[Movements only really work if they grow, if they build. If they
move. And that’s almost always an additive process. The trick, I
think, is figuring out how to make it possible for more people to join
in.] [[link removed]]

‘A BOMB IN THE CENTER OF THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT’: MICHAEL MOORE
DAMAGES OUR MOST IMPORTANT GOAL   [[link removed]]

 

Bill McKibben
May 1, 2020
Rolling Stone
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_ Movements only really work if they grow, if they build. If they
move. And that’s almost always an additive process. The trick, I
think, is figuring out how to make it possible for more people to join
in. _

Bill McKibben, Michael Moore, Jeff Chiu/AP/Shutterstock; Craig
Lassig/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

 

If you’re looking for a little distraction from the news of the
pandemic — something a little gossipy, but with a point at the end
about how change happens in the world — this essay may soak up a few
minutes.

I’ll tell the story chronologically, starting a couple of weeks ago
on the eve of the 50th Earth Day
[[link removed]]. I’d already recorded my
part for the Earth Day Live webcast, interviewing the great indigenous
activists Joye Braum and Tara Houska about their pipeline battles. And
then the news arrived that Oxford University — the most prestigious
educational institution on planet earth — had decided to divest from
fossil fuels. It was one of the great victories in that grinding
eight-year campaign, which has become by some measures the biggest
anti-corporate fight in history, and I wrote a quick email to Naomi
Klein, who helped me cook it up, so that we could gloat together just
a bit. I was, it must be said, feeling pleased with myself.

Ah, but pride goeth before a fall. In the next couple of hours came a
very different piece of news. People started writing to tell me that
the filmmaker Michael Moore
[[link removed]] had just released a
movie called _Planet of the Humans_ on YouTube
[[link removed]].
That wasn’t entirely out of the blue — I’d been hearing rumors
of the film and its attacks on me since the summer before, and I’d
taken them seriously. Various colleagues and I had written to point
out that they were wrong; Naomi had in fact taken Moore aside in an
MSNBC greenroom and restated what she had already laid out to him in
writing. But none of that had apparently worked; indeed, from what
people were now writing to tell me, I was the main foil of the film. I
put together a quick response
[[link removed]], and I
hoped that it would blow over.

But it didn’t. Perhaps because everyone’s at home with not much to
do, lots of people watched it — millions by some counts. And I began
to hear from them. Here’s an email that arrived first thing Earth
Day morning: “_Happy Dead Earth Day. Time’s up Bill. You have been
outed for fraud. What a MASSIVE disappointment you are. Sell out.
Hypocrite beyond imagination. Biomass bullshit seller. Forest
destroyer. How is it possible you have led all of us down the same
death trap road of false hope? The YOUTH! How dare you! Shame on
you!”_ More followed, to say the least. (If you’re wondering
whether it hurts to get this kind of email, the answer is yes. In a
time of a pandemic, it’s hard to feel too much self-pity, but that
doesn’t mean it’s easy to read someone accusing you of betraying
your own life’s work.)

Basically, Moore and his colleagues have made a film attacking
renewable energy as a sham and arguing that the environmental movement
is just a tool of corporations trying to make money off green energy.
“One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that
alternative technologies, like wind and solar, are somehow different
from fossil fuels,” Ozzie Zehner, one of the film’s producers,
tells the camera. When visiting a solar facility, he insists: “You
use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from
it. You would have been better off just burning the fossil fuels.”

That’s not true, not in the least — the time it takes for a solar
panel to pay back the energy used to build it is well under four
years. Since it lasts three decades, it means 90 percent of the power
it produces is pollution-free, compared with zero percent of the power
from burning fossil fuels. It turns out that pretty much everything
else about the movie was wrong — there have been at least
24 debunkings
[[link removed]],
many of them painfully rigorous; as one scientist wrote in a
particularly scathing takedown
[[link removed]],
“_Planet of the Humans_ is deeply useless. Watch anything else.”
Moore’s fellow filmmaker Josh Fox, in an epic unraveling
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the film’s endless lies, got in one of the best shots: “Releasing
this on the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is like Bernie
Sanders endorsing Donald Trump while chugging hydroxychloroquine.”

Here’s long-time solar activist (and, oh yeah, the guy who wrote
“Heart of Gold
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Neil Young: “The amount of damage this film tries to create
(succeeding in the VERY short term) will ultimately bring light to the
real facts, which are turning up everywhere in response to Michael
Moore’s new erroneous and headline grabbing TV publicity tour of
misinformation. A very damaging film to the human struggle for a
better way of living
[[link removed]],
Moore’s film completely destroys whatever reputation he has earned
so far.”

