Original subtitles

[light dramatic music]

Provided by explosiveskull https://twitter.com/kaboomskull

[Max] I'm here outside Bend, Oregon.

Uh...

and there's a big old solar facility right here.

"High voltage. Keep out. Authorized personnel."

What's going on back here?

They don't want you breaking into these places,

but I'm in the facility now, so you can see this up close.

You'll notice this is all dusty.

So, these... these things have to be cleaned pretty regularly.

So, most people don't realize that solar panels

and solar power facilities are actually huge water users.

Um, and they like to install them in desert areas,

where water use is already a big problem.

Um, these elements are made of silicon, which is mined and refined,

using extremely high temperature destructive processes.

Then they're mounted on these big steel pipes here.

Look at this. I mean, this is just an industrial energy production facility.

It... it has nothing to do with saving the planet whatsoever.

Uh, it may have a slightly lar...

lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels,

but of course, this all requires fossil fuels to create.

Um, the steel was all made using coal.

All this material was trucked here using diesel... diesel trucks,

extracted all over the world using massive mining trucks, powered by diesel.

Uh, smelted using fossil fuels.

Assembled at plants likely powered by fossil fuels.

And, uh... And all of this destroys the planet,

no matter where the power comes from.

So, this shit ain't green.

[melancholic music]

[Julia] We are told that we can have our cake and eat it too.

That we can maintain a high energy lifestyle,

without destroying the planet.

We are told that solar, wind, hydro and biomass

are clean, green and sustainable.

What they don't talk about, are the unseen harms

caused by these technologies.

The processes which take place out of sight.

People rarely question the solutions they are taught to embrace.

But with all the world at stake,

we must start asking the right questions.

There is a push for a 100% renewable world.

And after the research I've done for this documentary,

I want no part of it.

I did not become an environmentalist

to protect my way of life,

or the civilization in which I live.

I did it because I am in love with life on this planet,

and because the world I love is under assault.

This film is for those whose allegiance

is with the living world.

Those who would do whatever it takes to defend it.

[Lierre] The environmental movement used to be

a very impassioned group of people who cared deeply

about the places we loved and the creatures we loved.

What's happened, though, in my lifetime is that,

this movement that was so honorable and so impassioned

has turned into something completely different.

And now it's about protecting a destructive way of life...

while it destroys the creatures and the places that we love.

It's all become, "How do we continue to fuel this destruction?"

As if the only problem, was the fact that we were using oil and gas?

[Derrick] You will have hundreds of thousands of people

marching in the streets of Washington or New York or Paris.

And if you ask those individuals, "Why are you marching?"

They will say, "We want to save the planet."

And if you ask them for their demands, they will say,

"We want subsidies for the wind and solar industries."

That's extraordinary.

I can't think of any time in history,

when any mass movement has been so completely captured...

and turned into lobbyists for an industry.

Frankly, solar, hydro, all them,

do a great big fuck all to stop global warming.

But what they do is, they make us think

we are accomplishing something,

while certain sectors of industry... get rich.

The natural world isn't really part of the conversation anymore.

You know, Kumi Naidoo, the former head of Greenpeace,

I was watching him being interviewed the other day

and he was saying, you know, "Look, the planet's going to survive,

the oceans are going to survive, forests are going to survive.

It's really about, 'Can we save ourselves or not?'"

And I just saw that and I'm thinking, "What the hell are you saying?"

This is somebody who is considered to be,

you know, one of the top environmentalists in the world and he's saying,

"We don't have to worry about the forest or the oceans."

I mean, to me, that just betrays a complete lack of empathy

and connection to the natural world.

I don't know how you could possibly say that,

when we're in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction.

And it's being caused by industrial culture.

It's being caused by the same institutions,

the same economies, the same systems, the same raw materials.

The same extractive mindset

that is being used for these renewable energy technologies.

[Derrick] Bright Green environmentalism is founded on the notion that

technology will solve environmental problems

and that you can, through 100% recycling,

through wind and solar power

have an industrial economy that does not harm the planet.

Deep ecology is the belief that we need to radically change

the way society functions, in order to be sustainable.

[light dramatic music]

[Julia] I'm in New Hampshire,

getting ready to film a clear-cut.

The activist I'm meeting sent footage he captured,

of animals who live in the forest.

[light dramatic music]

All these creatures who live here...

their homes are being destroyed,

to provide so-called "green energy,"

in the form of biomass.

[Derrick] Biomass is one of the big, dirty secrets

of the Bright Green movement.

What biomass is, is simply a fancy word for burning stuff.

What they're doing is, they are cutting down forests all over the world,

and burning them and calling this biomass,

calling this renewable, calling this carbon neutral.

They will talk about how, "Oh, renewables are growing X percent every year."

But what they never talk about is that, for example,

in their German miracle, majority of the increase

in so called renewables is biomass.

It's not wind and solar, like they talk about.

That's because they don't really want to talk about

the fact that their so-called "renewable energy"

is simply cutting down forests.

[engine rumbles]

- [Frank] So they sell these timber sales? - [Julia] Yep.

Last year, they got revenue

- of about $550,000. - Okay.

[Frank] Their timber program costs at least

three million dollars to implement.

Not only are they removing our trees,

not only are they removing the only thing we have

to sequester carbon on this Earth...

- but we pay for it. - Wow!

- That's insane. - It is insane.

It's completely insane.

And people don't...

You t... explain that... you tell people that,

and they're like, "No..." Yeah! Absolutely.

- We... we, the US taxpayers... - [mechanical whirring]

...subsidize these guys, to kill trees.

The problem we have right now, and... and the thing I always

fight these guys on is that,

- we have a carbon problem right now. - Yeah.

- You know, we're at 400 parts per million or whatever it is. - Yeah.

So, you know, that... and they'll say, "Well,

yeah, but that tree will regrow."

Yeah, but that's 100 years from now.

- Mm-hmm. - Where are we going to be then?

- 600 parts per million? I don't know. - Yeah.

But if you leave that tree there,

that tree is going to continue,

not only to sequester the carbon that's in it right now...

- Mm-hmm. - ...but the carbon that, in the next 100 years...

- Right. - ...that it would have taken to rep...

you know, 100 plus years to replace that tree.

- It's sequestering that much more carbon in that one tree. - Mm-hmm.

- Yeah. Just totally sets you back to remove it. - So...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's what...

that's what makes... you know, so then you go

to the whole thing of whole-tree harvesting,

where not only do they take the bole of the tree,

they take everything, you know, that's removing everything

from the... from the... the equation.

