If you haven’t already seen it, the new documentary ‘Planet of the Humans’, written and presented by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore, is probably worth watching. I say ‘probably’, because it makes depressing viewing – exposing the delusion that all 'renewable energy', particularly biomass, is 'clean and green'. Even more depressingly, it reveals the tentacles of the fossil-fuel industry capturing and profiting from the ‘renewables revolution’. But the film is unfair, inaccurate and potentially harmful in condemning the whole energy transition movement. Worse, it ends offering no hope or any real solutions for reducing our impacts on the planet, when several are readily available: less fossil-fuel-compromised renewables now on-stream, and as demonstrated by Project Drawdown, universal access to family planning and education for girls which would cut more carbon than all on-shore and offshore wind combined.

Despite its flaws, the film’s ultimate message resonates: tech-fixes will not curb climate change on their own. Only by managing down our numbers alongside runaway consumption can we achieve that. The means to do so ethically exist, but there’s not as much money in encouraging smaller families, enabling choice and promoting contraception as in manufacturing allegedly ‘green’ cars, planes and all the associated infrastructure that maintain the high-energy dependency living standards the developed world has come to expect. You can read my full review of the film here. 

- Robin Maynard, Director, Population Matters

"People on social media joke that nine months from now, the children who will be born, in some tribes, will be called Corona Andrews, Quarantine Molo and such like. But the reality is that thousands of women who will not be able to access contraceptives will have one more child they cannot afford to feed, one more pregnancy denying them time for productive work and one more reason to stay in abusive relationships."

- Wendo Aszed, Executive Director, Dandelion Africa