’t agree with many of the points the film makes, but nonetheless claimed “all this effort of green power, all this expense, is for next to nothing”, despite studies repeatedly finding that electric vehicles reduce emissions even in heavily coal-dependent power grids.
Another presenter on the same channel, Rowan Dean, similarly described renewables as a “hoax”.
In Canada, Terence Corcoran, comment editor for the Financial Post section of the Toronto-based National Post, said Moore’s film showed green energy was a “giant capitalist fraud” and should be the “hottest doc of the year”.
Corcoran has previously dismissed warnings about climate change from the UN and downplayed threats the Arctic, criticising the “sensational language in the media and elsewhere that implies the Arctic is heading into some kind of oblivion. A changing Canadian Arctic might even be good.”
In the UK, James Delingpole wrote on Breitbart that renewables were “a monstrous, dirty, ugly scam, orchestrated by a cynical few at the expense of the many”, while Andrew Montford, Deputy Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, tweeted that the documentary showed “the green movement is just a way to make a few dishonest capitalists very rich. Greens have been lying to everyone for 25 years”. The GWPF refuses to disclose its sources of funding, but has been revealed to be bankrolled by a number of wealthy donors, many of which financially supported the UK’s pro-Brexit campaign, including billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Hintze and currency trader Neil Record.
‘Environmentalists are now trying to cover up the truth’
Following the call from some environmentalists to have the film removed, opponents of climate action have since accused them of censorship.
The GWPF’s Montford tweeted in response: “You know the Michael Moore film is right about renewables because the greens are trying to have it taken down rather than arguing their case. Just as they always do”.
Another GWPF employee, Harry Wilkinson, Head of Policy at the organisation’s campaign wing, tweeted: “This is a classic. The Guardian endorse censoring a film exposing the environmental consequences of renewables, labelling it 'full of misinformation'. But fail to identify a single inaccurate fact in the documentary.”
The letter, organised by the director of the anti-fracking documentary Gasland, Josh Fox, and co-signed by climate scientist Michael Mann among others, said Moore’s film “trades in debunked fossil fuel industry talking points” and “ignores the last ten years of peer-reviewed renewable energy planning and policy”.
In the US, an article on the film in the Daily Caller, founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and majority funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, reported that climate activists had failed to “browbeat” the Films for Action website, which is hosting the documentary in addition to YouTube, into taking down the film. The article was reposted by the popular climate science denial blog, Watts Up With That?
Sky News Austrlia’s Chris Kenny also hinted that Australia’s public broadcaster ABC was deliberately burying the film, stating: “it seems the ABC has forgotten about Mike Moore and this film. Last I checked they hadn't reported on it at all. It seems to present too many inconvenient truths.”
The ABC was widely praised for its coverage of the Australian wildfires at the beginning of the 2020, while Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which owns Sky News Australia, was criticised for its “irresponsible” coverage of the fires. Murdoch’s son James said he was “disappointed” with the media company’s climate science denial and a News Corp employee resigned saying she could no longer work for an organisation that she claimed was running a “misinformation campaign” around the wildfires.
Criticism of the film
Dana Nuccitelli,Yale Climate Connections: “Michael Moore's 'Planet of the Humans' documentary peddles dangerous climate denial”
Ketan Joshi: “Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths”
Leah C. Stokes, Vox: “Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil”
Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News: “Inside Clean Energy: 6 Things Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ Gets Wrong”
Brian Kahn,Gizmodo: “Planet of the Humans Comes This Close to Actually Getting the Real Problem, Then Goes Full Ecofascism”
A Siegel, Get Energy Smart Now: “Planet of The Humans: An Annotated Collection“