Yeah, and then you burn it for biomass.

- And then and then you burn it and it goes poof! - [chuckles]

And all that carbon is instant released

into the atmosphere that's already overloaded with carbon.

It's kind of like a spider web.

You have all these trails going off.

That's the beginning of the clear-cut.

I mean, you walk out the thing

and... and it's going to hit you in the face.

An old forest has carbon as part of the trees.

The soil, the branches.

That's all carbon that is... is currently sequestered

and is not going out into the atmosphere.

You cut that tree down.

Not only does it stop sequestering carbon,

but it actually starts emitting carbon from the soil that's left,

because the soil has been disturbed.

To generate a unit of electricity,

biomass will release more carbon than coal will...

and coal's plenty dirty enough.

We're looking at the aftermath of a 245 acre...

whole-tree harvest liquidation cut,

where effectively, they removed all of the above ground biomass.

Almost all the trees. They left a couple of pine here and there,

uh, one or two little patches that they didn't cut,

but effectively, it's a 245 acre clear-cut.

To call it carbon neutral,

you have to do some pretty dishonest accounting.

For instance, the European Union...

doesn't count the carbon it released in its burning

in its calculations, whereas the American forests

that are supplying the carbon

don't count the carbon they're releasing during the harvesting.

Now, the justification is, we don't want to count it twice,

so we don't count it at all. And now it's carbon neutral.

We got to count at once, folks. And when you count at once,

it doesn't matter whether it's the carbon released

from the burning of it, or whether you count

the carbon stored in that forest that you've liquidated,

because now it's going to be burned

and it's going to be released. So, uh, I guess I...

I'm not comfortable with an industry that deceives me,

about something as important as climate change.

[light dramatic music]

[Derrick] As forests get older...

they sequester more and more carbon.

They sequester more and more carbon per year.

Every time you cut down the forest,

you are removing lots of biomass,

and you're removing lots of nutrients.

You're completely stressing out the forest.

You're removing all those who live there,

and you are somehow expecting it to recover.

I love the line by John Livingston, "There is no surplus in nature."

Every tree that's taken out was a home for someone else

and was food for someone else.

[light dramatic music]

[music fades]

[waves crashing]

[Julia] Bright Green environmentalists love pointing out examples

of countries that have switched to renewable energy,

but there are a lot of inconsistencies in these claims.

One problem is that they will often imply this energy

comes from solar and wind,

when the majority of this so-called "green energy"

comes from hydro.

[Derrick] Hydro is incredibly destructive.

Dams destroy the regions below the dam.

They destroy the river above the dam.

They kill the fish, who can no longer move up and down the river.

Dams increase the water temperature.

And then to sort of top all this off,

dams are claimed to be carbon neutral,

but that's been known for decades not to be true.

But there are those who call dams "methane bombs,"

because they release so much methane.

One of the reasons they produce methane is that, when the reservoir first rises,

it will, of course, inundate the land above.

And when the forest has been inundated,

it then decays in anaerobic conditions

and produces methane.

It is almost a prototypical Bright Green lie,

in that they claim it is good for the environment,

when actually it is harmful for the environment,

and it is harmful for even global warming purposes.

It succeeds on no level.

[music fades]

[Max] One of the pioneering writers in this field

is a guy named Ozzie Zehner, who wrote a book called Green Illusions.

And he starts off the book with a story,

from when he was working, doing solar installations.

And he was in Washington, D.C. and these politicians

wanted to install solar panels on their roof.

So, he went to their house to check out the site and...

and see what it would look like, so he could give them a... you know, a quote.

And he got there and assessed the situation

and he went back and talked to them and he said,

"Look, you've got these beautiful old oak trees

growing on the south side of your house,

and if you want to put in solar panels on your roof,

we're going to have to cut these trees down.

And I would actually recommend that you don't install the solar panels,

because both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,

and, uh, your electricity bill,

these trees are providing a greater benefit

by shading your house in the summer,

by protecting it from winds in the winter, uh,

than the solar panels would."

And the people said, "We don't care about that.

We actually want you to go ahead and cut them down

and install the sol... solar panels anyway."

And I think that really gets to the fundamental issue

with these technologies is that, for many people,

they're more about a status symbol

and an indication of a...

Some sort of greener than thou...

uh, mindset that's going on,

than they are an actual solution.

[Derrick] If you can install a solar panel on your roof...

you may not directly be seeing any smoke

come out of any smokestacks...

but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

You can't produce a solar/wind infrastructure

without fossil fuels.

[Max] To produce solar panels, you need...

extremely high-purity silicon.

It's something like 99.999% pure.

And that's not found in nature.

But what you have to do is, you have to go find

the purest silicon deposits that you can.

And this is usually in the form of sand mining,

and this happens around the world,

and it's highly, highly destructive.

[Derrick] Because of the demand for high-quality silica,

there are islands off the coast of China that have disappeared completely.

They have mined the island out of existence.

They require rare earths and much of the rare earth minerals

come from Baotou in China.

And Baotou is, essentially, devoid of wildlife,

and there is a, basically, 19 square-mile tailings pond,

tailings lake, in which nothing can grow.

So, don't tell me this has no effects.

Don't tell me this is environmentally neutral.

[liquid rushing and splashing]

[dark dramatic music]

[Julia] Mining, pollution, carbon emissions.

The production of renewable technologies

has obvious environmental impacts.

I wanted to see what mainstream environmental organizations

were saying about so-called "green energy."

[fast typing]

NRDC. Our work. Climate change.

"Fighting climate change by cutting carbon pollution

and expanding clean energy

is the best way to build a better future

for our children."

Policy solution.

"Increase renewable energy.

Bolster global clean energy financing."

World Wildlife Fund. Climate.

"Create a climate-resilient and zero-carbon world,

powered by renewable energy."

Sierra Club.

They're advocating for people to sign a petition

telling members of Congress to support a Green New Deal.

David Suzuki Foundation.

"Canadians overwhelmingly support a quick transition

to efficient, zero-emissions energy."

"Clean energy." "Clean energy."

"Clean energy provides a wide array of services."

"Clean electricity will replace fossil fuels."

Okay, this is Greenpeace.

"Renewable energy is cheap, sustainable

and already making our planet more green and peaceful.

It disrupts corporate energy systems.

It's great for our health, and there's nothing better for our planet."

[jovial music]

[David] You know, why don't we imitate a forest

and try to do what the forest does?

Take this clean, free energy

and... and use it.

And, um, that, to me, is the opportunity.