But enough about the future of humanity. Let’s talk about me, since
I got to be the stand-in for “corporate environmentalism” for much
of the film. Cherry-picking a few clips culled from the approximately
ten zillion interviews, speeches, and panels I’ve engaged in these
past decades, the filmmaker made two basic points. One, that I was a
big proponent of biomass energy — that is, burning trees to generate
power. Two, that I was a key part of “green capitalism,” trying
somehow to profit from selling people on the false promise of solar
and wind power.

The first has at least a kernel of — not truth, but history. Almost
two decades ago, wonderful students at the rural Vermont college where
I teach proposed that the oil-burning heat plant be replaced with one
that burned woodchips. I thought it was a good idea, and when it
finally came to pass in 2009, I spoke at its inauguration. This was
not a weird idea — at the time, most environmentalists thought
likewise, because as new trees grow back in place of the ones that
have been cut, they will soak up the carbon released in the burning.
“At that point I would have done the same,” Bill Moomaw, who is
one of the most eminent researchers in the field, put it. “Because
we hadn’t done the math yet.” But as scientists _did_ begin to
do the math, a different truth emerged: Burning trees put a puff of
carbon into air _now_, which is when the climate system is breaking.
That this carbon may be sucked up a generation hence is therefore not
much help. And as that science emerged, I changed my mind, becoming an
outspoken opponent of biomass. (Something else happened too: the
efficiency of solar and wind power soared, meaning there was ever less
need to burn _anything. _The film’s attacks on renewable energy
are antique, dating from a decade ago, when a solar panel cost 10
times what it does today; engineers have since done their job, making
renewable energy the cheapest way to generate power on our planet.)

As for the second charge, it’s simply a lie — indeed, it’s the
kind of breathtaking black-is-white lie that’s come to characterize
our public life at least since Vietnam veteran John Kerry was accused
by the right wing of committing treason. I have never taken a penny
from green energy companies or mutual funds or anyone else with a role
in these fights. I’ve never been paid by environmental groups
either, not even 350.org, which I founded and which I’ve given all I
have to give. I’ve written books
[[link removed]] and given
endless talks
[[link removed]] challenging the
prevailing ideas about economic growth, and I’ve run campaigns
designed entirely
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cut consumption.

Let me speak as plainly as I know how. When it comes to me, it’s not
that _Planet of the Humans_ overstates the case, or gets it partly
wrong, or opens an argument worth having: it is a sewer. I’ll finish
with just the smallest example: In the credits, it defensively claims
that I began opposing biomass only last year, in response to news of
this film. In fact, as we wrote the filmmakers on numerous occasions,
I’ve been on the record about the topic for years. Here, for
instance, is a piece
[[link removed]] from
2016 with the not very subtle title “Burning Trees for Electricity
Is a Bad Idea.” Please read it. When you do, you will see that the
filmmakers didn’t just engage in bad journalism (though they surely
did), they acted _in bad faith_. They didn’t just behave
dishonestly (though they surely did), they behaved _dishonorably_.
I’m aware that in our current salty era those words may sound mild,
but in my lexicon they are the strongest possible epithets.

A reasonable question: Given that the film has been so thoroughly
debunked, can it really cause problems?

I’ve spent the past three decades, ever since I wrote _The End of
Nature_ at the age of 28, deeply committed to realism: no fantasy, no
spin, no wish will help us deal with the basic molecular structure of
carbon dioxide. That commitment to reality has to carry over into
every part of one’s life. So, realistically, most of the millions of
people who watch this film will not read the careful debunkings. Most
of them will assume, in the way we all do when we watch something,
that there must be something there, it must be half true anyway.
(That’s why propaganda is effective). To give one more small example
from my email, here’s a note I received the other day:

_Stop killing trees you lying murderer.  _

_Forests are life.  you are killing us all.  _

_You can change your stance and turn back the tide of destruction
you unleashed… or perhaps just go throw yourself in a fire and go
down as one of the worst humans to ever exist.  _

_Straight up evil. _

When I wrote back (and I always write back, as politely as I know
how), explaining what I’ve explained in this essay, the writer’s
reply was: “I have read your dribble and am glad someone has finally
called you out for the puppet you are.”

I don’t think most people are that mean-spirited (or maybe I just
hope not) and of course dozens of friends within the climate movement
wrote to express their solidarity and love. But I have no doubt that
many of the people who’ve seen the film are, at the least,
disheartened. Here’s what one hard-working climate activist wrote me
from Montana: “The problem is, this movie is all over the place and
is already causing divisions and conflicts in climate action groups
that I’m involved in — it’s like they detonated a bomb in the
center of the climate action movement.” Which I’m sure is true
(and I’m sure it’s why the film has been so well-received at
Breitbart and every other climate-denier operation on the planet).

