Bashing EV's, and Ecological Action in General

Some say that EV's are bad for the environment, because some pollution is involved in making them. I disagree, because I think you've got to measure their effect by comparing it to the effect of ICE vehicles. Yes, not owning a car at all would be even better. 

 

But saying that EV's are bad for the environment, imho, is like saying that rooftop solar panels are bad for the environment because it would be even better if humans just went extinct. Which some environmentalists actually want. See for example Jeff Gibbs and his recent, disgusting documentary Planet of the Humans, which basically takes a big long piss on everybody who's trying to combat climate change and pollution for not doing a 100% perfect job of it. News flash: nothing is 100% perfect, not everyone who's trying to help is a fool or a dupe, and it is possible that humans will reverse the damage we've done to the environment. People don't deserve to be castigated for trying to help. Jeff Gibbs is a huge jerk and a pathological misanthropist. He's not trying to help.

Improvement is improvement. Some ICE vehicles are, in fact, much cleaner than others. A hybrid is better for the environment than an ICE vehicle. An EV is better than a hybrid. Walking, riding a non-electric bicycle or taking public transportation is better than driving an EV. 

Misinformation or disinformation (deliberate misinformation) is bad. It tends to encourage people to think that their actions make no difference, and that they might as well just give up, keep polluting as much as anybody does, and get ready to die, because the whole planet is going to die soon and there's nothing we can do about it. Which is completely inaccurate, there are all sports of things we can do about it and are doing about it. We need to keep on doing those things, and doing more. For example, the charge that EV batteries are going to end up causing horrible pollution in landfills, besides coming from people who never before in their lives expressed any concern about pollution or landfills, also happens to be dead wrong: those batteries, after lasting much longer in EV's than anyone expected, will be used in other ways, such as storing energy in people's homes or for utilities, and when they finally do expire, they will be recycled. No part of them will go into landfills. So if you've been telling people that EV batteries will soon be choking landfills and killing us all, please stop, and inform yourself on the topic. Thank you very much.

Of course, the belief that global warming is a hoax and that burning coal doesn't harm living things and that windmills are causing birds to go extinct, and so forth, that form of misinformation and disinformation is bad, too, but, thank goodness, it's finally dying out. Which shows us that other forms can be overcome as well.

The charge that driving EV's causes people to stop worrying about other causes of climate crisis such as overconsumption and overpopulation, seems to be untrue as well. On the contrary, while a few EV owners may be unconscientious, massively-polluting pigs who own six huge EV's which are all powered by coal-generated electricity and never carpool, most tend to support climate science and renewable energy (including putting solar panels on their own roofs in a high percentage of cases), and to be better than average at reducing consumption of plastic, to be vegan more often than non-EV drivers, and in general: it's crap, the charge that driving an EV makes a person think they've done all they ever need to do for the environment, and they're done.

Thank goodness, more and more people already know all of the things I've said in this post, and it's getting harder and harder to attack EV's, or solar or wind energy, or climate science, or engaged, woke people in general, without looking like a complete fool.

Jeff Gibbs and his Documentary, "Planet of the Humans"

"Hi, I'm Jeff Gibbs, maker of the new documentary movie Planet of the Humans. As you can tell by my voice, I'm a very cheerful and up-beat person." [This is hilarious because Gibbs, in his documentary, actually sounds clinically depressed. He sounds as if he hasn't so much as tried to smile for several years.] "However, as I made this documentary about alternative energy, electric vehicles and such, I found that things are often complicated, and not always perfect. Therefore, I have decided to lay down and die, and I hope that all of you do, too."

That's the basic message of Planet of the Humans. Like me, other reviewers have wondered What the Hey? Why is Gibbs, alleging to be an environmentalist, doing everything he can to make all sorts of environmental action and clean technology look as bad as possible?

After you finish reading my review, I suggest this one at the website Films For Action. And if you're interested in seeing a documentary which actually shows some of the good that environmentalists are doing, I suggest Jamie Redford's Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution. (But be warned! Redford's documentary is NOT PERFECT!!!!! All it does it show people making a difference, encouraging the viewer to make a difference.)

The movie is mostly divided between telling us things we already know, and focusing on a flaw in an otherwise-good thing or helpful person or entity -- which can be regarded as more telling us what we already know, for those of us who have already grasped that nothing is perfect. It is not news that corn-based ethanol is flat-out a failure from an environmental point of view. Switchgrass-based ethanol is much cleaner -- oh, but it's not in Gibbs' film, is it? It is not news that an electric vehicle can get its electricity from a grid which is powered by coal. However, it seems that many people still have not grasped that, even if it gets its electricity from coal, an electric vehicle will still be cleaner, overall, than an internal-combustion vehicle. And if they didn't know that already, they also didn't learn it from Gibbs' movie. And of course, if an electric vehicle gets its electricity from solar or wind, it is much cleaner still. And many of the people who drive electric vehicles also advocate for solar and wind and other types of clean energy, have solar panels on their roofs and so forth.

Gibbs shows protesters in Vermont hiking to the top of a mountain to protest plans to put wind turbines on the mountaintop. He films one of the protesters comparing wind turbines on top of this mountain to entire mountaintops having been removed in other parts of the country in the process of strip-mining coal -- and he ends that scene there, as if that were a valid comparison. I think that if he had dug a little deeper, he might have been able to show that the wind turbines planned for the Vermont mountaintop would be a wee bit more environmentally-friendly than coal mining with mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

But he doesn't seem interested in showing any upside to anything or anyone in the alternative-energy sector. Al Gore sold his cable TV network to Al Jazeera, a company which owns stock in oil interests -- and so, Gibbs implies, all of Gore's efforts on behalf on the environment are therewith exposed as -- you know, we've heard this sort of thing before. But usually, we don't hear it from environmentalists, we hear it from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or some other oil-funded right-wing idiots who are trying to discredit the entire environmental movement.

What exactly is Gibbs trying to do?

There are some environmentalists who hate people, and want the human race to die out as quickly as possible, for the alleged good of the rest of the planet. The only way I can make sense of Planet of the Humans, which begins with a montage of Folks on the Street Answering the Question: How much longer will humanity survive? -- is if Gibbs is one of that humanity-hating type of environmentalist.

Some right-wingers and proponents of petrochemical and nuclear power also seem to like Planet of the Humans, since it does what they do: trash environmentalists, supposedly "expose" us by concentrating on our real and imagined flaws, ignore what we're actually getting right. Screw you, Jeff Gibbs! The Wrong Monkey might love you, but he loves everybody. I don't.