I think that every bit of our clothing should be a solar panel.

Uh, you know, I... I've got a backpack that's got a solar panel on it,

and I can charge my laptop and my cell phone,

right from the, uh...

My... my, uh, backpack.

I think that hats and everything... [chuckles]

You know, um, in France now,

they're building 1000 kilometers of highway,

and the highway is a solar panel.

And that highway, 1000 kilometers,

will service I don't know how many 100,000 homes.

And, um, the same thing with concrete sidewalks.

It should... our buildings should be wrapped in solar panels,

not just have them up on the roofs,

but everywhere that sunlight hits,

let's grab that and use it the way that a forest does.

[Julia] It's hard for me to see many similarities

between forests and solar energy generation facilities.

We all know solar panels don't grow out of the ground.

They require a global supply chain

and a functioning industrial economy.

With all the mining, shipping, manufacturing

and environmental harms inherent to these processes.

While forests sequester carbon, provide habitat,

and promote biodiversity.

Solar electric generating facilities

require habitat destruction,

both at the site where they are installed,

and around the world, where the materials to make them are extracted.

While editing this film,

I researched the solar highway in France.

Turns out it broke, shortly after it was installed.

One publication described it as a "total disaster."

Solar and wind have been called alternative fossil fuels,

because they require fossil fuels

at every stage of the production process.

So the mining, the shipping, the manufacturing...

- Yeah. - ...it might be less than fossil fuels,

but it still adds up to quite a bit.

You don't get anything for nothing.

Yeah, you know, to lay the asphalt, uh, highway that France is,

- you use a lot of fossil fuels. - Yeah.

Um, and that's the, uh, the dilemma we're in.

It seems to me that we have to get off the... the deliberate...

burning of fossil fuels that can be replaced with electricity,

and, uh, we have to minimize the, uh, the c...

the carbon that we use in creating the products

that are really going to give us a big edge.

But you don't get anything for nothing.

And there's no question, you know,

you think of all the metals that go into a windmill.

Even the servicing is going to take, uh, fossil fuels

to... to get up there and...

Yeah, th... but it's a question of...

are they in the long term,

are they going to reduce our carbon footprint...

in... in a long term way?

[Julia] That's the real question.

Do solar panels and wind turbines

actually reduce carbon emissions in the long term?

There's an assumption that when you add energy from solar or wind to the grid,

it displaces fossil fuels.

But this isn't what we're seeing in the real world.

This is really one of the key...

elements in the Bright Green vision.

Is this idea that, as you bring more and more green energy online,

you turn off more fossil fuels.

You don't need them anymore, so you can get rid of them.

And that's just not happening.

If you actually look at the data,

the increase in renewable energy,

that power is generally added on top

of what's already available from coal power plants,

from fossil fuel power plants,

from nuclear, from hydro and so on.

Research I've done, looking at data on many nations,

over time, mostly over the past five decades or so...

um, shows that there's not a strong rate of suppression,

when you add non-fossil fuel energy

of suppressing fossil fuel use.

It takes maybe four to ten times more, um,

non-fossil fuel energy, to get one unit reduction in fossil energy,

controlling for what you'd expect

from growth of population, GDP and so forth.

If you look at the trends in all energy sources,

roughly speaking, they've all grown rapidly.

Fossil fuels, when you add natural gas,

you don't see any suppression, per se of coal

or oil consumption.

Nuclear power doesn't seem to have a strong effect on the others.

Meaning, all energy sources are consumed

as their production increases.

And so I've called that, um, the displacement paradox,

just meaning, you know, we might assume that one would displace another,

it would push another out in proportion,

and we don't see that, or we don't see it strongly.

To the extent there is displacement, it's certainly not one-for-one.

But if you think about it, most industries,

companies, corporations, they're trying to make profits.

They're trying to expand production and consumption.

They're not trying to conserve resources.

So, that's historically, new energy sources have just

allowed for more growth, more...

more production, more consumption.

If we want to push out fossil fuels,

I think we need to push out fossil fuels,

rather than just hoping producing more

wind or solar will do that, naturally in the marketplace.

[Julia] While these energy sources are being brought online,

- they tend to add on top of the fossil fuels... - [phone chimes]

- Yeah. - ...they don't tend to displace them.

So, it takes, on... on average, about ten units of... of, like,

solar or wind to displace one unit of fossil fuel energy.

- That's recently added to the grid... [inaudible] - Yeah. Yeah.

So, what is the conclusion from an analysis like that?

We shouldn't do anything?

- No, I don't think so. - Is it saying it's making it worse,

by trying to come up with a solution?

No, it's... it's not. It's not that.

It's just maybe we're looking in the wrong places for solutions.

That maybe we need to tackle it on a more systemic level.

- Yeah, there's... there's no question. - [inaudible]

I mean, our major impact on the planet now,

not just in terms of energy, is consumption.

And that was a deliberate program.

After all... [stutters] you're way too young,

but, uh, I remember the impact of the Great Depression.

The 1930s. My mom and dad were married in the 1930s,

and that was a terrible time and people learned to live

and, you know, cooperate and act together.

In many ways, communities were much stronger and tighter back then,

because you had to.

What brought us out of the Depression was World War II.

Wars are great for bringing economies up.

As the war was coming to an end, the Pr... U.S. President said,

"Holy... we're going to win this...

but what do we do with the economy in peacetime?"

So, he asked his Council of Economic Advisers...

"How do you transition a wartime economy to a peacetime economy?"

And their answer was "Consumption.

You've got to make consumption an American way of life."

Buy things, use them up, throw them away and buy more.

And it works. 70% of the North American economy,

now is about consumption.

So, we have a real pickle, because the economy now

has been so dedicated to consumption.

And we think that the economy has got to be kept growing.

Well, constant growth is the creative cancer cells.

Cancer cells think they can grow forever.

[tense dramatic music]

[Derrick] What is the energy being used for?

Within this culture,

production is the conversion of the living to the dead.

It's the conversion of living forests to two-by-fours.

A living forest is not counted.

All these fish in the oceans, they don't actually count.

What happens is, when the fish get killed

and then converted into fish sticks...

then that adds to the GNP.

[Max] Alternative energies both support and are produced by

the industrial system that's killing the planet.

So, when people talk about 100% renewable energy transition

to save the planet, to save civilization,

what they're actually talking about is sustaining

modern, high energy, uh, ways of life,

at the expense of the natural world.

I think we often have this, uh, image that it's...

wind power and solar power companies

competing with fossil fuel power companies.