Which may well mean that for now — maybe for a long time — my work
will be at least somewhat compromised and less effective, because my
work is mostly about trying to build that movement, to make it larger
and more unified. Yes, there are days (and more of them than I would
have expected) when it’s about going to jail
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but mostly it’s been a long, long process of reaching out and
talking to groups and people — helping them raise consciousness (and
sometimes helping them raise money). I’ve spent a very large
percentage of my life in high school auditoriums and at Rotary
lunches; I’ve traveled to every corner of the world, and in recent
years, as the technology improved, I’ve traveled too by low-carbon
Skype and Zoom. (Pandemic communications is old-school to me; for some
reason I now forget, my invaluable colleague Vanessa Arcara assembled
a list
[[link removed]] of
the virtual talks I gave in one stretch of 2015-16, which will give
you a sense of what my days are like). But if those visits and talks
end up igniting suspicion and controversy, then they’re obviously
less useful. I want to help important organizing, not disrupt it.

I’m used to attacks, of course. The oil industry has been after me
for decades, and some of their tactics have been far worse than
Moore’s — the period when they assigned videographers to literally
follow me whenever I set out the door was another low point in my
life, but I didn’t complain until
[[link removed]] it
seemed like they were doing the same to my daughter. I’ve gotten
used to an endless and creative series of death threats — each one
jolts you for a moment, but clearly, since I’m still here, most of
them are not serious. And again, I’ve only complained
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when they were bandying about my home address and particular methods
of execution on well-trafficked websites. But those kind of attacks
don’t confuse and divide environmentalists; if anything, they do the
opposite. They’re a punch in the nose, which turns out to be far
less damaging than a stab in the back.

And I think this leads to the larger point, about what’s useful for
movements and what isn’t.

I’m going to begin by boasting for a moment, if only to make myself
feel a little better: Here’s what I’d like people to recall from
my work these past years, as opposed to the notion that I am a
forest-raping sellout. See if you can figure out what every item on
this short list has in common.

* My role in helping found and build an actual climate movement. I
decided at a certain point that we weren’t in an argument over
global warming (we’d won that), but that we were in a fight. And the
other side — the fossil fuel industry — was so powerful they were
going to win unless we built some power of our own. Hence my decision
to go beyond writing and to try to learn how to organize. In 2007,
with my seven original undergraduate collaborators, we formed Step It
Up and found people to organize 1,500 simultaneous demonstrations
across the U.S.; two years later, at the start of 350.org, the numbers
were 5,200 rallies in 181 countries.
* My role in helping nationalize the fight over the Keystone XL
pipeline, and in the process lay the seedbed for much of the ‘keep
it in the ground’ work that has led to challenges of fossil fuel
infrastructure around the world.
* My role in helping launch the divestment fight, with a piece
of writing
[[link removed]] and
with the Do the Math campaign around the U.S. and then Europe and the
antipodes. (Here’s the movie
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it’s better than Moore’s). We’re currently at $14 trillion in
endowments and portfolios that have divested.
* My role in helping solidify and unify the newer fight against the
banks, asset managers, and insurance companies that fund the fossil
fuel movement — the StopTheMoneyPipeline.com effort that is
fighting pitched battles right now with Chase Bank, Liberty Mutual,
and BlackRock.

The thing that unites these four things is the word “helping.” So
many others have fought just as hard. If I started listing names I
literally would never stop; the pleasure has been in the teamwork and
collaboration.

And that’s the point: Movements only really work if they grow, if
they build. If they move. And that’s almost always an additive
process. The trick, I think, is figuring out how to make it possible
for more people to join in. When we started 350.org, we gave out the
logo to anyone. It was like a potluck supper; if you organized a
little demonstration in your town, you were a part. (One of the early
protests we were proudest of involved exactly one woman: an Iranian in
a headscarf who worked her way through half a dozen army checkpoints
to hold up a sign). The Keystone fight was well underway when we came
on board — indigenous groups and Midwest ranchers had been fighting
hard — but we helped to create ways to let anyone anywhere join in,
framing it as a fight about climate change
[[link removed]] as well as land.
Divestment, similarly: not everyone has a coal mine in their backyard,
but everyone’s connected through a school or a church or a pension
to a pot of money. Banks may be the best example
[[link removed]]:
Chase has tens of millions of credit cards out there. Or, to take the
example of the movie, biomass: Thank heaven for campaigners like Danna
Smith and Mary Booth and Rachel Smolker, who built a movement to help
explain why this was a bad idea. It worked for me — I changed my
mind, which is what you want movements to do.

You can, in other words, change the zeitgeist if you get enough people
engaged — if they both see the crisis and feel like they have a way
in.

But that’s precisely what’s undercut when people operate as Moore
has with his film. The entirely predictable effect is to build
cynicism, indeed a kind of nihilism. It’s to drive down turnout —
not just in elections, but in citizenship generally. If you tell a
bunch of lies about groups and leaders and as a result people don’t
trust them, who benefits?