And I think that... you know, that varies on ownership,

but a lot of times, it's the same company

that owns wind power and fossil fuels.

That's the nature of economies, that...

companies are involved in these activities to make money.

They're not trying to... to displace or change other things.

When a... a company invests in wind power,

it's typically an economic decision,

and that doesn't mean that they're then trying to use less fossil fuel.

And the irony is, a lot of times the profits that come from renewable energy,

can be invested anywhere in the economy.

That's another misunderstanding about economies,

capitalist economies.

If you make profits from wind power,

that doesn't mean those profits are invested in wind power.

They can be invested anywhere. So, somewhere the irony is,

those profits can also be invested in expanding fossil fuel extraction.

[light dramatic music]

[Max] I lived for a number of years in Salt Lake City,

and the largest copper mine in the world

was about ten miles from my house.

And, uh, that mine is called the Bingham Canyon Mine,

it's been operating for 100 years.

And it's a mountaintop removal mine.

It's one of the largest man-made holes on the planet.

Copper production is absolutely essential

for green technologies.

A single wind turbine generator...

maybe a five megawatt design, probably has something like 1000lbs of copper in it.

So, people like Mark Jacobson,

who are calling for 100% renewable energy...

He's calling for 3.8 million

five megawatt turbines to be built.

Now, multiply that by 1000lbs of copper per turbine,

and you've got a lot of copper. I think it would be about

six years of the full production from...

the Bingham Canyon mine, which again,

is the largest copper mine in the world.

So, when people say that wind turbines are clean and green and sustainable,

I think it's completely out of touch with reality.

[dark dramatic music]

Um, well, my goals are to develop

clean and renewable energy solutions to global warming,

air pollution and energy and security.

So, I do this by going state-by-state in the U.S. and country-by-country,

and developing clean and renewable energy plans,

uh, that result... that require electrifying all energy sectors,

including electricity, which is already electrified,

transportation, heating and cooling,

industry, agriculture, forestry and fishing.

And then providing that electricity with 100% clean,

renewable wind, water and solar power...

and... and also involving storage,

and, uh, some additional transmission as well.

[Julia] What percentage of the electricity

would be from what? Like solar, wind,

or... like, what percentages would they take that?

Well, in a 100% clean renewable energy economy worldwide,

we'd probably have around...

55% solar, maybe 40% wind...

And, uh,

you know, the rest of it is I...

You know, it's going to be everything else, like,

hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal wave power

in small quantities...

so...

Yeah, so it's going to be...

you know, mostly solar and wind.

[dark dramatic music]

[Max] Wind energy, of course is produced by these giant turbines

that they erect in the windiest places they can find.

And they've been doing it for a long time now.

One of the first production-scale wind facilities

was down in California, near the Bay Area.

And they... they called that particular place, "The Cuisinart for Birds,"

because it killed so many birds.

And that's one of the first problems

that these wind turbines cause,

is they kill a lot of birds, and they kill a lot of bats.

What happens with bats is that,

they'll be flying near the blades,

and as the blades move, they're creating such a massive

pressure differential between the front of the blade

and the back of the blade, that, um...

that their lungs will explode.

And it's called barotrauma.

It's a pressure injury, essentially and, um...

I'm sure a pretty horrible way to die.

And...

So, the impacts on bats and birds alone,

are reason enough to never support wind energy.

[Derrick] If you talk to these mainstream so-called "environmentalists"

about the bird deaths from windmills,

or the bat deaths from windmills,

they will oftentimes say, "Well,

there's a lot more birds die from cats,

or a lot more birds die from skyscrapers,"

as though that makes it okay.

Buildings kill one billion birds per year,

and cats kill about three billion birds per year.

So, it's really a red herring to talk about birds'...

bit... death due to wind turbines.

And I think about this in terms of a medical model,

that if you have someone in a hospital who has,

for example, AIDS and they have...

seven different opportunistic infections are going after them,

You don't say, "Well...

it doesn't matter if we add MRSA to the mix, does it?"

Just because there's one bad thing can happen to you,

doesn't mean you don't prevent the second bad thing.

That's the same with all these wind energy facilities,

that just because there are birds who die flying into skyscrapers,

doesn't mean you should kill 200 million more every year

with wind energy generators. It makes no sense!

You would think... here's the thing is, if there were

no other threats to them,

then maybe you could consider this,

except still, for those 200 million birds it'd be bad,

but when the bird populations are collapsing anyway,

you're adding another threat. Are you nuts?

This is horrible.

[Julia] So what would be the impact on birds and bats

if we had 40% wind energy?

Yeah, we would reduce bird and bat deaths

by about a factor of ten,

compared to what they are from fossil fuels.

So in other words, fossil...

You know, wind turbines kill birds.

The American Bird Conservancy estimates in the United States

about 400,000 to 500,000 birds per year and were killed.

But we also know that oil, coal and gas, for example,

they kill birds at a rate that is ten times higher,

per unit of energy, than wind power does,

due to not only destroying their habitats, uh, and...

[stutters]... by all the mining that goes on.

One of the first rules of propaganda is

if you can slide your premises by people, you've got them.

And so, if you can...

frame a question as, "Well...

look, lots of birds are going to die from global warming.

So instead, what if we only have

200 million birds a year die from windmills.

Isn't that better?"

Okay, what is inherent in that question is the notion

that the world needs industrial energy,

and that...

the choice is between burning oil and gas and coal,

and having wind turbines.

But that's not the choice, for multiple reasons.

One reason that's not the choice...

is because...

there is nothing inevitable about industrial production.

It is a social choice,

and given that the planet is being killed because of those choices,

you would think we would make different choices.

[Julia] Do you think it would be better for, like,

the natural world if we just didn't use energy?

Well, I suppose that would be nice, but, um... [chuckles]

- Yeah, it's not a very practical thing... - Yeah.

...but it's, uh, it's... definitely it would be nice

if we didn't use energy, but then how would we...

You know, we would not be able to survive.

[Julia] Gosh, I wonder how humans survived

for the past 200,000 years without electricity?

Could it be that we don't actually need electricity

for our survival?

[Derrick] Electricity is a convenience. It is a luxury.

Humans have survived for tens of thousands of years...

without industrial electricity.

And there's a real question...

as to whether humans will survive,

with industrial electricity.

What is energy used for when it's produced in this society?

It's used for the military.

It's used for producing cheap consumer goods.

It's used for entertainment.

It's used for transportation.

It's mostly used for these non-essential luxuries

that are destroying the planet, in one way or another.

[light dramatic music]

[Julia] This is Ivanpah.

It's a concentrated solar power system,

located in southeastern California.

A field of mirrors concentrate sunlight on a central tower,

heating a fluid inside to over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The light from the mirrors attracts insects,

and the insects attract birds.

The concentrated sunlight burns every creature

who flies overhead.

[Derrick] Before you can commit any mass atrocity,

you have to have what Robert Jay Lifton calls,

"A claim to virtue."

And what he means by that, is that...

no one ever admits to causing an atrocity.

That internally, you have to make yourself out to be the good person.

And so, from their own perspective,

the Nazis weren't committing mass murder and genocide,

they were purifying the Aryan race.

And today capitalists are not killing the planet,

they are...

developing natural resources.

And how this relates to the Bright Greens,

is the Bright Greens are not in fact killing the planet,

but they are saving the planet.

Unfortunately, they might have to kill part of the desert to do it,

and so, you can see headlines like,

"Harming the desert to save the world."

That was before they put in this solar power generation facility,

that caused great harm to birds,

caused great harm to desert tortoises.

Great harm to the landscape.

It's all a claim to virtue.

The planet itself does not need

solar power generation facilities.

The planet needs...

to have this stopped.

There are some estimates that

solar energy generation facilities,

by 2050, they could be the greatest threat to habitat.

So, that's how many they want to put in.

It's extraordinary what you can get by if you've... [stutters]

got a claim to virtue, as we saw with the Holocaust,

as we're seeing with the murder of the planet.

I've seen environmentalists, sort of mainstream,

Bright Green environmentalists, applauding the construction

of gigantic battery factories in Nevada,

simply because they're for electric automobiles.

And that's nuts.

Environmentalists in general...

have... have historically been pretty decent on being opposed to electronics...

and environmentalists, historically have been

pretty strong in being opposed...

to automobiles.

But somehow,

if you combine electronics and automobiles,

then suddenly it's a good idea.

That's crazy.

Never mind the fact, that most of the pollution

coming from an automobile does not emerge from the tailpipe,

it's in the construction vehicle.

And never mind the fact that

there are about 228 trillion insects killed per year by cars.

There are about...

two billion vertebrate animals killed every year by cars,

and I don't care whether they're electric cars or...

diesel or gasoline engine, doesn't matter.

And that's only those who were killed directly.

Roads fragment habitat.

Punching in roads into new areas,

make it so loggers can follow, miners can follow...

all sorts of destruction follows.

And somehow, if it's an electric vehicle, it's supposed to be okay.

Of course, electric cars, like a lot of the other green technologies,

are getting huge subsidies.

There are these tax credits.

There are write offs, there are government rebates.

And this is a public subsidy,

coming directly from our tax dollars

and going to corporations.

And it's incentivizing them to build more cars,

to build more factories, to build more parking lots,

to build more shopping malls, to build more highways, to build more roads.

To invest in car culture, as a whole.

[Derrick] There was a headline the other day

that was pretty funny. It was about how...

by putting all these electric cars on the road,

Tesla could reduce

oil consumption in the United States by about 300,000 barrels per day.

It feels like a lot, until you realize that in 2015,

U.S. oil consumption for transportation

was about 20 million barrels per day.

So, this is a whopping 1.5% decrease by 2030

at the cost of lithium mines around the world.

At the cost of all these additional cars being made,

that are going to actually cost,

God knows how many barrels per day to manufacture.

I know that

the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta

and other groups in Nigeria, have reduced oil output...

by up to 60%, um, through acts of sabotage on...

um, oil rigs there.

And...

they have done so with really no time lag.

It's... they reduce the oil output in real time.

Ask yourself, uh...

from the perspective of nonhumans...

or of poor humans...

or of any creature going to be driven extinct by global warming

or by roads or by cars...

you know, which... which would you prefer.

[ethereal music]

[Julia] I started fighting for the ocean six years ago.

Since then, I've seen this world continue to collapse.

The ocean is the foundation of life on this planet.

The fact that we're losing it at the rate we are is alarming.

I think part of the reason we're failing,

is that we ask, "What is politically possible?"

More often than we ask, "What is necessary?"

[Paul] We're in the midst of what's called the Anthropocene,

which is the sixth major extinction of life on this planet.

The last one was 65.2 million years ago,

and the most serious one was, uh, the Permian Extinction,

250 million years ago, which wiped out 97% of everything.

The Anthropocene has the potential to wipe out 90% of everything.

It won't wipe out everything,

but we will go along with that 90% that's being wiped out.

So, we won't survive.

At the climate change conference in Paris in 2015,

I said, "Look, you know, the only way to do this is

we need a moratorium on all industrialized,

heavy gear fishing for the next 50 years.

That's the only thing that's going to work, we have to shut it down.

Right now, there's ten million fishing vessels out there...

44 million of them, 40% are illegal.

And there's no such thing. There's no such thing as a sustainable fishery.

It doesn't exist anywhere.

So, we have to shut it down, if we care about the future.

[ethereal music]

[Marketa] I don't think people realize,

how intimate the connection we have with ocean is.

It's the very foundation of life.

People think that the oxygen comes from the rainforest and trees,

which is true, but it's only about 28%.

The rest of it comes from the ocean.

The photosynthesis that are usually done by plants and trees,

are actually done by phytoplanktons,

which are these tiny microalgae organisms

that are living in the ocean.

It takes the carbon dioxide and releases oxygen.

So, it's very important for humans to actually protect the phytoplankton.

And that's where the population of whales come into picture.

Whale feces are very rich in iron and other nutrients

that are very important for phytoplankton to be healthy,

and whales are moving from depth to the surface

and provide nutrients through all these layers.

So, all that balance in the ocean,

every species depends on another.

It's very important.

We have to keep all this balance together.

[light dramatic music]

[Paul] Since 1950, there's been a 40% diminishment

in phytoplankton populations around the world.

And when you couple that with the fact that we're destroying the world's forests,

then really what we have is that this planet has two lungs.

One is blue and one is green,

and we're destroying both the green and the blue lungs.

[Julia] What would it take to actually save the ocean?

What would it take to actually save the oceans?

Well, shut down all

heavy gear industrialized fishing operations.

Stop sonic testing in the ocean.

Spracking military sonic testing.

Stop dumping chemical pollutions

and radioactive materials into the ocean.

Uh... [blows out] stop dump... dumping agro, um...

waste from both the, uh... you know, the meat industry

and also from the production of vegetables,

of pesticides and everything like that.