To be clear, I doubt that was Moore’s goal. I think his goal was to
build his brand a little more, as an edgy “truth teller” who will
take on “establishments.” (That he has, over time, become a
millionaire carnival barker who punches down, not up — well,
that’s what brand management is for). But the actual effect in the
real world is entirely predictable. That’s why Breitbart loves the
movie. That’s why the tar-sands guys in Alberta are chortling.
“People are going ga-ga over it,” Margareta Dovgal, a researcher
with the pro-industry Canadian group Resource Works, told reporters
[[link removed]].
The message they’re taking from it is “we’re going to need
fossil fuels for a long time to come.”

Actually, we won’t. We’ve dropped the price of sun and wind 90
percent in the last decade (since the days when Moore, et al. were
apparently collecting their data). As Stanford professor Marc Jacobson
has made clear, we could get much of the way there in relatively short
and affordable order, by building out panels and turbines, by making
our lives more efficient, by consuming less and differently. But that
would require breaking the political power of the fossil fuel
industry, which in turn would require a big movement, which in turn
would require coming together, not splitting apart.

It’s that kind of movement we’ve been trying to build for a long
time. I remember its first real gathering in force in the U.S., with
tens of thousands of us standing on the Mall in Washington on a bitter
February day in 2013 to demand an end to Keystone and other climate
action. “All I’ve ever wanted to see was a movement of people to
stop climate change,” I told
[[link removed]] the
crowd. “And now I’ve seen it.”

We did an immense amount of work to get to that moment, helping will a
movement into being. But from that moment on, for me it’s been
mostly gravy — the great pleasure of watching the movement grow and
then explode. Watching the kids who had built college divestment
campaigns graduate to form the Sunrise Movement and launch the Green
New Deal. Watching Extinction Rebellion start to shake whole cities.
Watching the emergence of the climate strikers — and getting to
know Greta Thunberg
[[link removed]] and
many of the 10,000 others like her across the world. In each case,
I’ve tried to help a little, largely just by amplifying their voices
and urging others to pay attention.

I remember very well the night that same autumn after an overflow talk
in Providence when my daughter, then a sophomore at Brown, said
something typically wise to me: “I think you should probably be less
famous in the years ahead.” I knew what she meant even as she said
it, because of course I’d already sensed a bit of it myself. It
wasn’t that she thought I was a bad leader — it was that we needed
to build a movement that was less attached to leaders in general (and
probably white male ones in particular) if we were going to attain the
kind of power we needed.

And so, even then I began consciously backing off, not in my work but
in my willingness to dominate the space. I stepped down as board chair
at 350.org, and really devoted myself to introducing people to new
leaders
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dozens of groups. So many of those leaders come from frontline
communities, indigenous communities — from the people already paying
an enormous price for the warming they did so little to cause. Their
voices are breaking through, and thank heaven: If you follow my
twitter feed, you’ll see that the most common word, after
“heatwave”, is “thanks,” offered to whoever is doing something
useful and good. If you get the chance to read the (free) _New
Yorker_ climate newsletter
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earlier this year, you’ll see the key feature is called Passing the
Mic: So far I’ve interviewed Nicole Poindexter, Jerome Foster II,
Mary Heglar, Ellen Dorsey, Thea Sebastian, Virginia Hanusik, Tara
Houska, Vann R. Newkirk II, and Christiana Figueres; this week Jane
Kleeb; next week Alice Arena, helping lead the fight against a new gas
pipeline across Massachusetts.

I think that one thing that defines those movements is their
adversaries — in this case the fossil fuel industry above all. And I
think the thing that weakens those movements is when they start trying
to identify adversaries within their ranks. Much has been made over
the years about the way that progressives eat their own, about
circular firing squads and the like. I think there’s truth to it:
there’s a collection of showmen like Moore who enjoy attracting
attention to themselves by endlessly picking fights. They’re
generally not people who actually try to organize, to build power, to
bring people together. That’s the real, and difficult, work — not
purity tests or calling people out, but calling them in. At least,
that’s how it seems to me: The battle to slow down global warming in
the short time that physics allots us requires ever bigger movements.

It’s been a great privilege to get to help build those movements.
And if I worry that my effectiveness has been compromised, it’s not
a huge worry, precisely because there are now so many others doing
this work — generations and generations of people who have grown up
in this fight. I think, more or less, we’re all headed in the right
direction, that people are getting the basic message right: conserve
energy; replace coal and gas and oil with wind and sun; break the
political power of the fossil fuel industry; demand just transitions
for workers; build a world that reduces ruinous inequality; and
protect natural systems, both because they’re glorious and so they
can continue to soak up carbon. I don’t know if we’re going to get
this done in time — sometimes I kick myself for taking too long to
figure out we needed to start building movements. But I know our
chances are much improved if we do it together.

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