You know, there's so many factors.

Can we stop them?

You know, a few years ago, I was at a...

oh, man, quite a few years ago, I was at a discussion in Toronto

about pollution in the Don River...

and the Union people were there

and the environmentalists were there and, uh,

everybody's saying, "We've got to solve the problem.

And how are we going to solve the problem?"

And I just, uh, was very unpopular,

because I said, "Do we know what's causing the pollution?

Do we know what factories are... are doing this?"

"Well, yes, we do."

"Well, stop doing it."

And they all looked at me like I'd just...

said something completely outrageous and blasphemous, you know.

"Just stop doing it. Just turn off the taps."

But no, they wanted a solution,

without really getting a solution.

[Julia] I'm on my way to the Green Living Show.

Basically, it's an expo with people selling eco products.

You know, it all centers around this idea

that we can shop our way to sustainability.

And there's a great line from Endgame, which is,

"Within an industrial economy, buying good things

isn't really doing good for the planet,

so much as it is doing something not quite so bad."

I think this all really serves as a distraction,

you know, it points people's attention towards themselves,

and towards their personal habits,

so that they're not looking

at the root causes of these problems.

They're not looking at the systems

that make this culture functionally unsustainable.

Instead, it's putting the blame on individuals.

And I'm not saying individuals don't have responsibility.

They do, but our responsibility is not

to find the most eco-ethical toothbrush and buy it.

Our responsibility is to stand between industry

and what's left of life on this planet.

Our responsibility is to deprive those who would destroy life

of their ability to do so.

And shopping for green products does not threaten those in power.

It takes people's very real concerns about the environment,

and diverts that into a way to promote consumerism.

[Lierre] The underpinnings of these solutions are all about,

you as an individual. "What can you do?"

And the answer is honestly, it's like,

don't be an individual, because as an individual,

you just don't have that much power.

The only power you have as an individual is,

"Well, I can buy this instead of that,

or I can try to recycle a little bit better."

That's not a lot of power, given the global scale of destruction.

- Hey! - How's it going?

- Good, how are you? - Good, good.

So, is this an electric car?

Yes, this is a fully electric vehicle.

Um, pretty much from the whole charge,

it goes up to 383 kilometers.

Um... People love the color.

- Yeah. It's very bright. - It's very bright,

- grabs your attention. Yeah, very green. - Very green.

- That's exactly what we wanted. - Yeah... [chuckles]

- That's great. - How much energy does it take to make an electric car?

Energy to make an electric car?

Um, well, the battery is 60 kilowatts.

- Mm-hmm. - Um...

Uh, to make the car? I wouldn't want to

- give you false information, because I don't know. - Okay.

[Julia] "Vote with your dollars" has become a catchphrase

of mainstream environmentalism.

The 1950s was the first time that human beings

were called "consumers," more often

than they were called "citizens."

If you can convince people that their primary means

of social and political action

is through their personal consumption,

then their choices of resistance

are reduced to buying or not buying.

But human beings have a much wider range

of available tactics.

[Max] They want us to believe that consumer choices

are the only way we can change things.

But if we accept that, then that means they've won,

because we're defining ourselves as consumers.

I don't think we should let them have that victory.

Because the reality is that, yes, we consume things.

I have to buy things within this culture to survive and...

that is not something that defines me or my power

as an actor in this world.

I... I would say, much more fundamentally,

I'm an animal and I have hands and I have feet

and I can walk places and I can do things.

And I have a voice...

and I have the ability to speak with people

and to build a relationship with people.

And I have the ability to organize...

and I have the ability to fight if need be.

These are all much more important

than my ability to buy or not buy something.

[indistinct background chatter]

[Julia] So, if I'm a person who comes to this event,

I'm going to come away thinking that to solve the world's environmental problems,

I need to buy an electric car,

um, buy clothing made out of bamboo and organic cotton

and get a reusable water bottle and a bamboo toothbrush.

None of these things are sufficient to address

the problems facing the natural world,

and these are all just luxury items being produced,

that nobody really needs.

[indistinct background chatter]

[Julia] If we're going to tackle this on a meaningful level,

we need to address the root causes

of this culture's unsustainability.

Contrary to what we often hear,

climate change did not begin

with the burning of fossil fuels.

It started much earlier.

[Lierre] The beginning of global warming is actually

the beginning of agriculture.

I mean, we've all seen that, kind of, the hockey stick graph.

Fossil fuel has this huge CO2 release,

and so it, you know, all of a sudden, just boom, starts going up,

and that's true, but if you back that up 10,000 years,

human activity actually released that much carbon

from the beginning of agriculture to the year 1800,

as we did from 1800 till now.

So how? How... what is this about?

Well, huge amounts of carbon are stored in soil,

and when you do agriculture,

you're destroying the soil, essentially.

So, as the soil falls to pieces, all that carbon is released.

We live in an agricultural society

which makes it really...

hard for us to examine the nature of agriculture.

To us, it's like air. It's just what's there.

It's just how things happen, like, how we get food.

There's not even a question that there's another way,

because this has been happening now for so long.

10,000 years is... is how long some humans have been doing agriculture.

I mean, agriculture started in probably

14 different places around the globe.

And it always starts in river valleys, and there's a reason for that.

The reason is that agriculture is based on annual grasses,

and where you're going to get the most annual grasses

is in river valleys.

So, there's two different kinds of plants.

There's annuals and there's perennials.

Annuals only live one year.

That's why they're called annual.

And the perennials live a long time.

So the annuals, their moment is

when there is a disturbance across the landscape.

So a fire, a flood, an earthquake.

What happens is that the ground is bare,

and the planet recognizes this as a biological emergency.

So, you know, nature has come up with ways to fix this as fast as it can.

And the answer is annuals.

When there is no competition, the annuals spring to life.

So one way to think about it is, they're the first responders,

or think about, you know, if you cut yourself

with a knife or a pair of scissors or something,

um, you're going to put a Band-Aid on that.

And that's what the annuals are, they're the Band-Aid.

And eventually, just like your skin will knit back together,

the roots of the perennials will come back.

Those perennial plants will close in across that disaster area again,

and there will be that tightly knit web of perennial roots once more.

But until that happens, all you have is annuals.

So 95% of plants are perennials, on the planet,

and about 5% are annuals.

So, they certainly have their role,

but there's no landscapes where it's just annuals.

That's the problem with agriculture,

is that it's based on these annual grasses.

Now, the only way you're going to get those to grow

is to clear the life off the land.

They can't compete against the perennials.

So, for 10,000 years we've, essentially, been waging a war.

So, if you think about what agriculture is

on a really, just basic scale...

you take a piece of land,

you clear every living thing off it,

and I mean down to the bacteria,

and then you plant it to human use.

So, it's biotic cleansing.

I mean, we've all heard of ethnic cleansing.

Well, this is the same thing, except it's not just humans.

It's every last living creature.

Just gone.

So, it's this massive war that we've been waging.

And every season you have to keep it up,

because, of course, life fights back.

Life wants to live.

The problem now is so bad,

that 98% of the world's old growth forests

and 99% of the world's grasslands have been destroyed.

And this is all in the service of agriculture.

So, humans have taken over

every piece of land that could be taken for this activity.

There's nothing left to take.

What this means is that 200 species are going extinct

each and every day.

They haven't just been extirpated.

They're gone forever...

um, and that's what we've done, by taking up agriculture.

[Derrick] They say that agriculture increases food production,

but that's completely false.

What it does, it grossly decreases food production,

but it funnels whatever food production there is

towards humans.

Um, but in terms of actual food production,

when you include food production for all the non humans who live here?

No, it's... it's grossly reduced.

And one of things that agriculture does

is it commits you to a path of further destruction,

because you have more food for humans,

but you do so at the cost of the health of the land base.

So, you slowly decrease the carrying capacity of the land base,

because you've overshot it.

And as you destroy your land base,

you have a choice. You can either collapse...

or you can continue to find new frontiers to exploit.

The problem is somebody else already lives there,

which means your way of life has to be militarized,

because you're going to conquer them.

And also you have to destroy the environment of the places nearby.

[Lierre] So, this is an inherently destructive activity,

and it kind of snowballs into worse and worse things.

So, the moment you clear that land,

that soil starts being destroyed.

One season of planting your annual crop,

you know, pick whichever, wheat, soy, corn...

you can lose 2000 years worth of top soil.

That's how slowly topsoil grows and how easily it is destroyed.

When the Europeans first got to the Midwest,

the prairie soil was 12 feet deep,

and it can now only be measured in inches.

So, it's gone. We blew through it all,

in a very short period of time.

So, that's the nature of agriculture.

Like, there's not...

a better way to do this. There's not, like, a kinder,

gentler form of agriculture.

It's literally what it is.

You remove all the life, and then you draw down the soil,

and in the process, you also draw down water

and you draw down species

and you draw down entire biotic communities.

[light dramatic music]

[Derrick] The fertile crescent is where a lot of these problems started.

And you've seen it now, and it doesn't look like a fertile crescent at all.

It's treeless, horizon to horizon,

but that was before the beginnings of this culture.

That was cedar forests, so thick that sunlight never touched the ground.

It was like this. Thicker, because sunlight's touching the ground over there.

And this culture has destroyed that.

Converted it to agriculture and then converted it to desert.

That's what happens.

Forests precede us, and deserts dog our heels.

[Lierre] During the era of the black plague in Europe,

anywhere from, like, one third to three quarters

of the population died, depending on where you were.

So what happened pretty quickly, was all the agricultural fields

were... were abandoned, because there were no people left.

And the forest starts to take over.

And there's actually a dip in the carbon in the atmosphere,

because Europe was, at least partially reforested,

at that... at that moment.

So, you can see that, actually, it responds pretty quickly.

Um, if we could get some plants back in the ground,

that can sequester carbon...

it could happen.

And this is why I am not, in any way, out of hope.

If we were to repair even 75%

of the trashed-out prairies in the United States,

in about ten years, we could sequester

all of the carbon that we have released in this country.

Basically, period. We would actually become a nation that sequesters carbon.

Around the globe, if we could repair 75% of the world's grasslands,

we could sequester all of the carbon that's been released

since the beginning of the industrial age till now,

and pretty quickly.

And that's really all it takes is,

we... we have to just let life come back.

[rhythmic melodic music]

[Julia] Fish sequester carbon in their bodies

and excrete gut rocks,

which help balance the acidity of the ocean.

Industrial fishing has wiped out 90%

of the large fish in the ocean.

Mangroves, salt marshes, sea grasses and peat bogs

have similarly been decimated.

And could similarly sequester a lot of carbon,

if we stop destroying them and allowed them to come back.

The natural world is our best ally

for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

Yet, the mainstream climate movement demands we plunder

what remains of our already decimated planet,

in order to produce solar panels and wind turbines,

to add energy to the grid.

Energy which will power the further destruction of the planet.

The mainstream environmental movement

has completely lost touch with reality.

♪ Climate change has got to go, hey-hey, ho-ho ♪

♪ Climate change has got to go, hey-hey, ho-ho ♪

[Julia] I'm here at the climate march in Montreal.

They're expecting about 300,000 people today,

mostly youth, who are here marching,

thinking that they're fighting for their futures

and they're fighting to stop climate change,

but when you look at the explicitly stated demands

of the big organizations who are putting this together,

what they're asking for, is a swift transition

to 100% renewable energy.

So, that's not going to stop, or even slow climate change.

It's only going to make things worse.

- ♪ What do we want? ♪ - ♪ Climate justice! ♪

- ♪ When do we want it? ♪ - ♪ Now! ♪

[Derrick] The thing that blows me away, is the length

to which people will go

in order to avoid looking at the problem.

That they will create all these...

extraordinary fantasies, in order to do something

that's not going to help the planet,

so they can avoid looking at the real issue,

which is that...

industrial civilization itself is what's killing the planet.

[Lierre] So, this word civilization. What does that actually mean?

Well, just etymologically,

it means people living in cities.

Okay, but what does that actually mean?

Well, it means people living in densities large enough,

that they require the importation of resources.

So, just think about this common sense level.

Eight million people cannot live on an island called Manhattan.

Right? Where does their food come from?

Where does the water come from? Where does the energy come from?

And that's the problem with cities, okay?

The city has used up its own.

Whatever it is, it's not there.

So, now where are they going to get it?

Well, from that point forward, it doesn't actually matter

what kinds of beautiful, peaceful, nonviolent...

spiritual values people hold in their hearts.

Your society is now dependent on imperialism and genocide,

because nobody willingly gives up their land,

their water, their trees, their fish,

but since the city has used up its own,

it's got to go out and get those from somewhere else.

So, the pattern of civilization is always the same.

You've got this bloated power center, right at the middle,

and then it's surrounded by conquered colonies.

And the power center takes whatever it can,

brings it all back in. Eventually, it collapses,

because we're on drawdown. We're on overshoot.

Historically speaking, civilizations had a natural end point.

They were only going to get so big before they eventually would collapse.

And so that's what you see. Whether it's South America,

North America, Asia, Africa, Europe.

It's the same pattern over and over.

There have been 34 civilizations to date.

They have all ended in collapse.

This one will be no different.

The only difference is this... this one right now, you know, we've...

we've added this incredible accelerant of fossil fuel.

[Max] You know, I grew up in Seattle and...

what is now downtown Seattle,

with skyscrapers and concrete, as far as you can see,

used to be old growth forest, with cedar and Douglas fir

and hemlock and maple and all these other trees.

Old growth trees, thousands upon thousands of years old.

The trees in the urban areas of the Pacific Northwest,

for example, in Vancouver, B.C.,

what's now downtown Vancouver,

used to be old growth forests.

And there used to be trees 400 feet tall there,

and there's records of this.

And those trees, they were Douglas firs in this case,

those would be the tallest trees in the world today.

People think the redwoods are the tallest trees in the world,

and it's only because the tallest Douglas firs,

who are quite a bit taller...

have all been cut down.

And they were cut down, among other things, to build these cities.

[Derrick] We, in this culture, have come to conflate

this way of life with all life on the planet.

If I say, "I want to end civilization."

They say, "Oh, you want to end life."

But the problem is that this culture is ending life.

And some people have accused me of being cruel,

because I want to bring down civilization,

and that will make it so, people who...

are reliant upon modern medicines will die.

I have Crohn's disease and coronary artery disease,

and without...

modern medicines, I would die.

I am one of those people...

but I realize that the world is more important than I am.

[light dramatic music]

[Lierre] Um, I think a lot of people...

You know, the easier thing, is to say things like,

"Well, it's greed is the problem."

It's like... Okay, so... [chuckles]

We actually have a society, that is not just about greed.

I mean, we actually reward greed on a massive scale.

All right, so, like, what are the social rewards?

What are the political rewards? What are the financial rewards?

Well, that system is actually called capitalism,

at least right now. I mean, there's certainly other versions of it.

I don't mean to say it's the only one,

but right now it's capitalism across the globe,

and that's what it does.

All right, it takes living communities.

It converts those into dead commodities.

And then those dead commodities are turned into private wealth.

And a lot of people think, "Well, if we just make that into public wealth.

If we all could get an equal piece of the pie,

that's the solution." This is the problem,

There's not going to be a solution,

because you've still got the first two parts of that equation.

Why are we taking the living planet,

and turning it into dead commodities?

Like, that's the problem.

I don't actually care. in the end...

who gets all the... all the goodies.

It's the fact that...

like, rivers and grasslands and forests and fish

have been turned into those dead commodities. That's the problem.

[light dramatic music]

[Derrick] What do all the so-called "solutions"

to global warming have in common?

They all take industrial capitalism as a given.

The natural world is having to conform to industrial capitalism.

They've switched the dependent, independent variables, that...

The world has to be primary and the health of the world

has to be primary, because without a world,

you don't have any economy whatsoever.

And the Bright Greens are very explicit about this.

What they're trying to save is industrial capitalism, industrial civilization.

They say this all the time, and...

that's my fundamental beef,

is that what I'm trying to save is the real world.

[rhythmic techno music]

[Julia] Bright Green environmentalism has gained popularity,

because it tells a lot of people what they want to hear.

That you can have industrial civilization and a planet, too.

It allows people to feel good about maintaining this destructive way of living,

and to avoid asking hard questions,

about the depth of what must be changed.

[Max] I think that a 100% renewable world

would not look very different than the one we live in now.

Even if you snapped your fingers and that happened tomorrow,

I think that global warming would continue to be a huge problem.

You'd still have all the emissions from logging,

from concrete production, from steel production,

from consumer goods, from global shipping.

From all these things.

And, of course, that renewable energy

would still be used...

to power this, to power the global economy.

[light dramatic music]

[Derrick] If space aliens came down from outer space,

and they were changing the climate...

and they were putting in mines everywhere...

we wouldn't care whether the mined materials

are going to be used to make windmills,

or to make solar panels

to power the alien economy.

The occupier economy.

What we would do is, we would stop the occupiers.

We would... we would do whatever necessary,

to make it so these space aliens can't change our climate.

And when you change your loyalty from the system,

to the planet, it does become their economy,

not our economy.

And it does become a matter of stopping their economy.

[light dramatic music]

[Max] There's war being waged on the natural world every day.

Yet, when we talk about fighting back...

people look at us like we're crazy... [chuckles]

The vast majority of environmentalists in this culture

do not perceive that we are in a war.

They love this culture and they see that it has some problems.

And I see that we're living in a culture that is not broken.

It was set up this way.

It was set up to exploit and to steal

and to use violence to take what it needs.

That's the history of this culture,

and I do not see how to stop it without force.

[Lierre] What I don't understand is why we're not fighting back.

Because what I do know is that if there's anybody alive

to look back 100 years from now...

they are going to wonder what the fuck was wrong with us.

That we didn't fight when the planet was going down.

Now, you love something or you wouldn't be listening to this.

Whatever you love, it is under assault.

But "love" is a verb.

We've got to let our love call us to action.

[melancholic music]

[Julia] I spent three years making a film about the ocean.

It is only now that I've learned

that the production of so-called "green technology"

represents one of the largest upcoming threats to the ocean.

They want to mine the deep sea,

to provide the materials necessary for the proliferation

of so-called "green technology."

A recent study estimates that two million cubic-feet

of sediment will be processed each day by each mining vessel.

The resulting slurry will be dumped back into the ocean...

where it will increase turbidity,

smother and bury organisms

and toxify the food web with heavy metals.

The ocean, which is the source of all life...

has become the next sacrifice zone,

in the name of green technology.

People claim that the future of electric cars

may depend on deep sea mining.

What if we switched what is primary

and instead said, that the future of the ocean

depends on stopping car culture?

Or that the future of the ocean depends on opposing

so-called "green technology?"

Evidently, this culture does not care

whether the ocean has a future.

It's more interested in justifying

continued exploitation

under the banner of green consumerism.

What we desperately need, is an environmental movement

that's willing to put nature first.

That's willing to put life on this planet

above this way of life.

We need people who will look honestly at the problems

and have the courage to ask the right questions.

Most importantly, we need to get to work.

To stop the destruction

and allow life to come back.

[music fades]

[light dramatic music]

Provided by explosiveskull https://twitter.com/kaboomskull